Regional students urged to air youth allowance concerns at review

Regional students have a month to tell the Labor government how its unfair changes to independent youth allowance have affected them.

Submissions have finally been called for a review into student income support reforms, nearly five weeks after the government decided to bring it forward 12 months. The government and Independents refuse to work with the Coalition to immediately fix the changes and make the independent youth allowance criteria fair for all regional students.

“Students struggling to access the allowance have until the 28^th of April to make a submission to the review,” the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education, Senator Fiona Nash, said.

“It’s important they address the Key Questions as part their submission that are outlined on the government website. The more submissions there are, the stronger it makes the case for a fair deal. I also urge families and concerned others to do the same.”

Senator Nash welcomes the appointment of eminent academic, Professor Kwong Lee Dow, to do the review. But she worries the Labor government is not genuine in making independent youth allowance fair for `inner regional’ students, no matter what it pledged to the Independents. 

“The Tertiary Education Minister, Senator Chris Evans, admitted as much during the recent senate estimates and his media releases and the department websites don’t give a rock solid guarantee either,” she said.

“Furthermore, nothing will happen after the review finishes in July for at least six months. With Labor’s track record of commissioning reviews and doing nothing, who knows if there’ll even be an outcome. It’s exactly what happened with a recent senate inquiry into youth allowance, that was run by a Labor dominated committee.”

Details on the review and how to make submissions can be found at:http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Programs/YouthAllowance/Pages/RSISRSubmissionProcess.aspx. The deadline for submissions is 28^th April 2011.

Comments

# joanne sorensen

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 10:29 PM

our government really needs to change the youth allowance, that they thought was a great idea to change. young adults should not have to rely on their parents income to make their future decisions in life. parents responsibility stops when children are 18. in our case we are trying to keep n income of our own, which is a struggle in our area, my husband is in the building industry, as we all know has been on the down hill slide for the passed 4-5 yrs, even more so in this area, i have been working in a local supper market to top up our income. our son worked most of last yr and saved money to be able to go to uni and not rely on us, the only way we could help him was to let him live with us and not pay rent etc. he has moved 5 hours travel away to go to uni, we cant help him ang the government wont either, because of this he needs to find work, which is proving hard due to trying to fit in uni studies etc, hense i cant see how he is going to pursue his career choice for too much longer. i dont get how anyone who has an ounce of an idea of living in the real world could think these changes would be better............ so much to living in the lucky country! i purposely ndidnt vote for our loclal state rep, (mr bessling) due to him being buddy buddy with mr oakshot as he was the one who stopped the review, please please please change this system, we cant keep struggling like this, there is alot more people feeling worst than me about this, some one make these changes happen

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# Fiona Nash

Monday, June 06, 2011 8:32 AM

I completely understand how you feel, hundreds of students and parents have contacted me saying very similar things. This Labor Government simply doesn't understand how tough it is financially for regional students and their families when students have no choice but to move away from home to go to uni, and that comes with a huge cost.

I will absolutely keep fighting to try to get a fairer deal for regional students and their families.

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