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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Wednesday, 31 March 2004) . . Page.. 1390 ..

The restructuring of social security payments to young people has dramatically reduced the number of young people who are able to claim support to further their studies at school, TAFE or university, or support to assist them in looking for full-time work. Between 1998 and 2001, the number of full-time students under the age of 19 receiving youth allowance fell from 33 per cent to 21 per cent. As a result, an increasing number of school leavers are delaying entry to further education so they can work for 12 months to qualify for youth allowance. When they actually start education with their youth allowance payments they are still living in massive debt and below the poverty line. That is the reality for many students in the ACT, as it is across the nation.

For those lucky enough to have convinced Centrelink that they are eligible to receive youth allowance, the payments are simply not enough. The current rate of youth allowance puts recipients at 40 per cent below the poverty line. That is not enough on which to study full time and it is not enough to support someone while they look for work. We have heard the vice-chancellors of our universities talking about students not being able to live, not being able to eat, not being able to afford their education.

Last week we were having discussions about how the lack of support that students are getting means that their education is suffering and that they are having to manage full-time work as well as full-time studies, which means that they do not have enough time to devote to their learning to get the full understanding they are meant to get at university. It is truly disappointing that we, the lucky nation that is meant to be supporting higher education, are not able to support young people as they attempt to complete their degrees.

The October 2000 report Runaway Youth Debt found that there are fundamental flaws in the structure of youth allowance and its administration. Almost all the young people interviewed for the report mentioned that they had difficulties in surviving on youth allowance payments due to the inadequacy of the payments, the repayment of Centrelink debts and the impact of breaches. The consequence of these issues has entrenched poverty and further homelessness, criminal activity or contact with the criminal justice system and, for many, the inability to complete or undertake education. Young people are disproportionately represented in breaches of social security payments, with over 50 per cent of the Centrelink breaches going to people under the age of 25.

Youth allowance has been a failure in assisting young people to participate in vocational and higher education and has been a failure in providing a leg-up for our most vulnerable young people. The system is definitely one that needs review and it needs to recognise the poverty in which young people are currently living in the ACT as they attempt to complete higher education.

I am happy to support this motion, but I am disappointed that the ACT government is not doing more. It should be working to help young people attempting higher education or vocational education in the ACT, but the government appears to be washing its hands of the problem, as it has done with the crisis in student accommodation.

The government’s vision of Canberra as the education capital of Australia stands in stark contrast with its lack of action in actually alleviating the problems and the government continues to lay the blame at the feet of others. Students on youth allowance contribute

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