"Invest in our future!"
David Barrow, President of the National Union of Students said "Today is crunch time for the Liberals on student scholarships. Christopher Pyne wants to halve Julia Gillard's new relocation and start-up scholarships- leaving next year's uni students in the lurch".
"These new scholarships are crucial for the thousands of students who need to move out of home to go to university and crucial for all those students who go without meals in their first semester because they are paying for exorbitant text book costs, bond, university equipment and set up costs. Year 12s have been counting on these scholarships all year - to rob them now at the eleventh hour is massively unfair," he said.
"After 12 years of neglect by the Liberal Government Christopher Pyne sounds like a complete hypocrite suddenly championing the student cause. They should have indexed youth allowance and should have allowed thousands more students from low-SES families access the benefit. They didn't- and now they want to cut these new benefits. It defies belief," he said.
"Now it is Pyne who takes from Peter to give to Paul," he said.
"Students support an increase on the total amount spent on youth allowance. We want to see the increase in the personal income test threshold brought forward to 1st of January 2011 and we would like to see a long term solution for rural and regional access to university. However these initiatives cost money, it would be a step in the wrong direction to cut the new scholarships to fund new criterion," he said.
"Until both Labor and the Liberals cease to maintain their position of a 'budget-neutral-package' in relation to youth allowance there are going to be inadequacies in the system. Blocking the scholarships is not part of any solution," he said.
"Both parties need to listen to the Greens and Senator Fielding who call for more funding for youth allowance - to build the clever country and entrench university education as a right, not a privilege," he concluded.
