Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to follow my colleague Senator Ronaldson to make some comments on the youth allowance legislation, as it is loosely known, before us. I commend my colleague Senator Ronaldson for his comments, because he is right on the money. I firstly thank the committee members of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, which looked into this legislation, for their contribution. I also thank the secretariat, who is doing an enormous amount of work on this issue.

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009 makes a number of changes. Some of those changes are positive. We from this side have indicated that we are supportive of the increase in the thresholds in a number of the areas and also of targeting, where it has occurred, the issue of rorting, so to speak, by rich city families. But there are also a number of negatives in this legislation, and the changes to the workforce participation criteria are among the worst.

I firstly address the issue of the gap year students. This has taken on a life of its own, because it has affected so many of our students right across the country. There was an absolute outcry when this bill came out into the public. I do not think I have ever had so many letters, emails and calls from people on an issue since I have been in the Senate, and I know that my Nationals and Liberal colleagues, particularly in the regional areas, received the same correspondence. And it was huge; we saw the submissions to the Senate inquiry. There were over 700 submissions to that inquiry, the bulk of which particularly addressed the changes to the youth allowance and the changes to the workforce participation criteria.

What we had was a cohort of students who at the end of 2008 took the advice of Centrelink and school advisers to go down the path of qualifying for independent youth allowance through the gap year provision—through earning the lump sum over the 18-month period. And the minister simply changed the goalposts halfway through, so all of these students who had in good faith embarked on this course of action to be able to access the independent youth allowance that they so desperately need were told by the minister: ‘Sorry, you can’t do it anymore. We don’t care that you’re nearly a year through your gap year. We couldn’t care less that you embarked on this in good faith; we’re just going to pull the rug out from underneath you and we’re going to start these changes on 1 January 2010.’

How unfair can you be in government? I do not think there was anything in recent times that was more unfair than saying to a student who is out there trying to get themselves a tertiary education, ‘I’m really sorry about that, but the financial assistance you thought you were going to get I am simply going to take away from you just because I feel like it, because I think retrospectivity is a really good idea!’ But it is absolutely wrong that they changed the goalposts midway, and it was only recognised because all of those students right across the country got active and absolutely lobbied their hearts out to the minister to say, ‘This is wrong’. Clearly she could not see what impact it was going to have when she brought it in in the first place.

What did we see then? The minister did a backflip. But did she do a backflip for all the students? No, she did a backflip for some of them, just some of them., just those ones who lived further than 90 minutes away by public transport from a tertiary institution—just some of them. What about those other 25,000 students currently on a gap year who entered it on good faith? Because the minister has simply changed her mind about this criteria, they are no longer going to be able to gain that financial assistance. That is just wrong. It is just wrong and it is not on. It is a retrospective change. How dare the minister say to these students, ‘I’m going to change this around because I want to do something different,’ when they in their good faith had gone out and embarked on this particular course of action because they had been told to by the relevant authorities, by the people they trusted, that this was the appropriate thing to do?

We will be moving an amendment as has been indicated already by my colleagues to ensure that all of those gap year students are not hit by the incredibly mean, retrospective nature of this particular change to the legislation. It is not fair and it is not right, and those students should be allowed to access that funding that they so desperately need to start their university and tertiary courses.

The impact on rural and regional students is enormous as a result of the removal of criteria (c) which is: employment for at least 18 months since the person last left secondary school earning the person at least the equivalent of 75 per cent of the maximum Commonwealth training award payments for the calendar year in which the 18 months started. In short, the gap year.

What we have seen is that so often there is no alternative for financial assistance for these rural and regional students. This is an equity issue. This is a fairness issue, and the government simply does not understand the inequity. We were told time and time again as our committee went across the country, because we are doing a broader access to education for rural and regional students inquiry at the same time as this specific youth allowance inquiry, that the inequity that exists between rural and regional students and metropolitan students is huge, and we know that the cost for our regional families of relocating those students is around $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

In 2007 Charles Sturt University with Monash University, the University of Western Australia and the Foundation for Young Australians funded a study titled Youth allowance and regional young people access to tertiary education, by Godden 2007, which was referred to many times during the course of the inquiry.

The study found:

Regional young people have high expenses when studying away from home—which all participants describe as the biggest challenge, and affects participation and choices. Regional families are extremely financially burdened with the expenses particularly when they are ineligible for Youth Allowance.

It went on to say:

… the annual living cost for a rural or regional young person studying away from home was between $15,000 and $20, 000, plus relocation and start-up costs of $3,000-$6,000.

Did the minister make absolutely no attempt before she came up with these changes to actually go and find out what the financial impact of relocation is for students? She obviously must not have given it a single thought because I can tell you right now the changes that are in this legislation, as much as they claim that they help country students, go nowhere near what is necessary for our regional students.

The issue is that the independent youth allowance and our youth allowance in general is a social welfare issue. It does not address this issue of equity, this issue of access to education. During the inquiry Mr Kent Spangenberg who is the principal of Loxton High School, I may inform the Senate, raised this issue with me about the inequity years ago. I quote from him:

… if you look at the inequity between two families on the same income—one in a metropolitan area and one in a rural area—the rural family, by the mere fact that they are living rural, has to find some significant additional financial income support or whatever for their child to access the same quality of tertiary education as an urban family. There has to be a baseline there or a benchmark around where that increased cost for accessing tertiary education must be addressed in any sort of solution. It does not matter whether you are earning $50,000 or $70,000 in an urban or a rural setting, the rural person has to find additional moneys to have their child study in Adelaide.

