Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

It is absolutely outrageous. It is inhumane and unjust. I just wonder what on earth is going on with a government which is so keen to wear its heart on its sleeve but which, in reality, slashes and burns and makes it harder for people whom we have embraced in this country and have said we would care for by cutting the fundamentals of English language learning.

The government has also slashed training in citizenship. We all know that, if you are from a non-English-speaking background, you often need a bit of help to learn the style of questions that will be asked in the citizenship test. You need to become familiar with the format. Of course, while the booklet is well written, you still need some help, especially if you are not literate and numerate in your home language, to understand the process of the test for Australian citizenship. We as a coalition ensured that there was funding for those training programs. This government has announced that it will not proceed with the funding of $15.8 million for the Citizenship Support Grants Program. I think that is very unfair. It really begs the question: if you are not helping those individuals to learn English and if you are now not helping them to learn what is behind our citizenship test, do you really want these people in this country? But then you see the softening of the border protection controls and the loss of the integrity of our migration program—the open-door, come on down policy—and you wonder what is going on with this government.

There was an excellent article, an opinion piece, on page 10 in the Australian on Monday, written by Barry Cohen, a minister in the Hawke Labor government between 1983 and 1987. I recommend that every Labor member and senator read that article. He says it exactly like it is. He says that you cannot have an open-door policy. He says in a rhetorical question:

Tell us, how many or if they would prefer an open-door policy?

He is addressing those who say that we do not have to deal with the current problem of the surge in people smuggling. He is a man whose own family escaped the hell of Nazi Germany. He says:

No Australian government, and for that matter, no government in the world has an “open-door” policy.

It is a real lesson for his contemporary Labor member and senator colleagues. I urge them to read that article.

I now address another matter which is of extraordinary importance and, I am afraid, one that is along the same theme of an uncaring or ignorant government. This budget has seen a change in the criteria for young people seeking financial support to go to university. It is a change in the youth allowance criteria. In the last two days, questions have been asked during question time in the House of Representatives which have shown that Julia Gillard, the minister in this area, does not understand, does not care or is that badly briefed that she is unable to explain exactly what this government has done in slashing the opportunity for 50 per cent of those on youth allowance to go to university. They are the rural and regional students.

What she has done is say that, in the future, if you are seeking independent status you have to work 18 months for 30 hours a week in order to qualify for it. Now, clearly, she has not moved beyond her own suburban environs or the capital cities for a very long time. There are no 30-hour-a-week jobs for year 12 school leavers in rural and regional Australia right now. If you work—if you are lucky—for 18 months as required, you lose your place at university because the universities only allow you to defer for one year.

The minister has said in her new program, her rewritten youth allowance criteria, that you have to work for 18 months—oops! She forgot that you would lose your place at university—and that you must work for 30 hours a week. Given what the Rudd Labor government’s unemployment figures look like right now and where they are going to, that is an unreal ask. Already there is a 50 per cent higher deferment rate of university offers to students in rural and regional Victoria than in metropolitan Melbourne. The gap year is not a choice for someone who simply wants to go on a lovely holiday or go on overseas. The gap year gives rural and regional students an opportunity to get government support to pay the extra $15,000 to $20,000 it costs to live away from home.

If the old system was being rorted, you should fix the rorts. You should go to the metropolitan families who were apparently working over the system in an unfair way and deal with them. You do not cut off the opportunities for rural and regional students to go to university, because we know, for example, that rural and regional medical, legal and engineering students and students studying to become surveyors and nurses—you name them—who are born and bred in country areas and who qualify for university are more likely to come back and work in rural and regional Australia. This government is taking generations of university graduates out of rural and regional areas. I think that is a disgrace and I beg the minister to look again at that criteria. She cannot tell us, ‘I’ve reduced the age of adulthood.’ You have already left university at the age of 22. She cannot say to us, ‘I’ve increased the means test,’ because at the rate she says you can still be eligible, you get zero for your student to live away on. This was a cruel blow for country people. They are up in arms. I have a rally on Friday in Shepparton, in the mall, where we expect hundreds, if not thousands, of year 12 students and those in their gap year to attend. (Time expired)

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