SOCIAL SECURITY AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (INCOME SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS) BILL 2009
October 26, 2009
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland) (6.16 pm) — I rise to speak in relation to the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Income Support for Students) Bill 2009, which deals directly with the government’s proposed changes to income support for students. I say at the outset what an absolute unmitigated disaster this has been for the Minister for Education. If ever there has been an example in this place of arrogance and contempt for regional Australia, it has been the minister’s performance in relation to these changes. I do not use those words lightly. It is almost impossible to put into words the anger, disappointment, uncertainty and frustration that this minister’s actions have caused among families in my electorate.
I like to think I am a reasonably charitable man and when the minister first announced that she was pulling the rug out from students who were currently on their gap year I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I thought it must have been an unintended consequence, because regional students had followed the process as it existed at the end of their VCE year last year. The students did the right thing. As the member for Flinders just commented, they acted in good faith. They decided to take the gap year under the rules that existed because they had been advised by their principals, their teachers and even by Centrelink officers.
These students had made the decision to work hard and try to achieve the Youth Allowance criteria under the circumstances that existed when they left school and most of them were doing it with the intention of trying to help their parents out. These were not rich kids from incredibly wealthy families, from my experience. These were the students from rural and regional areas who were basically saying that they knew their mums and dads could not afford the cost of sending them to university so they were prepared to help out.
Now, the minister in May this year was prepared to pull the rug out from under their feet. This, I thought, was no way for the Minister for Education to act, let alone the Minister for Social Inclusion—to risk disenfranchising a whole generation of young Australians with a decision that applied retrospectively. It was certainly an enormous disappointment for the students who have contacted my office in the past six months.
My confidence that it was an unintended consequence was certainly shattered in this place on 25 May when I asked the minister to guarantee that students currently in their gap year would not be financially penalised under the government’s changes to eligibility criteria for independent youth allowance. At the height of her arrogance on this issue the minister replied:
With the greatest respect to the member, what a very silly question …
But during her second reading speech on 10 September, the minister had changed her tune and announced what she described as a transition measure. After meeting with a broad range of students and interest groups, the minister claimed that she would delay the implementation of the new workforce criteria to allow gap year students who completed school in 2008, and who needed to move to study, until 30 June 2010 to qualify for independent status. What had been described as a ‘very silly question’ in May was in September, in the minister’s own words, a ‘sensible change’. It was a backflip but, frankly, the students in my electorate are hoping for a triple somersault in the future. I am not going to dwell too long on the politics of this decision but I am prepared to venture that the minister took action in this regard only when she realised that she had a political problem. In Gippsland alone, more than 5,000 people have signed a petition protesting against the changes and dozens of people sent me letters and emails to explain the impact of the decision. I will get to some of those messages soon. It has amazed me to hear the minister, in this place and in the media, accuse the opposition of scaremongering on this issue. And the backbenchers have been at it again over the past week as they debated this bill. ‘There is nothing wrong,’ they say. ‘We just do not understand the changes. It has all been a massive scare campaign on our behalf.’ Everything is perfect if you listen to the Rudd robots who walk in here and roll out to mechanically parrot the party lines. I urge those regional Labor MPs to start fulfilling their side of the contract with the regional communities and, as their representative, give them a voice in the House of Representatives.
If my office has been knocked over in the rush of students, mums, dads and teacher and principals raising their concerns about student income support, then you can bet that Labor MPs in regional seats are experiencing something very similar. But do they come in here and raise those concerns on behalf of their constituents?
No way. Not even a whisper of discontent. They either hide in their offices and watch the debate on closed circuit television or they come in here and parrot the party lines. The media likes to pretend that there is something creditable about having party discipline in this regard. There is nothing creditable in regional communities if you have not got the guts to stand up for your constituents.
This debate is long overdue. It may surprise some of those opposite, but I am not one of those who is going to deny recent political history. I believe the previous government made some progress in relation to levelling the playing field for students from regional areas seeking to pursue a university career, but it never went far enough for my liking. I fully accept that reform is never easy; it is always a difficult process and there is always going to be more to do. The previous government was faced with a very different set of budgetary circumstances and it was a difficult process to be paying back debt and then looking at what other changes they could make on behalf of regional students. But, as I said, when addressing an area of equity and disadvantage, like this one, I would have liked to have seen the previous government go further. I take up the comments from the member for Braddon and the member for Barker, who have both spoken on this bill. They both spoke about their passion for regional students. I think we all agree across the chambers that we need to do more for regional communities and regional people, particularly students. I urge those members to speak up in other forums. If they are not prepared to speak in the chamber at least speak up in their party room in relation to the future of regional students.
