Student fee promise

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 8

Student fee promise

A National government would scrap the student youth allowances package and parental means-test-ing, the party’s education spokesman, Dr Lockwood Smith, said yesterday. He agreed with Victoria University’s claim that 18-year-olds received less now than they did last . year under the scheme. “It is patently unfair that families with both

parents working and on modest incomes — say $19,000 each — are hardest hit by the scheme,” he said.

“Labour has got its priorities wrong again. It is spending $6O million to pay children to go to school to make its dole queues look less while tertiary students suffer in poverty.” The National Party’s

study right for education and training scheme would pay a tertiary student’s fees and provide a living allowance that

was not means-tested on parents’ incomes, he said. Extra money saved from not paying students to stay at school would be used to increase grants to 18-year-olds at universities or polytechnics.