Transcript - Doorstop - 24 February 2010

SUBJECTS: Changes to Youth Allowance; Student ID

(greetings omitted)

Christopher PYNE: The Coalition supports the new Commonwealth Scholarships being proposed by the Government and we have done so since last year's Budget but we don't support disadvantaging rural and regional Australians and that is what the Government's Youth Allowance changes do.

For that reason I'm announcing today, with Brett Mason, who has Senate carriage of this legislation, that we will move to split the Government's Bill in the Senate into a Scholarships Bill and a Youth Allowance reform Bill. That will then give the Government the opportunity to show they are acting in good faith.

We can pass the scholarships part of the Bill and we'll propose savings measures as part of that as we did last year so that it is revenue-neutral. And then we can have the argument over the Youth Allowance changes, which the Government is insisting upon and we say disadvantages rural and regional Australians.

This is a very sorry affair. It's been going on since last Budget. The Coalition has been warning since last May that handcuffing the scholarships to the Youth Allowance reforms meant that rural students were being held hostage to this Minister's ego. We are prepared to un-handcuff the two measures. If the scholarship measures are separated from the Youth Allowance measures that can pass as early as this week and the Youth Allowance reforms can then be discussed between the Coalition and the Government.

We have two primary concerns with the Youth Allowance reforms. Number one is their retrospectivity. The fact that they are starting on the first of January 2010, half way through many students' gap year, about 25 000 young Australians, at least, are going to miss out who had planned for higher education around access to Youth Allowance.

Secondly, rural and regional students find it impossible to fulfill the Workplace Participation Test of thirty hours work a week over eighteen months in a two year period. I challenge the Minister to tell me where rural and regional students are going to find thirty hours of work a week to fulfill that Workplace Participation Test.

They won't be able to and we have support from rural organisations, rural youth, Isolated Children's Parent's Association and many others who are telling us that rural youth will not be able to fulfill that test and even Geoff Howard, the Labor Member in Victoria, who chairs their Education Committee in that Parliament has indicated that this will have a diabolical effect on rural young Australians and their access to higher education.

Mr Pyne, when will this be bought into the Senate?

PYNE: Well the Bill is to be debated today. It's due to be debated today. I'm not sure it will necessarily be gotten to today by the Senate but it will certainly be gotten to by today or tomorrow.

If you decouple the scholarships, how will they be paid for?

PYNE: Well the Coalition opposed a savings measure of amendments last year that would save $696million. That was to reduce the Startup Scholarships from $2254 to $1000. Remember that these scholarships are new so students haven't received scholarships of that kind which means that the almost $700million of savings would more than pay for the new cost measures. Those being the 25 000 students in their current gap year, who would now not miss out because of the Coalition's amendments and also the changing of the Work Test to back how it was before, which is 15 hours of work a week for rural students rather than thirty hours of work a week.

The Greens are proposing a similar decoupling...

PYNE: ...they are...

...Senator Hansen-Young is bringing that to the Senate today. Why don't you just support that Bill?

PYNE: Sarah Hansen-Young wrote to me last week...in fact, she acknowledged that the public support for the funding of scholarships and said she hoped we should support a separate Bill that dealt with scholarships. We will support a separate Bill. We don't necessarily support the Greens' scholarships Bill because it contains an entirely new spending measure and it would need to be a request to the House of Representatives. Sarah Hansen-Young and the Greens are working with Brett Mason. Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding are working with Senator Mason to split the Bill and therefore allow the scholarships part to be passed and the Youth Allowance reforms to then be amended. It will therefore be up to the Minster if the Government stands in the way of splitting that Bill. The ball will be in her court if the Greens, Senator Xenophon, Senator Fielding and the Coalition move to split the Bill. It will entirely be down to Julia Gillard whether those scholarships are paid to students.

Every Vice-Chancellor in the country has asked that you support this Bill. Do you think the Vice-Chancellors are wrong?

