Gillard Garrotte chokes life out of university

On the very day when many Year 12 students are beginning their exams, the Parliament will be debating Julia Gillard's student support legislation that will make it almost impossible for thousands of rural students to gain Youth Allowance and achieve their dreams of higher education, according to Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne.

"Minister Gillard's cruel dismissal of the needs of rural students has been haunting Year 12 students all year,"said Mr Pyne.

"Any student from an average farming family, for example, will be ineligible to receive Youth Allowance because the value of the average family farm exceeds the assets test for the dependent rate of Youth Allowance. However the average farming family income is nowhere near enough to support their child's move to the city, plus rent and living expenses, when that student is at University.

"Minister Gillard doesn't seem to comprehend that students from rural Australia don't have the option of living freely at home while pursuing their studies. These students have up until now been able to gain access to Youth Allowance through the workforce participation - or 'gap year' - route, that the Government is seeking to abolish."

"The Coalition will move amendments to remove the retrospective aspect of the Legislation, and we have already announced our policy to provide scholarships to students from rural and regional areas who are ineligible for Youth Allowance, but whose financial circumstances are preventing them from accessing higher education. We encourage the Government to support these sensible, fair, policies.

"To maintain Budget neutrality, the Coalition has announced a reduction in the rate of the new Start-Up Scholarship. This is a new scholarship that currently no students are receiving, and as it is to be paid in a lump sum at the beginning of each semester, this change will not affect the proposed fortnightly payments to students by even one dollar - despite the misleading spin in the Minister's press releases.

"Under the Coalition's amendments, all students on youth allowance will be better off, receiving for the first time ever a $1000 start-up scholarship, rural and regional students will have a clear route to University available to them, and no student currently on their gap year preparing to enter University next year and claim Youth Allowance will have the rug pulled out from under their feet.

"In addition to the barriers to University study that the Government is placing in front of rural and regional students who are currently at school, the legislation is also seriously flawed as it changes the rules to deny Youth Allowance to 25,000 students (based on the Department's figures) who are already in their gap year - having made their plans based on advice from careers advisers, teachers, and Centrelink officials last year.

"The Gillard Garrotte is being applied to the throats of rural students currently doing their Year 12 exams, as well as these gap year students who have been in limbo since the May Budget, desperate to realise their dreams of a tertiary education but unsure if they will have the financial means to do so.

"Their stories have flooded the Coalition's website www.educationforaustralia.com.au.

Even the Victorian Parliament's Labor-dominated Education Committee recently reported: "the Committee believes that the removal of the main workforce participation route will have a disastrous effect on young people in rural and regional areas..." and that the changes "... will have a detrimental impact on many students who deferred their studies during 2009 in order to work and earn sufficient money to be eligible for Youth Allowance."

"From May to August, Julia Gillard maintained that there was no problem with retrospectivity, and there was no problem for rural students. Under constant pressure from the Opposition, she was forced into a humiliating backflip that saw her legislation changed to remove the retrospectivity for some rural students.

"She therefore admitted that there is a problem with retrospectivity, and with rural disadvantage. But having admitted these problems, her measures to fix them were half baked, as her stay of execution only applies to remote students in 2010.

"For a Minister to attempt to change legislation retrospectively demonstrates just how little time she spends focusing on the details.

"Australia deserves better than a part-time Education Minister."

20 October 2009

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Adam Howard

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