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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was not aware that standing orders did not allow me to mention members of the House who are in the chamber. But, in deference to you, I will not do so. The member for Braddon, of course, has a rural electorate, and I am sure that he would have been inundated by people concerned about the changes to the youth allowance. But also the member for Flynn, who is not in the chamber, the member for Capricornia, the member for Dawson and all Labor members in rural and regional seats could not have avoided being contacted by young Australians and their families who are desperate because of the changes the government has made to the youth allowance.

There are two particularly important aspects of this debate which need to be aired today. The first is that the transitional provisions for these changes catch thousands of Australians in their current gap year because they begin on 1 January next year. I cannot believe that the government will not return to this subject and deal with the transitional issues which leave thousands of Australians in their gap year out in the cold because they have taken decisions for 2009-10 which mean they begin university from 1 July 2010 and now face the prospect of not being able to access the youth allowance.

We will give the Minister for Education a rare opportunity to say: ‘I was wrong.’ It does not happen very often, but I imagine that this was an inadvertent error and that she is coming under tremendous criticism from her caucus about the need to reverse this decision. So we will give her that opportunity. It does not happen very often, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt that this is just another one of her bungles and that, given the chance, she will fix it. We will have a Senate inquiry—we will refer this matter to the Senate education committee, which will report in due course with the change that will need to be made in order to remove the transitional provisions that so disadvantage young Australians who are in their gap year. I hope the minister will be woman enough to come into the House and admit the error, admit this inadvertent mistake—we hope it is inadvertent; we hope this was not a deliberate attack on young Australians in their gap year—and reverse what is necessary to be reversed so that the law that was in place when people made those decisions will remain in place until 1 July next year. That will be a matter for her, but we will give her the opportunity through a Senate inquiry to save whatever face she wishes to save by backing down on that matter.

The second aspect about the youth allowance changes which must be worrying rural members of the Labor caucus as much as it is worrying my colleagues from rural and regional Australia concerns those rural and regional young people whose families have done everything in their power to get them into university and higher education only to find that they are now not eligible for the youth allowance but cannot stay at home with mum and dad, or mum or dad, and still go to university. If you are living in Toorak in Melbourne, Smithfield in Adelaide or parts of Brisbane, Perth, Fremantle et cetera and you no longer qualify for the youth allowance, often you will be able to stay at home and still go to university. But, if you are in the electorates of Forrest or Kalgoorlie, in outback Queensland, in seats such as Dawson, Flynn, Capricornia, Braddon or Leichhardt, in Solomon or in the electorate of the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel, Warren Snowdon, and you find you are no longer able to access the youth allowance, that is effectively the end of your dream of higher education. It is too bad. It is the cold shoulder, the rough pineapple, from the Labor Party. You will no longer be able to go to university because you cannot stay home with mum and dad and still access higher education.

It is a matter of social justice. The minister is supposed to also be the Minister for Social Inclusion. This government, as did the previous government, had a policy of trying to encourage young people from rural and regional areas and from disadvantaged backgrounds to get to university. This measure will diabolically affect those students who are incapable of accessing higher education simply because of the geographic place from which they come.

On Monday I gave the minister the example of Kieran Stubbs, the vision-impaired student from Victoria who is from Mount Martha in the electorate of my friend the shadow minister for the environment. Kieran is no longer able to access his dream of higher education because he needs to get to university every day and, if he has to go there from home, it is a three-hour bus trip either way. There is no possibility that Kieran Stubbs will be able to get to university because of this government’s change. His family are shattered, as you would expect them to be. I ask government members to search what hearts they have—what black and cold hearts they may have. But I give them the opportunity to change their position in a way that would allow a student like Kieran Stubbs the opportunity to get to university to fulfil his dream. His family have done everything in their power to give Kieran the opportunities that other young Australians have, and those opposite are snatching them away and giving him the cold shoulder in return. (Time expired)

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