Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Forrest says, some of them do not eat. Some of them go without three meals a day to be able to pay for their private health insurance. They hold it dear—first from a desire for independence, second because of their desire to choose the health care that they receive and third because they want to be able to take care of themselves. They go without, in many cases, three meals a day in order to pay for their private health insurance.

The member for Braddon knows it is true, and it is disappointing for me to know that the member for Braddon has signed up to a policy that he knows will not just hurt middle-class Australians, will not just hurt self-funded retirees who can care for themselves in many instances, but actually attack the poorest Australians who have scrimped and scraped and saved to be able to pay for their private health insurance. Seventy-two per cent of the electors of Sturt have private health insurance; 72 per cent of the electors of Sturt can, today, recognise that they have been the losers out of this budget. That is putting aside the debt and the deficit and the unemployment that will flow from the government’s mismanagement of the nation’s finances. Putting that to one side, 72 per cent of Australians in my electorate will be materially affected financially by the budget brought down two weeks ago.

I should turn to education, as the shadow minister for education, and I have already briefly talked about higher education. I would like to touch on the Education Investment Fund. An amount of $6.2 billion was assigned in the 2007-08 budget for a new Higher Education Endowment Fund to provide an ongoing revenue source to pay for university infrastructure into the 21st century. Last year the Rudd government added $2½ billion from the Howard government surplus and renamed it the Education Investment Fund. This budget uses the funds to pay for 11 university projects and 12 state government TAFE and training projects. Successful applicants should be grateful for the strong economic management of the previous government which created the fund and provided the money. However, the government has also raided the EIF for a range of unrelated projects, including putting $400 million towards solar energy and carbon capture energy projects. These may well be worthy projects but they are not what the Higher Education Endowment Fund was created for. The universities and vocational education and training institutions have been seriously dudded, and they should say so. They should stand up for themselves.

In the final moments of this speech I would like to talk about the most pernicious aspect of the budget from an education point of view, and that is student income support. The government has changed the eligibility criteria for youth allowance. It will leave thousands of students who would currently be eligible for this income support out in the cold. Thousands of concerned constituents have contacted my office and the offices of other coalition members, especially people like the member for Forrest, the member for McMillan and the member for Gippsland—many members across the coalition side—regarding the impact of the federal budget on young Australians, and in particular the changes to eligibility for the youth allowance. I would warrant to this House that many members of the Labor Party caucus would have been contacted too by very concerned parents and families about the change to the youth allowance—probably not the member for Fremantle, who comes from the cafe latte set of Perth, but certainly the member for Braddon—

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