Sarah on ABC's Heywire about Youth Allowance
Blog Post | Blog of Sarah Hanson-Young
Friday 22nd May 2009, 5:30pm
Sarah had a chat to Watto at ABC's Heywire about the proposed changes to Youth Allowance in the Federal Budget. You can read the story, 'Greens declare change needed', and listen to the audio of the interview here.
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Youth allowance
Hi,
It goes without saying that reneging on future students currently in their gap year is very poor behaviour by the Government, and Sarah Hanson-Young is rightly protesting about that. But what's with the 18 months anyway? Just to ensure that even future students are about 2 months short when succeeding in working 30 hours/week straight after their HSC, as this would be hard to maintain once uni starts about 16 months later? How petty. Turn back those Liberal income & superannuation tax cuts for the rich instead, guys, and, shock-horror, maybe even some of that private school funding, and you can easily pay for a happier independent generation of students.
Regards,
Frank
Think twice
I'm not exactly sure what the ALP are all about but they're not spelling it out either. Even a google search gives me no information about Youth Allowance changes in the federal budget from the Labor government. However I can think of an argument that may be influencing the government's proposals.
I do believe that the attrition rate for university students is extremely high. Apparently more than 20% of Australian university students drop out in their first years. I would venture to state that this falls short of my observations whilst studying at university putting the figure (of attendance) at around 50%. The reasons for this may be varied including financial strain but also "cold feet", a lack of motivation, a change of heart, low grades and so on.
It is also highly probable that the greater the chances of a students' success and depending upon the type of success, the more likely the parents are to become financially involved including where it puts extra burden on them. Where a student is less likely to succeed more onus is put on the child in his or her way forward including financially. And for the government this may mean some undue pressure on student allowances or their "return on investment" (ROI) due to a high attrition rate. Easy come, easy go - so to speak.
So basically the government may be trying to reduce financial burden placed on them where there are alternative options for families and students that may result in greater success and gain for the economy, including a decision never to attend university. The government may be trying to influence decisions about futures that are more steadfast by making one particular pathway harder, like anything's possible if you really want it to happen. Make it happen.
In my opinion this is nothing new. Of course my inferences could be wrong but in any case it's all about the bottom line to the two-party preferred system. And the future will only see more of this. Feminism for example is acceptable and taught at university because it has doubled the economic output of the country with two heads of the family now working. The difficulty for the government now is it's unlikely they will ever find another way to increase productivity so massively again. So they are squeezing the sponge for all they can instead!
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[...] Sarah on ABC's Heywire about Youth Allowance | Greens MPs greensmps.org.au/blog/sarah-abcs-heywire-about-youth-allowance – view page – cached Sarah had a chat to Watto at ABC's Heywire about the proposed changes to Youth Allowance in the Federal Budget. You can read the story, 'Greens declare change needed', and listen to the audio of the interview here. — From the page [...]
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