Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens oppose these amendments from the government. They go directly to the heart of the entire problem with this piece of legislation. The government is trying to create a false sense of crisis in relation to higher education at a time when we should be doing more to support young Australians being able to get an education and being able to afford to conduct that education.

There's a new report out today that says that one in seven university students is being forced to go without food because they are living below the poverty line. That is the real crisis in our higher education sector: university students, young Australians right across this country, cannot even afford to live while they are studying. That is the problem that this government should be fixing, but instead we have the government trying to slash and burn the education budget, forcing young people, young Australians, to carry the burden.

This, of course, is on the back of very generous tax cuts that have gone through this place, hailed by the government as necessary. Of course, that comes at the cost of public services. When they've given billions of dollars in tax cuts to rich Australians, they still want to give billions of dollars more to big corporations and the big banks. And yet university students are being told that they need to tighten their belts.

When you've got studies like that conducted by Universities Australia, which shows that a huge number of young people in this country are living well below the poverty line, struggling as university students, this is not the type of legislation that the Senate should be passing. I just want to make note of Senator Martin, who today crossed the floor opposing this bill. When you have individuals in this place understanding and recognising the real struggle of young Australians and people studying in this country, that's a good thing. However, seeing the rest of the government on the government benches turning a blind eye to the real struggles facing young people is extremely disappointing.

Of course, we know that one of the biggest problems here is stagnating jobs growth and wages growth. When no-one's wages are growing except the wages of those who are very rich in this country—and they are about to get even more in their pockets because of massive tax cuts passed by the Senate last session—and young people can't afford their rent, their bills or to put food on the table, then we have a serious problem. When are the government going to start addressing these issues rather than trying to use young people and education funding as a scapegoat for their big tax handouts to corporate Australia, big banks and themselves?