Commonwealth Start Up & Relocation Scholarships (1 Viewer)

[Ishynooshy]

These scholarships were proposed during 2009's budget and were to be introduced at this beginning of this year. As I understand it, the coalition has blocked support for these scholarships when they were to vote on them during the last few weeks of parliament last year. Is anyone willing to join me in filling the inboxes of Julia Gillard, Christoper Pyne (Shadow education minister) and your local federal MP with emails to get them to get this piece of legislation voted on as soon as possible, as to reduce the financial impact on all of those that are about to start uni in the next couple of weeks?

 

[Doomah]

i was relying on this sht to pay for rent. thanks for nothing... john howard is gone, but his goonies are still around....

 

[Epic]

Yeah I'm really disappointed that these scholarships haven't been passed. I'm not depending on them but it sure would make things easier.

 

[aussie-boy]

Julia Gillard doesnt give a shit about making uni life affordable... the whole YA package is a massive money saving tactic that will backfire in the long run when students spend more years in shitty part time jobs saving for uni and less as well paid graduates

Its a disgrace

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I cant sympathise with you though, if you are eligible for one of these scholarships, you're also eligible for $370 YA a fortnight - most of us dont get $10k a year for doing nothing

 

[shady145]

Julia Gillard doesnt give a shit about making uni life affordable... the whole YA package is a massive money saving tactic that will backfire in the long run when students spend more years in shitty part time jobs saving for uni and less as well paid graduates

Its a disgrace

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I cant sympathise with you though, if you are eligible for one of these scholarships, you're also eligible for $370 YA a fortnight - most of us dont get $10k a year for doing nothing

-ve
being eligible for those scholarships doesnt mean you are eligible for 370/fortnight... you only get that much if you are extremely poor... and you also have to be living away from home

 

[Miner]

Is anyone willing to join me in filling the inboxes of Julia Gillard, Christoper Pyne (Shadow education minister) and your local federal MP with emails to get them to get this piece of legislation voted on as soon as possible, as to reduce the financial impact on all of those that are about to start uni in the next couple of weeks?

Not going to happen THAT easily. These scholarships have been packaged with legislation that severely restricts rural and regional students from accessing Independent rate YA. Pyne is 100% committed to blocking this package because of the tens of thousands of signatures on petitions against this legislation being passed. Sure it has affected you negatively at this point in time but maybe spare a thought for all those students out there who have to live away from home and need to be able to gain independent status via workforce participation.

Gillard has known all along that the legislation was bad and was never going to get over the line. She still went ahead and cancelled the CECS and CAS scholarships though because she doesn't want any $ passing to non-YA recipients. In case you haven't realised it, unless you qualify for YA you don't get a cent of these scholarships.

 

[babikakez]

I am so glad I got onboard the CECS gravy train last year.

 

[Triangulum]

Not going to happen THAT easily. These scholarships have been packaged with legislation that severely restricts rural and regional students from accessing Independent rate YA. Pyne is 100% committed to blocking this package because of the tens of thousands of signatures on petitions against this legislation being passed. Sure it has affected you negatively at this point in time but maybe spare a thought for all those students out there who have to live away from home and need to be able to gain independent status via workforce participation.

Gillard has known all along that the legislation was bad and was never going to get over the line. She still went ahead and cancelled the CECS and CAS scholarships though because she doesn't want any $ passing to non-YA recipients. In case you haven't realised it, unless you qualify for YA you don't get a cent of these scholarships.

i don't see how the legislation affects rural students at all? the whole point of the reforms is that you don't need to be classified as independent to get YA any more. originally the idea was that only a few people who were genuinely independent of their parents would be in that category, and most people would get YA as dependents - but for some insane reason the parental income test wasn't indexed to inflation, so it got to the point where only fairly poor people could access YA through the dependent route. thus we had the widespread abuse of the workforce participation criteria, because there was no other way for people whose parents were earning over about $35,000pa to access YA.

the reforms work by massively increasing the thresholds on the parental income test, so that far more people can access YA as dependents, without having to take a year or more off to earn whatever arbitrary amount Centrelink wants for independence. this applies to both rural and urban students, and means that many more people can access YA immediately. all the opposition to these reforms seems to be centred on 'zomg the government is taking away the workforce participation criteria, zomg removing the main way people qualify for independent YA!', but this ignores the easing of the criteria for dependent YA.

this is not to mention the fact that rural students who qualify under the relaxed parental income test will be swimming in cash from the new relocation scholarships, and thus have even less to complain about than urban students.

 

[Miner]

i don't see how the legislation affects rural students at all?

That might be because you aren't one.

If you read through some of the lobbying information you'd realise that these changes are an extreme disadvantage for many rural students. The increases in parental income thresholds still don't make financial sense particularly when there is more than one student having to leave home (and only 2 are built into the threshold taper when some families have more than 2). They are totally inequitable. While a combined income of $140k might seem a lot, if parents need to pay out $15-20k per student that is $30-40k (after tax that they have to find). Then if one dependent becomes ineligible for YA for any time that threshold almost halves even though the parents still have to find $15-20k from their disposable income for their one dependent student. There are no tax concessions and no FTB help for the parents either. There are actually points in the new income taper at which rural students are indeed worse of than under the old dependence rate taper. Read the documentation of the senate committee if you really want to understand the issue. Their report notes that it is indeed inequitable legislation when it comes to rural/regional students whether they by rural students moving to the city to study or city students moving to rural universities and actually recommends that a $10k payment to students having to move to go to uni is what is the minimum needed to address equity of access for rural students.

In order for rural students to gain independence via workforce participation most will have to leave home for the two years because of the seasonal nature of work in most rural areas. That is something that isn't required for city based students which means the govt are perpetuating the city-regional divide rather than closing it as per their own targets. The assest test also affect rural students in a far greater way because many rural families are asset rich while income poor. Contrary to what many city folk might believe they can't just sell off a paddock or two to pay a years fees and they can't borrow against it either. Rural areas risk losing their professional and semi-professional population if these changes go through as these families will leave communities to return to the city for their children's education.

It was bad policy ill-thought out by city centric researchers that Gillard just adopted without consultation. Everyone is now paying for that.

As for the relocation scholarship I don't see how $1000 for all years after the first year is anything like "swimming in cash". Do you even have a clue as to what is needed to set up a home away from home? The initial $4000 has to cover rental bonds, utility bonds, furniture, household items like pots and pans, linen, crockery, whitegoods etc.