Mr LATHAM(9.34 a.m.) —I move:

That regulations 11 and 12 of the AUSTUDY Regulations (Amendment) as contained in Statutory Rules 1997, No. 83, made under the Student and Youth Assistance Act 1973, be disallowed.

This measure, announced in the 1996-97 budget, reduces by a third the maximum rent assistance available to single students without dependants who share accommodation as of 1 July this year. It is in line with the same measures affecting people who receive rent assistance through the Department of Social Security, which cut rent assistance payments to some 80,000 Australians. This is the final change to Austudy from the range of measures, all negative, which were announced in last year's budget.

At the time of this announcement this measure would have saved the government some $700,000 over four years. However, with the recent announcement of the introduction of a youth allowance, which will extend rent assistance to a far broader range of students than is presently the case, the reduction of the maximum amount payable to singles in shared accommodation becomes far more significant in terms of the number of people who will be affected.

Currently, to receive Austudy rent assistance you need to be in one of the following categories: you are homeless; your parents are unable to provide a home, care or support for you; you are an orphan; you are a refugee with no parents in Australia; or you are in state care getting the away from home rate and living away from your foster carer's home. In other words, the people we are talking about who are affected by this disallowance motion and in terms of the measure's immediate effect are facing severe disadvantages. It cannot be said that any of these categories represent those who are at all financially advantaged in our society.

Austudy is designed to help people complete their education for their own benefit and for the benefit of our society generally. People receiving rent assistance are the perfect example of those for whom Austudy was designed. In many cases, in order to have reasonable access to university or TAFE, students would find it necessary to live in inner-city, high rent areas and to share accommodation to reduce costs. This government has decided to penalise them for that decision, which is related to the advancement of their education. It has reduced the weekly rate of rent assistance for such people from $37.30 to $24.90.

In order to access such assistance, a student needs to be paying a certain amount of rent—a threshold—before that student can receive any assistance. Above that threshold, three-quarters of what is paid by way of rent is then paid to the student in the form of rent assistance, subject to a ceiling. So we are not talking about some sort of windfall gain to people who might not need it; we are talking about people who are desperately in need and who are actually paying out more than the threshold level of rent. This measure, now subject to disallowance, has immediately affected around 2,600 people. It is likely that some of these will find it too difficult to continue their studies. The advancement through the education system of more than 2,500 young Australians affected by this measure is now in jeopardy.

With the commencement of the youth allowance on 1 July next year, some 70,000 full-time students, currently Austudy recipients, will be eligible for rent assistance. Of those who are single and living in shared accommodation, probably a significant proportion will suffer because of this change.

The government has said that the youth allowance is not a saving measure, although it has not released the full details of costings. Therefore, it is very difficult for the parliament to know the legitimacy of that claim. What we are talking about today, however, is a savings measure in advance: taking away an entitlement to maximum rent assistance before the rent assistance is provided. So there is the direct impact of 2,600 students being adversely affected by this measure and now, with the introduction of the youth allowance, the possible adverse impact on 70,000 full-time students.

The government claims that the youth allowance is designed to encourage young people to study. Yet last year's budget cut student assistance expenditure by $514 million over four years, representing a sustained attack on income support for students. This measure can take its place among the unjustified and mean-spirited changes to Austudy introduced by the Howard government. It can stand beside the abolition of case management of secondary students on the homeless rate of Austudy and Abstudy. It can stand behind the cessation of the schooling incidentals allowance for those same homeless students and the tightening of the actual means test, which Amanda Vanstone turned into an administrative nightmare. It can also stand behind the raising of the age of independence which, apart from being inequitable in itself, is impacting particularly unfairly on some students who, for technical reasons, are being considered dependent on their parents when they have, in reality, led independent lives for years.

The opposition is opposed to this particular measure and seeks its disallowance. We make the broader point that a government that is taking away over $½ billion in assistance for income support for young Australians going through their studies is a government that does not value education. It is also a government that does not value security for young Australians.

In the public debate we are having a substantial discussion about the need for security—job security, income security, all forms of security—in this world of constant change and uncertainty. It should not be forgotten in that particular debate that there is a need for income support and security for young Australians. If, as a parliament and a nation, we are not providing certainty and security for young Australians, particularly in that important transition from school to post-secondly studies and beyond, then we are much diminished as a society. If we are not providing the sort of certainty that young Australians need to advance themselves and their studies, then the nation as a whole is much diminished.

