Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak in this grievance debate about a pressing injustice: the grievous wrong that the Rudd Labor government wishes to inflict on rural, regional and remote students and those who aspire to study with its 2009-10 budget measures which change the criteria for youth allowance. I rise to address the House about this injustice on behalf of my electorate, a mere one-third of Australia which is entirely regional, rural or remote, and therefore of absolutely no significance whatsoever to the Rudd Labor government. Like my coalition colleagues—and I am sure like many of those opposite would they but dare admit it—my office has received numerous representations from families, parents and young people upset at the changes to eligibility criteria for the independent youth allowance. Rarely has an issue excited such a fervent response from my constituents.

At present students can receive the independent youth allowance if they work at least 15 hours a week for 18 months after leaving school or earn $19,532 in an 18-month period. The current criteria for youth allowance eligibility are critical and absolutely essential to many students in my electorate being able to access further education. But not for much longer. From January next year young people will have to work 30 hours a week for 18 months in a two-year period to qualify for independent youth allowance so that they may undertake further education. This is an affront, an outrage, an utterly contemptuous imposition on rural and remote Australians.

Higher education is generally and globally understood to be a wonderful thing, a public good with broad benefits for society as a whole. Education has widely acknowledged benefits, for example, positive links to society’s longevity, health, welfare and socioeconomic status. Tertiary education is a critical factor in our modern, knowledge driven, global economy. Even here in Australia the financial barrier to education has been recognised as a human rights issue for the people in rural and remote areas. It was tough enough already for my young constituents to get further education but it is about to get a whole lot worse when Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard slash the youth allowance—it comes into effect on 1 January next year. All Australians have the same right to access a tertiary education but for those in rural and remote areas, which in my electorate can mean thousands of kilometres away from urban campuses and it can be prohibitively expensive.

With this in mind let me describe the uptake of higher education in my electorate. The most recent census, some three years ago now, revealed a national participation rate in higher education of about 22 per cent. Sounds reasonable—more than one in five young people aged between 17 and 22 are participating in higher education. Surely that augurs well for our future. Not so in my electorate. In my electorate the higher education participation rate was 8.7 per cent in the 2006 census. That does not mean that 8.7 per cent of the 17- to 22-year-old people living in my electorate in 2006 were in higher education because, unfortunately, if you live in a rural or remote electorate there are very limited opportunities to attend higher education. Most aspiring students need to relocate to a major metropolitan campus to realise their study ambitions, which is to say they have to move to the city. Therefore, the 2006 participation rate was based on the usual residence of people five years before the census—before they had to move to the city to study. Around 36 per cent of the Australian population lives in regional areas but the tertiary participation rate for regional areas has gradually but steadily decreased and nationally now is about 17 per cent. In my electorate it is about half that. In fact, we have the second worst tertiary participation rate in Australia behind the Northern Territory electorate of Lingiari, which has a seven per cent participation rate. The Rudd government appears not to care.

I quote the very well educated staff at the Parliamentary Library who wrote on this topic in the 2009-10 budget review:

These disincentives to pursue tertiary studies would appear to run counter to the stated aims of the government in increasing participation in higher education.

My point exactly. We hear so much rhetoric about the education revolution. Is this it? Revolution, of course, is another word for spin in the case of the Rudd government—education spin—and meanwhile Labor takes $1.8 billion out of the pockets of rural and remote students over the next four years. This change to youth allowance will crush the dreams and aspirations of many in my electorate, especially the considerable number of young people who are currently in a gap year working to make themselves eligible for independent youth allowance next year.

How are young people in rural and remote areas supposed to find 30 hours of work a week for at least 18 months in the midst of the Rudd recession? Many young people in my electorate live in small communities with very few employment opportunities, particularly low-skilled jobs. Some larger towns have any number of jobs available but young people do not have the skills to get them because they are not yet doctors, engineers, nurses, teachers et cetera. Young people will have to compete for a small number of low-skilled jobs against many other job seekers. The well-educated budget analysts at the Parliamentary Library came to this conclusion too. They also noted that young people may be forced to stay at home to reduce the costs for their families and this could limit their study opportunities, especially in the case of young people in rural and regional areas.

Let me present another side to the argument for affordable access to education for rural and remote students. We are presently suffering the effects of a downturn, but there is still a regional skills shortage affecting both the professional and vocational training sectors. The mining and resources sector skills shortage has been particularly well advertised, but other professions in demand are teachers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, nurses, pharmacists—and more. Regional areas have to compete with metropolitan areas for skilled workers. City kids do not like country living, and country kids often have no great love of the city either.

Recent government initiatives to address regional skills shortages include migration, training programs and relocation incentives, but improving tertiary access for the people who live there would address this issue on the ground. Instead of which we have a situation where the Rudd government is punishing rural and remote students. It costs students in my electorate $10,000 to $15,000 a year to go away from home for study. City students do not face many of the same impositions with job hunting, travel, relocation, accommodation and so forth. This measure is a clear and very damaging burden to rural and remote students. They will not be able to afford to study when they leave school and may never end up getting to uni. Tertiary participation in my electorate of 8.7 per cent might be the second worst in the country now. I dread to think what the figure will become the next census when the Rudd education revolution has done its worst for my constituents.

I draw the House’s attention to this destructive proposal. It is my earnest desire that the Senate committee process this legislation will be subjected to will give the proposal the scrutiny it needs and give back to families, students and aspiring students in my electorate some hope for their futures. The situation is that, when this proposition from the Rudd government hits home, those sons or daughters of a family living in metropolitan Perth well serviced by tertiary institutions and in a gap year waiting to qualify for the independent living youth allowance will be able to make a decision to simply not get that independent living allowance and stay at home with mum and dad, catch public transport, get free board and lodging—have no financial imposition placed upon them whatsoever. Compare that to a student of a country family in a gap year now with their future study plans ahead of them for the career, the profession, they wish to pursue. They are now locked into a situation where on 1 January next year their aspirations to achieve a tertiary education and go back and provide a profession in the town or area from which they came have been absolutely dashed. If the Senate process does not highlight this inequity for country students as opposed to their city cousins, then I sincerely hope that the Rudd government cops the disapproval it deserves at the next federal election and is banished from ever representing rural kids again.