PORT Macquarie gap-year students have harnessed a social networking website to lobby against changes to the youth allowance.
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Heidi Pett and Jess O’Callaghan, both 18, started a group on Facebook to raise awareness and provide contacts to campaign about the changes, which make it harder for country university students to qualify for financial independence from their parents.
Some 300 people signed up to the website within three days.
Under the old system, students qualified as independent and eligible for the youth allowance by working part-time for at least 15 hours a week for two years, or making at least $19,500 in 18 months.
From next year, students will have to work a minimum of 30 hours a week for at least 18 months in a two-year timeframe.
Miss Pett is working three jobs to prove her independence before pursuing an arts/law degree at Macquarie University in Sydney or Deakin University in Victoria.
The 18-year-old is determined to attend university next year.
“It will place a huge burden on my parents and I will have to be working a lot more hours part-time when I’m at uni,” she said.
Miss Pett says the changes made it harder for rural students to survive financially at university.
“We have no choice but to relocate, so it’s discriminating against rural and regional students,” she said.
Jess O’Callaghan, who was accepted into media and communications at the University of Melbourne, is working three jobs on the road to financial independence.
Miss O’Callaghan said she would have to work 30-hour weeks while at university, wait until she reached the lowered independence age of 22 or decide to travel.
Port Macquarie’s Matt Hedge, 18, now is considering a TAFE course followed by travel and mature-age university study.
He is accepted into business events management at Griffith University and working in Port Macquarie before continuing his gap year at summer camps in the US.
University of New England chancellor Richard Torbay said the new deal announced in the federal Budget last week would hit regional students hardest.
“The federal government should examine the impact of these new provisions on country students with some urgency and change the ground rules to make them fairer,” he said.
