The Wellspring

The 2009-10 Commonwealth Budget was released on 12 May.

As in previous years, the Youth Affairs Council of South Australia (YACSA) has prepared a summary of budget measures that have significant effect on young people. This is available at http://www.yacsa.com.au/cgi-bin/wf.pl?pid=195864619091495&mode=cd&file=../html/documents//Policy%20and%20Research. Jennifer Duncan, Executive Director of YACSA, has prepared a more extensive overview of relevant federal budget measures, available at http://www.yacsa.com.au/onlinedocs/Federal_budget_notes_2009.pdf.

The Australian Minister for Youth, the Hon Kate Ellis MP, has also released a ‘quick guide to youth budget’ (eh?) available via http://www.youth.gov.au/budget.html. It comes with an accompanying video.

In addition to significant investments in secondary and tertiary education infrastructure, the two main measures directed to young people include:

• A $277 million Compact with Young Australians, which will guarantee training places for every young person under 25 and require that young people under 17 participate full-time in study, training or employment. It will also bring forward – from 2020 to 2015 – the target that 90 per cent of young Australians attain Year 12 or equivalent qualifications.
• A reform of the student income support system: The Government will tighten the definition of ‘independence’ under the scheme – doubling the number of hours students must work to prove they are financially independent of their parents, to 30 hours per week for 18 months – to make it more difficult to qualify for Youth Allowance through independence prior to turning 22. Minister Ellis’s summary states that, “The savings from tightening the independence test will be reinvested to provide greater levels of support and more generous means testing arrangements for lower income students”, but the exact details of this increase have yet to be released. Currently, youth allowance rates max out at $371.40 a fortnight, well below the poverty line of $558 a fortnight.