I would urge the government in this great national debate about insecurity to take heed of the need for greater security for young Australians, particularly in student income support. If students do not have that security, if they do not have that adequate level of income support as they engage in their studies, then they take lower risk options in their studies and they take lower risk options in their career ambitions. A nation that is dropping its ambitions, dropping its horizons among its young students, is a nation that will be diminished in the future.

This is the saddest thing about the whole raft of Vanstone changes to the education system. The damage might not necessarily be felt in 1997. But there is one certainty out of the debate: the damage will be felt supremely in decades from now. At that time, it will be too late to reverse this government's running down of security and opportunities for young Australians in their studies. The government needs to reverse a whole raft of Austudy changes and reductions in income support and security. It also needs to recognise that, in many other areas of its education funding cuts, reversal of policy needs to be implemented.

Travelling around Australia's universities, I have observed that Austudy itself has become a matter of substantial controversy—not only in relation to the disallowance matter now before the parliament but the whole raft of changes, the whole raft of impacts arising from the half a billion dollar funding cut, particularly with the administration of the actual means test. I know that the parliamentary secretary—inadvertently promoted earlier on by the Speaker, in word if not deed, and in recognition of relevant merit on the government frontbench—has had some responsibility for the actual means test. He too knows the difficulty. He knows the nightmare. He knows the horror of students, on average, having to wait 49 minutes on a so-called hotline just to have their queries answered.

Ms Macklin —That's right, if they can get through.

Mr LATHAM —It is a pretty cold hotline when they have to wait for 49 minutes—if they get through, as the member for Jagajaga points out. The 49 minutes was an average which was calculated off the number of students who got through. So, for all those who just gave it away in deep frustration, the statistics and the horror of this administrative nightmare would be much worse.

The government needs to have a sound review of Austudy policy, not only in this matter but across the board. The Australian Labor Party in embracing new policies, particularly in the education area, is conducting a policy review. We are very determined to produce some changes to the Austudy arrangements by ways of providing greater certainty and security for young Australians. What we have with Austudy, basically, is the disease that so many parts of the welfare state in Australia have been inflicted with—the idea that additional issues and problems can only be addressed by another category, another set of means testing, another cut in and cut out point; running students, in this case, through five or six hoops of means and asset testing before they can become eligible for the Austudy arrangements.

These particular arrangements need to be simplified. There needs to be simplicity and flexibility in the sort of income support that is being provided to young Australians—the flexibility, the simplicity, the strength and the certainty of income support that ensures that students are not dropping their horizons, that they are not dropping their level of ambition and risk in the education sector; that they are taking the highest possible option for their own benefit and the benefit of the nation.

These are hard issues for the opposition to advance because the government has a totally incorrect set of priorities. This is a govern ment that in its first and second budgets quarantined defence spending but made education, including Austudy, its No. 1 target for funding cuts. It is almost surreal in Australia at the current time, as people talk about security, as they talk about international engagement, to understand what we are doing in Australia by way of education funding cuts compared to the growth economies and nations of our region.

Have a look at Singapore or Malaysia where there is no public debate as to whether or not education is a public or a private good. It is the Vanstone approach, of course, to say, `Well, look, there's a public benefit and there is a private benefit in education. Off the private benefit, we'll hang a user charge.' In our competitor nations there is no such debate because they recognise that in a post-industrial society, where there are new information based opportunities in the economy and in our society, education needs to be regarded as an essential national investment, as an essential national good, that does not find itself subject to this public versus private debate.

If you invested in education as an essential national good, then years from now Australia would be reaping public and private benefit aplenty. That would be the sound set of policies that best serves Australia's national interest. What we have from this government is a very different set of priorities, quarantining all those defence golf courses and other parts of the defence establishment in Australia while making education the No. 1 target for funding cuts. The No. 1 targets are students, course work, universities, TAFE; all the opportunities that should be available for young Australians. This parliament and the government should be providing security for that transition from school to post-secondary studies and then on to work.

This is but one part of a whole raft of problems that the government has created in the education area. The Labor Party has constantly opposed each of these changes. We are doing it again on this particular matter with the Austudy regulations. I certainly urge the parliament to support the disallowance motion.

Mr SPEAKER —Is the motion seconded?

Ms Macklin —I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.