That just highlights the inequity, and the government obviously has no idea. What we have seen is that students and their families have been using this avenue of independent youth allowance because there is simply no other way for rural and regional students to access the assistance which they so desperately need. No other avenue exists.

In 2009, 12,473 regional and remote students accessed independent youth allowance. The government is going to take this away. They are simply pulling the rug out from underneath the current gappies. But as my good colleague Senator Ronaldson said, what about all those students coming after? What about all their siblings? What about all their younger brothers and sisters? What about all the new cohort of young students who are going to need to have some assistance? How many rural and regional students are going to be affected in 2010 and beyond? We have no idea. The department cannot tell us. No-one can tell us. But we know, and the regional members and senators in this place particularly know, that there are so many students who are going to be affected by this. How many will not go on to tertiary education because this government is bringing this legislation in? How many? It is on the heads of this government for every single one of those students who does not go on to tertiary education because of their changes. This government is going to have live with that every single time a student from a rural and regional area wants to access tertiary education and they are told by their family. ‘I’m really sorry, darling, I can’t send you away to tertiary because we simply can’t afford it.’

The government will say to us, ‘But that’s all covered under the new youth allowance changes.’ That is absolute rubbish. It certainly does assist the lower socioeconomic cohort. It certainly does assist them, but once you start moving up through the scale you do not have to get very far up until you do the comparison where you see that students would have been far better off on the $371.40 a fortnight under the independent youth allowance than they would be under these changes, and the government is going to have to live with it.

We know that there are so many students out there struggling. We were in Townsville earlier in the week as part of the broader inquiry and we heard some evidence there from one of the local universities about some students currently doing year 12. Those students had applied for scholarships to go on to university, but they had not even told their parents that they had applied for scholarships because they knew their parents could not afford to send them away. They knew that if they did not get that scholarship, they would not be going. They had not even told their parents because they did not want to put the burden on them of the fact that they knew that their parents could not pay if they were not successful in getting those scholarships. It is an incredibly sad indictment that we have got to the situation where we have students across the country not having the opportunity, if they so choose, to go on to tertiary education. I noticed today that the minister, Julia Gillard, has said:

This is a new system to better support students who need that support the most, including country students.

I do not know who she has been talking to, but she certainly cannot have been talking to any country students, because that is just completely wrong. There were over 700 submissions to the inquiry, most of them railing against the government’s changes. The minister has said: ‘We’re having an education revolution. We want to have an education revolution,’ but obviously that is not taking into account rural and regional students. She said back on 18 November 2007:

We want to make sure kids right across the country, irrespective of what family they’re born into, whether they’re in the centre of the city, in a regional centre or outback Australia, that they all get the support they need for their education.

She should put her actions where her mouth is and make sure that these regional students are looked after, because under the current provisions they certainly are not. One of the students during the course of the inquiry said of the minister:

I would like to ask her to consider the kids in the country that want to go up to tertiary education and have to travel for five hours or so. They live out of home and pay for their own meals and for their own transport. I do not think she has really put herself in our shoes.

That was from Miss Sasha Miles, and I think she is absolutely right on the money. The minister has absolutely no ability whatsoever to put herself in the shoes of those rural and regional students to see what it is like.

The coalition understands the seriousness and the significance of this issue, which is why we have put forward the amendment to continue criteria (c), which is about earning the lump sum amount over the 18-month period. Rural and regional students have no other way of accessing assistance. There is a welfare measure, but they have to use this independent youth allowance as an equity measure to try and ensure that they have the financial assistance available to go on to tertiary education. Thirty-three per cent of regional students go on to tertiary education. Fifty-five per cent of metropolitan students go on to tertiary education. What sort of equity is that? Are we saying that it is simply okay for our regional students—and primarily because of the reason of financial burden, as we have seen from all the evidence that has come through—not to have the chance to go on to tertiary education, knowing that they are far more likely to come back to our regional communities to take up their professions?

The committee also heard a lot of evidence showing how many of our regional families in professions are simply upping out of the regional communities and going back to the cities because it is easier for them to educate their children if they are actually living in cities. How much of a drain is that going to be on our regional communities that are struggling badly enough as it is? It is just not fair and it is not right. This issue of equity has to be addressed. The government wants only the 30-hour a week criteria to remain for independent youth allowance. It is just extraordinary stuff. It is just ridiculous. If it was not so serious it would be laughable. There are no jobs out there. The students cannot average the 30 hours a week, and they have to defer for two years. We all know it is far less likely that they will go on to university if they take a year off, let alone two. It is interesting that the removal of the two criteria, including this gap year provision, is to pay for the rest of the package. The minister has stolen the money from these country kids, from these rural and regional students, to pay for the rest of the package. It is just extraordinary. I see my good colleague Senator Ronaldson shaking his head. It is extraordinary and it is absolutely wrong.