In my maiden speech I talked about the need to reduce the cost barrier for students from rural and regional areas attending universities. I argued then, and I have many times since that speech, that the economic barriers to participating in higher education are a fundamental obstacle that must be addressed. Those of us with an understanding of the issue know that regional students are often forced away from home to study and the additional accommodation costs and living expenses are an underlying factor in the decision to defer or abandon studies.
I read today in the Bairnsdale Advertiser, in my own electorate, of a new report that has been released. Under the headline ‘Regional students struggle to cope financially’ the article says:
A new study has found rural and regional students are more likely to defer attending university and face more financial constraints than their city counterparts.
Gippsland East LLEN Executive Officer, Jacqui Bramwell, said the report proved that for most rural and regional students deferring university for a year was a necessity, not recreational.
Jacqui went on further to say:
It is a tragic loss if young people have to base their decision about attending university on whether their family can afford it. Sadly, that remains the case for too many rural and regional students.
The estimates vary, but the additional costs for regionalstudents to attend university are in the vicinity of $12,000 to $15,000 per year if they are forced to move away from home. These are the additional costs, the costs that a city student staying at home with mum and dad does not have to pay. These are the costs that we believe we should be trying to alleviate to help level the playing field for regional students.
The disparity between metropolitan participation rates in university and the participation rates of regional students has been the subject of much debate in recent years. I spoke in the House last September and highlighted the issue of retention rates and participation in higher education as it applied to the communities of Gippsland. At that time I indicated the Gippsland region has one of the worst education retention rates in Victoria. Compared to a state and metropolitan retention rate in excess of 80 per cent in 2006, just 65 per cent of Gippsland students finished year 12. These figures naturally lead to a lower university participation rate.
Many of our regional areas, including Gippsland, have comparatively low average household incomes, and it is a major barrier to participation in higher education. Lower household incomes also affect ENTER scores, parents’ capacity to support students to live away from home for study and the aspiration within families to seek higher education.
On that issue of aspiration, I assume that I am like many other MPs in that I visit schools in my electorate almost on a daily basis. It is an absolute passion of mine to get out there and meet the students and discuss the issues that concern them. My message to senior secondary students in my electorate is to always aim high and to aspire to be the absolute best they can be in their chosen field. I tell them that it does not matter if no-one else in your family has ever finished school— you can be the first one to finish Year 12; you can be the first one in your street to go on to university. For members in metropolitan electorates this may sound very basic and, frankly, absurd. But we do have a challenge in many of our regional communities to overcome the barriers of economics and the barriers of aspiration to encourage our young people to see a future for themselves beyond what they have perhaps seen with previous generations in their families. Many people in my electorate argue that increasing the aspirations of students and their families is almost as big a challenge as overcoming the economic barriers. I have a submission here from a former Gippsland school principal, Ian Whitehead, who says:
In families from low socio economic areas, the very thought of a tertiary future for their child is off the radar. Many of these families see universities as ‘here is a world with which we are not familiar; a club to which we cannot belong’. But in these families there are some clever kids. They are missing out badly.
It is undoubtedly true that, in some sections of my community, education has not always been highly valued. I believe it is important to encourage young people to achieve their best and follow the path to a university course if that is their ambition. We know that many of our young people will need to move away to advance their careers and learn new skills, but we also hope that some will return in the future and provide those skills in our communities.
As I have said before, from a social justice perspective it is a question of equity; and for the hard-nosed economists in this place it is also a question of productivity. Helping children from rural and regional areas to achieve their full potential will help to improve the skill base of country areas and reduce the skill shortages we are constantly faced with across a range of industries.
It is also worth noting, from a Gippsland perspective, that many of the children from the more remote parts of the state are Indigenous children. To give these young children the best possible start in life we must support them through the early stages of education.
And we must take up the challenge to get them to school in the first place and get them learning the skills that they can then pass on and succeed in our community and their own communities. All this helps to explain the anger and frustration in my community when the minister announced that she was not just moving the goalposts for students in their gap year; she was taking the goalposts away completely.
