Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let me first welcome this motion by the member for Forrest, who is no longer with us because she had other duties. This has been of great concern and great interest to me. In fact one of the reasons I entered politics was what I perceive to be the inequity in the way in which we treat rural and regional students. Last March it was quite a breakthrough for the coalition and a reward for perseverance when the Prime Minister—the then Minister for Education—Julia Gillard backed down on at least some of the amendments to youth allowance. I said at the time that I supported many of the government’s amendments to the arrangements for access for tertiary students to youth allowance. Some of the reasons I did support that were highlighted by the member for Parramatta and the member for Hunter—the lowering of the age of automatic eligibility for youth allowance from 25 to 22, the lifting of household income thresholds, the fact that students could earn a bit more before losing payments and the tightening of eligibility so students who live at home cannot qualify for independent youth allowance. I applaud the remarks of the member for Hunter in this area. I was very pleased to see that shut down.

But the move to effectively shut down independently accessed youth allowance by demanding students work a minimum of 30 hours a week for 18 months out of two years was a bridge too far. It unfairly targeted regional students. The coalition insisted for nine months and the then Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, kept saying that the budget could not afford the changes. We were under pressure from those who supported the minister—the student union, the vice-chancellors of the major universities and the government—but we would not budge. Eventually the minister saw some reason and allowed students from outer regional, remote and very remote Australia to continue to qualify under the old criteria. Without going through those criteria, basically they mean you earn $19,000 in an 18-month period, which qualifies and loosely fits the students who wish to take a gap year.

But that policy abandoned inner regional students in Australia. I have just one community in that category—most of my electorate is outer regional, remote or very remote—and that is Eudunda. I am appalled by the unfairness of a line on a map. These lines on a map were drawn up by ABS to assess health eligibility in a completely different debate and had no jurisdiction at all in education. The facts are that if you have to live away from home to attend university you have all the attendant costs. I developed a paper before this became an issue in the budget of 2009 which identified many of those costs and suggested a way forward for regional Australia. Those costs are around $20,000 a year per student. That is not $20,000 to attend university; that is $20,000 over and above the cost of someone living in the city attending university.

Whatever a family’s financial ability to meet these costs, they are inflicted on a student by reasons of nothing but geography. Sometimes students are not part of the decision-making process which determines whether a family would support them through that process. They are the part players in this and are put to one side. If you live in Mount Gambier, Echuca or Eudunda—which is in my electorate, as I have pointed out—you cannot live at home and attend university. It is just too far to travel. But you have all the same costs as someone who does live in a remote area like Port Augusta, Wudinna, Ceduna or Coober Pedy. Yet this line on a map says that you do not qualify for the same level of assistance. The reason I have chosen to speak in this debate even though I have only one affected community is the principle of fairness. We have abandoned this group of students and said, ‘You shall have something lesser than the rest of Australia.’ I do not think it is good enough.

For the coalition this is unfinished business. I concur with the member for Durack and the member for Gippsland, who would prefer to see a living-away-from-home allowance established outside the youth allowance framework. But we are where we are in this debate at the moment. The motion that the member for Forrest has put up does actually meet at least minimum criteria.

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