Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to speak to this MPI by the member for Indi. This is an area that I know the member for Indi has championed for a very long time.

I would like to read a quote that's come from the Australian Medical Students Association, and it's this:

I want to go home and tell potential future doctors in my rural community to choose a career path in medicine, as we have a government that will support you through the long, hard journey to become a doctor. But I can't, because we don't have the support we should at all.

That powerful statement is from a member of the Australian Medical Students Association, disappointed at the lack of support for medical students under this Commonwealth practical payments scheme. I think this scheme is brilliant. We just need to finesse it and make sure that we're capturing everybody that it should apply to.

From 1 July this year, this scheme provides $331.65 a week. It's payable for students who undertake a mandatory placement in select disciplines. Those placements, they might be doing a diploma of nursing or they might be studying a degree in teaching, nursing, midwifery or social work, or a masters degree. The requirement is for the placement to be an average of 30 or more hours per week and must prevent them from maintaining paid work.

I want to touch upon that. This is for my daughter, who is studying her diploma in nursing. It just blows my mind. She's just finished a prac placement and told me all about the work that she's doing. Truly, she has done things in the last two weeks that I could not even possibly do, but she also has two other jobs. She lives independently from home. She lives in another state while she is studying this. She's not allowed to do any work on those weekends in between when she's doing prac placement or, indeed, nights. So, financially, it is a huge impact for young people, for anyone—young or mature age—who is studying. Not only are they doing, in her case, two lots of 40 hours over a fortnight; to not be able to do any of your other casual jobs is a huge financial impost. We need to capture everyone that this should apply to. That does include those who are studying medicine. For young people, in particular, who are perhaps the first in the family, come from families who can't afford to financially support them or, indeed, are out of home, it's such a barrier to studying. So we really need to get this right.

This placement payment is designed to provide those most at risk of placement poverty with costs-of-living support to help ease the financial pressures associated with placements. I would even say that perhaps there are other areas of study we could look at expanding this to in the future. We really do want our young people to be able to undergo those prac placements. I didn't realise until I started talking to young people in my community who are studying physiotherapy or other qualifications how much placement they need to do as part of their degree. It really is quite extraordinary. Anything we can do to support them is really important.

I'll go back to my daughter. We were able to help her, but many of her friends at uni—and she was included in this—were not able to receive any assistance under this scheme during the last practical that they did because the last practical they did was only 80 hours over that fortnight. The threshold, she was told, was 80 hours. That's two weeks of no money at all. That's very, very hard for young people who are just trying to cover the cost of rent and food and everything else.

This is an excellent program, but I think it can be improved. I'd hate to think we would wait several years to review it and do that. I think that we could do that more quickly. I commend the member for Indi for bringing this to the parliament. Let's work on this now and not in years to come.

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