This decision demonstrated a complete disconnect between the minister’s office and the department and the families in my electorate. Over the years students had come to depend on the opportunity to achieve independent status to secure youth allowance when they moved away from home to university. I freely acknowledge that the original intent of independent youth allowance was not as a means for regional students to secure income support after a gap year. In fact, I argued in this place, and in a letter to the minister in March this year, that the system needed to be overhauled. I argued that forcing students to undertake a gap year to achieve independent youth allowance because the other criteria for income support were too restricted was a poor system and reform was needed. And I have also acknowledged that many of the measures the minister has sought to introduce will allow more students to secure a small level of support without the need to undertake a gap year. I am on the public record acknowledging the need to stop the misuse of public funds and broaden the opportunity for students to receive support to attend university. So I reject the posturing and the lecturing from those opposite about not understanding this legislation and its intent.
I fully understand what the minister was trying to do—I just happen to believe that she botched it. She botched it because she did not listen, did not understand or simply did not care abut the way it would affect regional students.
There is nothing revolutionary about these changes. This is no ‘education revolution’ as the minister and her spin doctors proudly proclaim. I am not the only one to feel this way. As Professor Geoffrey Blainey said in the Australian on 17 September:
The phrase education revolution should be quietly buried. It is unrealistic. It is still more a slogan than a blueprint.
Right now the government is shovelling $16 billion out the door to build school halls in primary schools, regardless of whether they need them or not. There is nothing revolutionary about that either. The Primary Schools for the 21st Century program does not have a single educational target attached to it. It is not aimed at improving literacy or at improving numeracy; it is a spending spree of massive proportions which does not even have the decency to require the building contractors to employ local people to carry out the work. It does not even allow individual schools to decide for themselves what they need to build on their school grounds to maximise the educational outcomes for their students. I fear we will look back on this program in 10 years time and marvel at the stupidity of rushing out to build so many halls that did not meet our educational needs.
I raise that program in the context of today’s debate for good reason. The question is always going to be asked: who is going to pay for the additional support in terms of income assistance for students? The minister’s changes to the system of student income support are designed to be budget neutral—that is, she is taking from one area of the system to bolster another area.
There is no new spending attached to these initiatives; there is nothing revolutionary about this. If we were serious about addressing the issues of regional disadvantage in the higher education system we would be looking beyond the current budget cycle and looking to the future of our nation. If we were serious about an education revolution we would not be throwing all of that money at the school halls program; we would have a balanced package that delivered strategic upgrades to schools which need the funding the most and we would be using some of that money to revolutionise the system of student income support. That is the debate that we should be having in this place here today. We should have every Labor regional MP, every Liberal regional MP and every Independent MP in this place, with the Nationals, arguing the case for more funding for student income support.
Before those opposite start parroting the party lines once again, I invite them to read the Victorian state parliamentary inquiry report into geographical differences in the rate in which Victorian students participate in higher education. This was a report by an all-party committee, led by Labor MP Geoff Howard from Ballarat.
The report took evidence around the state. This is what Mr Howard had to say in his foreword to the report:
Time and again, the Committee heard about the difficulties faced by young school leavers in rural and regional areas who are contemplating leaving home to study.
He went on to say:
Student income support is therefore a major contributing factor in university participation. While the Committee welcomes recent national reforms to enable more students from low-income families to access Youth Allowance, it is concerned that the specific circumstances of rural and regional young people still have not been adequately addressed. Already, many such students defer their studies to meet eligibility criteria for income support and this route to financial independence is set to become even more difficult under the new system. In the Committee’s view, all young people who must relocate to undertake their studies should be eligible to receive student income support.
That last line is worth repeating: all young people who must relocate to undertake their studies should be eligible to receive student income support. The report goes on to argue that the proposed changes to achieving the independent rate of youth allowance would have a ‘disastrous effect’ on young people in rural and regional areas. I believe that is the debate we should be having here today: how can we change the system to ensure that all students who are required to move away from home to pursue their studies receive a level of income support? It is the view that is held be many individuals and organisations who have contacted me in the wake of the public debate that has occurred following the announcement of the minister’s proposed changes.
