Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the motion from the member for Forrest, because it gives those of us in the parliament an opportunity to talk about fact and to dispense with some of the myths being propagated by the opposition on the very important issue of youth allowance. I heard the member for Forrest call upon us to stand up for students in rural and regional communities. That is exactly what the government is doing. I am standing up tonight for the hundreds of young people in my electorate who will now qualify for youth allowance and for Abstudy because of the relaxation of the parental income test—a test which was out of sync with the family tax benefit test and which, of course, was extraordinarily low. It was a test which meant that a student whose parents were earning just $59,000 a year was not qualifying for youth allowance.

I do agree with the member for Durack on this point: this is a debate about equity. This is ensuring that the limited money government has available to spend in this area of public policy is well targeted. Usually when we have a debate about hard policy issues in this place, it is about money. It is about government ministers trying to find savings in outlays for redirection to other government priorities. But this debate is not about money. This policy is revenue-neutral and expenditure-neutral. This is about taking the same amount of money and making sure it is properly targeted—making sure that more students have an opportunity to go to university. And guess what: the people who are currently disadvantaged are typically those living in rural and regional Australia and, more particularly, those living in rural and regional Australia who are from low-socioeconomic backgrounds. So this is an initiative on the part of the government which is designed, in particular, to help and assist rural and regional communities. I am happy to admit that when the then education minister first announced this policy I was not particularly happy. I thought we had not got everything right. But since then we have improved significantly on this policy and I believe we now do have that policy right. This will mean the policy will be well targeted.

Take my own electorate, for example. More kids will get a student allowance because parental income is lower. Those who live in the more remote parts of my electorate will get special concessions. I remember only too well when the government’s first response to the global financial crisis was to give to eligible people a $900 cash bonus—it was very effective in dealing with the financial crisis. My three teenage children, all in study—and I am not talking about self-interest here in any sense—wanted to know why they were not getting the $900 cheque when all of their mates were. I scratched my head for a little while before determining that the reason all of their mates were getting the $900 was because they decided to game the system. I am not suggesting that every student games the system, but many of the ones I know were. They were taking a gap year to enable them to avoid the parental income test and to get on with life under the youth allowance. Sometimes they moved back with mum and dad, who were earning $300,000 or $400,000 a year, but were still getting youth allowance, while other kids who had taken the conscious decision to go straight on to university for whatever reason were missing out not only on youth allowance but on the cash bonus that the government had designed as part of its rescue package for the global financial crisis.

Let us not bleat in here about equity. There is no better example of an equitable proposal than taking a bucket of money and making sure it is properly targeted. Yes, there will be losers. There have been losers in my electorate and I have spoken to many of them. I sympathise with them, but the government has to make tough decisions. I am very confident and am convinced that these changes target this funding more appropriately. Again, the government has made changes to protect those who had already made the decision to take a gap year, so in effect there was no retrospective operation of this very important change.

I welcome the debate. I welcome the opportunity to put some of the myths to rest and I want to reinforce the key point: this is about giving a hand-up to rural students. (Time expired)

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