Dear Editor,
About this time of the year, senators receive responses from federal government departments to questions they didn’t get to ask, or couldn’t get an answer to, during senate estimates.
Senate estimates is where senators question government ministers and department officials on a range of policy and expenditure issues. In short, the aim is to hold the government accountable for its decisions and spending.
The last senate estimates hearing was in October. Responses to outstanding questions, otherwise known as Questions on Notice, are due this month.
Of the few responses I’ve received so far, there are some standouts.
- The department confirmed what the Coalition suspected all along – that not as many regional students were receiving independent youth allowance that the government led us to believe. The government repeatedly claimed an additional 7435 (or 25.7 per cent) regional students were receiving youth allowance because of changes it made to the system in 2010. Only now has it been revealed that just 1321 of the 7435 `additional’ students were receiving the preferred `independent’ youth allowance between March 2010 and June 2011. Hopefully that number will increase now that the government’s finally backflipped and agreed to make the independent youth allowance criteria fairer for inner regional students.
- The department was asked to list the `priority regional areas’ targeted by the government’s Priority Area Employment program, aimed at boosting employment opportunities in regional Australia. In NSW, these so called priority regional areas include Canterbury, Bankstown, south western Sydney and the Blue Mountains.
- The government spent $6.6 million to run 40 jobs and skills expos in priority employment areas with 10 per cent of job seekers being offered interviews, training or jobs. I’ll leave that to your readers to decide if their taxpayer dollars have been spent wisely.
No doubt there’ll be more interesting revelations when the rest of my questions are answered.
Yours sincerely,
Senator Fiona Nash
The Nationals Senator for NSW
Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate
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