The Gippsland Local Government Network has argued that, because the average taxable income of a person living in Gippsland is $15,000 lower than a person living in Melbourne, it is not uncommon for a university student to find themselves juggling multiple jobs while attempting to study full time. I have long argued that we are setting these kids up to fail. We expect them to finish VCE, secure a good mark, go through the stress of getting their drivers licence, start going out to licensed premises legally and act responsibly, and then we expect them to move several hours to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, or wherever it may be, with very little money in their pocket. They pick up some part-time work, because their families cannot support them fully. We expect them to adjust to life in the city after years in the country, we expect them to travel several hours to come home and see us every now and then and then we expect them to excel at their chosen course. Is it any wonder that many of these young people drop out after six months and feel like they have failed? It does not have to be this hard. It should not be that difficult for a rich and prosperous nation like Australia to give our country kids a fairer go.
Just in case those opposite think I am making this up, let me reflect on some of the submissions to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry and some of the correspondence I have received from students in relation to the general issue of student income support and the more specific details of the changes proposed by the government. Orbost Secondary College in East Gippsland submitted:
The cost of living away from home to undertake tertiary study is without doubt the single greatest impediment to participation in our experience and for many families an overwhelming burden that can inflict great financial hardship.
Orbost Secondary College argue that returning to the days of affordable dormitory accommodation for regional students living in the city would reduce the cost burden and provide more support for students who are often isolated and lonely after making the move. They also support a policy initiative that I am driving within my party to provide free public transport vouchers for country students to return home more often to catch up with family and friends.
Some of the personal reflections I have received from family members and students affected by these changes have been quite alarming. This is from one young lady in Boysdale:
My fellow students and I have worked extremely hard, both academically and in employment, and I am deeply saddened by the fact that, due to the proposed revision of the allowance, much of that effort may be in vain.
Alyse said:
If changes must be made to current youth allowance eligibility, why not make it easier for those that need it most? Regional students who have to move away from their family and friends and re-establish themselves in a completely different environment surely should be entitled to assistance. If the government is striving to have more regional students attending and obtaining university qualifications, why make it harder to achieve?
Finally, Jessica said:
I don’t think Mr Rudd fully understands the damage that he has caused for thousands of gap year students like me. He has definitely tainted our future at university with doubt, financial burden and anxiety. We are at the most vulnerable stage of our lives. Surely our Prime Minister understands that by doing this some of us have nowhere to turn, that some of us are cancelling our dreams, cancelling our future. This is not justice. This is unlawful, criminal and heartless.
These are strong words from our next generation— young people being directly affected by this appalling decision, and in particular the retrospective nature of the changes proposed to the gap year.
The minister fails to understand that the students set out on these pathways several years ago. This is not some whim. They have been advised since year 10 on how to pursue their careers in the secondary education system, right through to having a gap year before going to university. They have been guided by their principals and careers advisers and are pursuing their dreams. Providing a transitional arrangement for 5,000 of the estimated 30,000 gap year students does not solve the problem. I believe that all students in regional areas who must live away from home to attend university should receive financial support as a means of levelling the playing field with their city counterparts.
That is my starting point in this entire debate. We need to address the fundamental differences which exist in the levels of opportunity to participate in our university system. Income and asset testing for any additional support for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could then be applied on top of the basic tertiary access allowance.
There is a clear economic opportunity which flows from the position that I am putting to the House. The current requirement for parents in regional areas to find $12,000 to $15,000 in after-tax income to support their students is a drain on the wealth of regional towns. As a regional development initiative, providing a tertiary access allowance to meet the accommodation costs of all regional students forced to move away from home would be a shot in the arm to regional Australia. The government likes to talk about economic stimulus.
Instead of the sugar hit of $900 cheques, such a system of student support would provide sustainable economic growth for regional centres. It would also help to overcome the current skills shortage. Common sense tells us that professional people are more likely to move to regional areas if they know that university access has been improved for their children and if they know that it will not cost them an arm and a leg to send their children off to university in the future.
In the time that I have left, I want to refer briefly to the new workforce criteria and what a masterpiece of complete stupidity they have been. Quite apart from the difficult economic times we face, did anyone in the department who drafted these changes actually take a look at the workforce participation rates for country students? It is simply impossible for our country students to achieve the 30 hours per work prescribed by the new legislation. We can do better with student income support. I urge the minister to go back to the drawing board — (Time expired)