House debates

Monday, 18 October 2010

Private Members’ Business

Youth Allowance

8:26 pm

Photo of Bruce ScottBruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to express my full support for the motion put forward by my colleague the member for Forrest and for other colleagues on this side who are supporting this motion. The issue has been ongoing for quite some time now, and I am sure that the Prime Minister, the former Minister for Education, wishes that the coalition would just let it go. But now that she is the Prime Minister for regional Australia, so she says, perhaps she will take a renewed interest in this issue, because it affects the many young people in areas that are considered inner regional Australia, when in fact the definition is wrong in relation to so many communities.

When the former education minister, the current Prime Minister, decided to change the criteria for independent youth allowance, the decision was met with uproar across Australia, particularly from the families of the 2009 gap year students, who had the rug pulled out from under them. Thankfully, after intense pressure from this side of the House, the then education minister performed a very graceful backflip. She also made some changes so that young people from rural and outer regional Australia would not suffer under her new, unfair rules. And at the time this side of the House welcomed those changes.

But unfortunately there are still a number of young people who are disadvantaged by the changes to the independent youth allowance criteria, and they are the young people who live in what is classified as inner regional Australia. In my electorate of Maranoa that includes towns like Dalby, Warwick, Kingaroy and Nanango. They are considered to be inner regional Australia. They are 200-odd kilometres from Brisbane and often further than that from the nearest university. Dalby’s closest university is the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. It is more than 80 kilometres away. Warwick is about the same distance from the University of Southern Queensland. The same university is the closest for people in Kingaroy, but they are 150 kilometres away. That is their closest university and yet they are considered to be inner regional Australia. The University of the Sunshine Coast is some 200 kilometres away from Kingaroy. Yet these three towns are considered to be even more metropolitan—and this is the irony of it—than the city of Cairns, which has a university and an international airport, because they are considered to be outer regional Australia. The same is true of Townsville, which is home to the James Cook University. It is also considered to be outer regional Australia. I do not dispute that, but they also have the James Cook University, and the students who live there can qualify under the outer regional Australia criteria. But that is not the case in my towns of Dalby, Warwick and Kingaroy, which are considered to be inner regional Australia.

I am sure families in those towns in North Queensland that have those international airports and have access to universities are very happy, but I have to say that families in my electorate are not. In Dalby and Kingaroy, as I said, which have populations of somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 people, the young people will have to work an average of 30 hours per week to be eligible for the independent youth allowance. That is just eight hours short of what is considered full-time work.

For many employers in these smaller towns, why would you hire a young person, train them up and then watch them after the 18 months it takes to qualify for independent youth allowance take those skills to a city like Brisbane or even Toowoomba? Why would they hire them when they know they are only a temporary employee and when they could hire someone they know will stay? And for the young people in many of these towns who are lucky enough to get a job for 30 hours per week, why would they give up a job of 30 hours per week? I know this is happening. There are some students who are taking a job and deferring, perhaps forever, going on to university. That is the great tragedy for so many students and young people living in rural Australia.

That is why during the election campaign the coalition committed to relaxing the work test for students living in inner regional areas such as Dalby, Kingaroy and Warwick in my electorate and many other rural and regional areas. That meant that they would have to earn at least 75 per cent of the maximum rate of pay under wage level A of the Australian pay and classifications scale in an 18-month period, or work part time for at least 15 hours each week for two years. I support the motion put by the member for Forrest. It is on the right track. (Time expired)

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