Abstudy, university funding slashed
By Sarah Peart
The news for students from the federal budget is again bad. The major new attack is a $40 million cut to Abstudy, the allowance paid to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. This is equal to 8% of total Abstudy funding and is largely accomplished through cuts to "incidentals" such as travel and allowances for dependents and through tightening eligibility.
The budget abolishes the Commonwealth Industry Placement Scheme, which subsidises employers who pay for training for their employees, saving $67 million over the next two years. It also increases the cuts in government grants to universities in the 1996 budget by 1%.
The cuts in the 1997-98 budget are equivalent to 8.6% of total outlays on higher education.
As a "sweetener", the government has created a fund of $26 million to assist universities with "restructuring and rationalisation measures" (i.e. sacking staff and cutting services) and announced a 25% discount for those who pay off their HECS debt in lump sums of $500 or more.
Resistance national coordinator Sean Healy described the plans as "further proof of this government's commitment to gutting publicly funded education and of its utter contempt for students.
"For John Howard to appear in the media rejecting Pauline Hanson's comments that Aborigines aren't disadvantaged and then to introduce 8% cuts to Abstudy is the height of hypocrisy."
Healy described the HECS discount on lump sums as "of no benefit to students. Certainly it's nothing compared to the wholesale funding cuts, restrictions on Austudy and Abstudy and the deregulation of undergraduate fees announced in both last year's and this year's budgets."