Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier this year I expressed my delight in the great year-12 results which were achieved by students in my electorate of Barker. These were students who faced ongoing disadvantages of distance, drought and unreliable internet connections and yet achieved great success in gaining a high TER ranking—a TER ranking that saw these young achievers being offered places at universities in Adelaide and Melbourne, a TER ranking that should have seen this government pave the way for them to continue that academic success at university. Their success would make us all better off as they go on to be the teachers, doctors, lawyers, scientists and other professionals of the future. Not so under the Rudd Labor government budget of this week.

When the average Australian wage is $1,148 a week it is unfathomable that parents whose total income is barely $818 per week are considered by the Rudd government to be too well off to be given assistance for their student children. An amount of $818 a week will barely house, clothe and feed a rural or regional family, and it certainly will not enable them to pay board or accommodation and travel costs for their student child to attend tertiary education up to 450 kilometres away. For the students in my electorate, there is no quick 80c bus ride into uni and back home for dinner that night with mum and dad. Our students have to pay for board in the city where the nearest university is located and then pay travel costs to return home periodically. A family on $818 a week does not have spare change to afford this. For some students the only option has been to take a gap year or to work part time, and to work as long and hard as they possibly can, just to get the funds they need to set up accommodation far from home to study.

Unbelievably, these students will now be penalised. If they have earned over $19,532 over 18 months—about $6.50 an hour—or if they have worked part time over 18 months, the Rudd government has now decided that they will not qualify for independent youth allowance whereas before they did. The flow-on effect creates more disadvantages. Students who are denied youth allowance will not qualify for relocation scholarships to assist them with the cost of moving for study and, for many, this means an end to their goal of a tertiary education. We know the Rudd government’s fiscal blundering will leave a huge debt to pay—$200 billion in fact—but to claw it back from hardworking students striving for a tertiary qualification by denying them income support or relocation assistance is a disgrace.