Family First senator Steve Fielding rebuffed yesterday a last-minute $20 million sweetener to pass the Government's Youth Allowance legislation.
Education Minister Julia Gillard announced yesterday the establishment of a $20 million Rural Tertiary Hardship Fund to ''help prevent the barriers to rural and regional students attending university.''
The pitch is aimed at securing the vote of Senator Fielding who along with the Nationals and Liberals is opposing Government reforms to Youth Allowance which they say will greatly disadvantage rural and regional students needing to travel away from home to attend university as well as those undertaking a ''gap'' year.
Ms Gillard said the Government would set up a rural and regional taskforce should the legislation pass through and that taskforce would consider how the $20 million would be spent from 2011.
She said the Government had already moved to support gap year students by quarantining those currently in their gap year excluding those who planned to live at home while studying and who had parents earning more than $150,000 a year.
She warned that should the Bill fail to pass, 150,000 students would miss out on Government scholarships.
But Senator Fielding said the changes would unfairly rip Youth Allowance away from 26,000 young people.
''The Rudd Government's offer of $20 million sounds like a lot, but this amount split over two years between 26,000 rural and regional students equates to only $769 for the entire year that's crazy and its nothing more than hush money to keep the kids quiet,'' he said.
''The Deputy Prime Minister will try to spin her offer as very generous, but don't let her rhetoric fool you the offer doesn't solve the problem, it only delays the massive funding gap which the Government will leave students with if these ridiculous changes are passed.''
Nationals Senator Fiona Nash, said the temporary fix being offered by Ms Gillard was inadequate.
Senator Nash, chairwoman of the Senate's Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee which has been inquiring into rural and regional access to secondary and tertiary education opportunities, said, ''Ms Gillard is attempting to buy off students in 2011 and 2012 but has done nothing to fix the long-term problem created by the Labor Government.''
She said the most important issue for rural and regional students was the Coalition's amendment to keep the gap year criteria that allows them to qualify for Independent Youth Allowance by earning around $19,500 a year.
She urged the Government to split its Bill to allow scholarships to go through in 2010.
But the reform package has broad support within the university sector, including all vice-chancellors, student unions, and all state and territory education Ministers.
National Union of Students President David Barrow said students had been ''left in limbo'' by the Senate's blockage of the package.
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