PYNE: Look, the Vice-Chancellors aren't always right. I went to Adelaide University and while I respected my Vice-Chancellor in those days I don't think I would have always taken his advice. The Vice-Chancellors are wrong to expect the Coalition to vote for retrospective legislation that disadvantages rural and regional students and I note that the Victorian Parliament's Education Committee, with a Labor majority and a Labor Chairman, says that these changes are "diabolical" for rural students. Organisations that are actually at the coalface in rural Australia, the Isolated Children's Parent's Association and the Country Education Foundation of Australia have all backed the Opposition's position. Let alone the hundreds if not thousands of emails, letters and constituent contacts I and my colleagues have had which says "stick to your guns".

Mr Pyne, the Government has offered to remove the retrospective changes for kids in their current gap year. For all of them except for those whose parents earn more than $150 000. Why should children whose parents earn more than $150 000 get Government support?

PYNE: The Government hasn't offered to remove the retrospectivity from the Bill except through a sleight of hand, which is just another political artifice from the Minister. The Coalition won't support retrospective legislation and the Minister knows that. It seems to me that the Minister is deliberately trying to deny students the funds that they need under Youth Allowance and scholarships by making it impossible to modify this Government's legislation. She knows that the Liberal Party supports a huge number; we see the impact it will have on rural and regional young people. Now the problem we have here is that, if the Minister wanted to she could split the Bill and provide scholarships to whomever she wanted to. Everybody who is entitled to them and they would get back in the Bill. The retrospectivity is still in the Bill. 25 000 gap year students are still affected even after the Minister's announcements last year.

Do you support the introduction of a Student Identification Number to track a student's academic progress?

PYNE: I have real concerns about ID numbers and ID cards...I don't like Government and I don't like Big Brother looking over the shoulders of parents and students. I'm not sure what a Student ID number would achieve, the Minister hasn't explained it. I assume it's a teaser to The Age Press Club speech today. Quite frankly, how will the student ID number improve the educational outcomes for students?

What will be the protections for that student ID number? The Government can't even protect their own websites from being hacked into so why on earth should we have confidence that they'll be able to protect students' results? If they can be hacked into...if the results can be seen by others, they'll be used for cyber bullying! These are the kinds of things families with children understand will be exercising the minds of parents about a student ID number. Now, I'm the father of four children.

I would be very concerned if my children's results were up on the net, accessed by hackers and used to then bully my children as they go through school. I think we need a proper explanation of what the Minister is trying to do. It looks like another distraction from a Minister who's failed to deliver Trade Training Centres, failed to deliver childcare centres, failed to deliver Computers in Schools, failed to deliver in almost every aspect of her portfolio...except she's delivered a website.

As a father of four children, do you think you get enough information now to track the progress of your kids?

PYNE: I am surprised and delighted with how much information my school provides to my children and to me as a parent and to my wife as a parent. It's certainly a great deal more than when I was in St Ignatius in Adelaide and I certainly feel that we can make decisions for our children based on that information. The Coalition supports the Myschool website as the Government is basically publishing the NAPLAN tests that we introduced. What I say about the Myschool website is that without giving principals autonomy, without real reform in education it is simply establishing a culture of complaint without giving principals and teachers the power to affect outcomes as a result of those problems.

What are the specific ways that students will be affected if this Bill goes through?

PYNE: If this Bill goes through as it is, rural and regional students will be expected to work thirty hours a week over an 18 month period over two years to be able to access the independent rate of Youth Allowance. That will be the Work Participation Test. Now I would challenge the Minister and anybody else to tell me where all those jobs are in rural and regional Australia that are thirty hours a week for young Australians. That means that essentially rural and regional Australians will have to move away from home to get jobs like that to be able to access the Youth Allowance to be able to go to university!

I'm not sure that was their plan and I'm not sure that's good for rural and regional Australia. It leads to a very good point. Rural and regional Australians are already a disadvantaged group in relation to their access to higher education. If a person has a job for that long and it's a thirty hour a week job. They have a lifestyle based around that kind of income and they might have taken a mortgage out for a car or whatever. The idea to access higher education in the future will start to slip from their minds and there are reports from rural and regional agencies that this will further disadvantage rural and regional Australians.

(ends)