Student concession discriminatory: Hargreaves

By ALEXANDRIA CAUGHEY
A NATIONAL student concession card is set to become an innovation of the ACT Government following its recent (6th April 2011) proposal in the assembly.

The ACT Minister for Disability and Community Services, Joy Burch, has requested the card be placed on the agenda at the next ministerial council meeting of the federal and state community service ministers..

The motion to flag the idea at a national convention was raised by John Hargreaves MLA in the Legislative Assembly and it passed unanimously without amendment.

“I was pleased to see, I think in living memory, that a motion went through unamended by either the opposition or the Greens,” he said.

Mr Hargraves said it was discriminatory that students were the only concession demographic that did not have a national card.

“It occurred to me there was a disparity between the treatment of the seniors and the treatment of students,” he said.

If the card was introduced, it would help more than 20,000 full time students in the ACT. Mr Hargraves said the potential benefit to students meant politics didn’t come into the debate.

“It’s really heartening to see that when you put an argument, which quite frankly makes imminent sense, the politics didn’t enter into the issue,” he said.

Chris Steele, a spokesman for Ms Burch will be lobbying other state ministers in the lead-up to the next conference to win support for the card.

Mr Steele said that the recent National Seniors Card took years to implement, but Ms Burch hoped those established processes would speed up the introduction of a student card.

“With the Seniors Card, that also went through this committee, that took several years to develop but we are hoping we can push it through earlier than that,” he said.

The National Union of Students was quick to support the card and have started a “Fair Fares for All Students” campaign.

The union’s president, Jesse Marshall, said the disparity between states and their concessions was a financial strain for students and did not make sense.

“The current system is illogical and discriminatory,” he said in a statement. “Crossing state borders does not mean a student has more capacity to pay more than they did before, so why does their concession cease?”

An online petition is available on the Union of Students’ website and Mr Hargreaves strongly encouraged all students to write to their local Members to show support for the card.

“I want the students around Australia to rise up and have a jihad against anybody that opposes it,” he said.