Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

In relation to the opposition’s amendments on sheet 5968, there are four of them. I will discuss all four of them if I may. With respect to item (1), this and amendment (3) extend the time frame for the government’s proposals so as to ensure that the students currently in their gap year are not disadvantaged. This is a transition measure to allow those students who have started under the old rules to continue under them without disadvantage.

With respect to item (2), we are removing this requirement in the context of extending the gap provisions because it is retrospectively applying to all students who have made decisions regarding their study arrangements this year based on what the government, through Centrelink, teachers, careers advisers and so forth, told them last year when they were finishing year 12. At present the government’s proposals as outlined by Ms Gillard and reflected in this legislation are that only some 5,000 of the 30,000 students affected will be entitled—that is, those that live more than 90 minutes from university by public transport. So, in effect, this is the opposition’s amendment that will overcome what we see as the retrospectivity of this bill. Students who, in good faith, received advice that the law operated in a certain way enabling them to become independent and qualify for youth allowance would in future be able to do so. The law was being changed midstream. While I agree that it is not technically retrospective, it is retrospective in operation.

In relation to item (3), that is simply an extension of the independence time frame reflected, of course, in the Greens amendments that Senator Hanson-Young withdrew before. In relation to item (4), this is about the amount of student start-up scholarship payment. From 1 January 2010 all recipients of youth allowance will receive an annual start-up scholarship. The government said it would be $2,254 in 2010, and I think it is thereafter to be indexed and paid in lump sums. This scholarship will be paid to about 146,000 students in 2010, growing to 172,000 students by 2013. What the opposition’s amendment does is to reduce this amount from $2,254 to $1,000 per year. We are not taking away any moneys that students are currently receiving; we are merely reducing the amount of money they would have started receiving as a new initiative from next year onwards. In effect this is a savings measure to pay for the opposition’s other proposals debated earlier this evening. A saving of about $700 million over four years is achieved through this amendment, and it will go towards financing the extension of the gap year provisions to the students currently affected by Labor’s proposed changes and the opposition’s other amendments that were passed earlier this evening to maintain the most important workforce participation tests for rural students who must leave home to pursue higher education.

That is the gamut of the opposition’s amendments. They relate to fighting the effective retrospectivity—that is very important to us—and also, of course, in effect the finance measure to pay for those amendments. That is what the opposition’s amendments seek to do.