By Marina Cameron
The Australian Council of Social Services, Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition, National Youth Coalition for Housing, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Catholic Social Welfare Commission, other welfare rights groups and the National Union of Students have run a campaign over the last month to force changes to the Howard government's common youth allowance bill, which will go before parliament soon.
The proposed CYA will replace existing unemployment benefits for 18-20 year olds, Austudy and youth training, sickness and family allowances from next July. Unemployment benefits for 16 and 17 year olds have been cut. Unemployed people up to the age of 21 will be considered dependents and subject to a much stricter parental means test.
Students will be considered dependent until they are 25. As a sweetener, rent assistance will be available to students, but only if they are deemed independent or have to live away from home to study.
The groups have been conducting a fax campaign, sending a letter to the PM and his ministers that states: "The introduction of a Youth Allowance offers the opportunity to simplify aspects of the income support system, to remove anomalies in the treatment of unemployed young people and students, and to offer greater flexibility to pursue different pathways to employment and adulthood".
However, they also express concern that "the government's proposed CYA withdraws support or makes it harder to obtain. The allowance is based on unrealistic and false assumptions about today's young people", including that:
- all 16-17 year olds from low-income families will either benefit from formal schooling, or have viable alternative training options open to them;
- all 18-20 year olds seeking full-time employment should continue to live with, and remain dependent on, their parents; and
- everyone up to 25 years who continues full-time studies should relinquish financial independence and continue to live with their parents.
The letter calls for the parental means test not to apply to 18-20 year olds; for 16-17 year olds to be supported (but not coerced) to continue their formal education; and for rent assistance to be extended to all CYA recipients living away from home.
The letter says, "If these critical issues are addressed ... the Youth Allowance is capable of achieving its goal of simplification and efficiency, while maintaining a fair and equitable support system".
In response, the social security minister, Jocelyn Newman, said that the government remained committed to the CYA as planned but that the "government remains interested in maintaining a dialogue with these organisations".
Resistance national coordinator Sean Healy said, "It is good that these groups have come out to some degree against the CYA. By contrast, the ACTU hasn't made any comment on it.
"However, the groups' proposals make some huge compromises on behalf of young people. They don't demand that the independent age for students be lowered. They don't address the below-poverty-line allowances already paid to young people. And they naively push the idea that the CYA can be a good thing when the government is on a massive drive to cut education and welfare spending."
Healy argues that the CYA as a whole should be opposed. Students have organised two national days of action this year which have done just this. "The Labor leadership of the National Union of Students should never have put their name to this letter, pretending that they speak for students", Healy said.
Healy pointed out that the government's non-response to the fax campaign reveals that compromise solutions, backed up by only the signatures of a few "recognised" organisations, cannot win a better deal for young people. "Young people themselves have to be involved in a campaign for a massive expansion of youth income support", he said.