Sykes: Local gap year students ‘dudded’ by Labor

Source: (State MP for Benalla) Bill Sykes Media Release

Over 100 students in the Benalla electorate, currently in their university gap year, will be forced to reconsider whether they can afford to take up their deferred tertiary place in 2010 because of the Labor Government’s ill-conceived changes to Youth Allowance, Nationals Member for Benalla Bill Sykes said today.

“The Labor Government simply does not understand the ramifications of their proposed changes to the independent Youth Allowance,” Dr Sykes said. “By making the changes retrospective, students who in good faith at the end of their 2008 VCE year made the decision to defer an offered tertiary place in order to qualify for Youth Allowance have now been caught short.

Dr Sykes said almost all those country students who deferred their studies for a year did so to become eligible for Youth Allowance.

“This is the most important issue to hit rural Victoria for years and the On Track figures released reveal the full impact of the Youth Allowance changes,” Dr Sykes said.

The On Track report, prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research, showed that the rate of deferral in country areas was twice that of Melbourne students. The report also showed a lower uptake of tertiary study by rural students.

“It shows, for example, that 84 per cent of the 64 students from Benalla College were offered a university or TAFE place and that 37 per cent deferred. That’s 24 young people from just one school who have been hit by the change. By comparison, in a Melbourne school of comparative size VCE numbers 93 per cent of the 62 students were offered a university or TAFE place and only 6 per cent deferred.

“In spite of a high percentage of offers 18 per cent of students were actually university enrolled.

“Of the 49 students from FCJ College 94 per cent were offered a university or TAFE place and 50 per cent deferred. That’s another 24 students from Benalla who have been hit by the change. While FCJ College however had no students looking for work 23 per cent of students were enrolled at university.”

While the statewide deferral rate was more than 12 per cent, many regional schools had rates in the high 20s and even into the 30 per cent range with one school at 50 per cent.”

Dr Sykes said that if the Federal Government does not scrap its Youth Allowance changes next year’s On Track figures will show an alarming decrease in the uptake of tertiary places by country students because without Youth Allowance higher education is not possible.

The Federal Government argued in Parliament this week that changes to Youth Allowance involve more than a single issue and were designed to weed out those twisting the rules to get the money.

“In arguing that case,” Dr Sykes said, “they again missed the point, and that is that Electorate Offices, state wide, are not being contacted by people who know they should not get Youth Allowance but by people who are halfway through their gap year and are now not eligible.”

Earlier this month Dr Sykes direct mailed a petition against the changes to Youth Allowance to over 800 young people in the Benalla Electorate with many more distributed to homes and schools. He has since made three presentations of signed petitions in Parliament.

“I will present more petitions when Parliament resumes next week and call on people to return all signed petitions to my office as soon as possible,” he said. “At both State and Federal levels, the fight against these changes has been led by Nationals MPs and we will maintain the pressure to have these controversial changes scrapped.”