After more than 14 weeks of back and forth, three official knock-backs and an estimated 480 minutes on the phone, Joshua Jack’s Youth Allowance claim with Centrelink was approved.
The 22-year-old from Kialla West moved to Burwood to complete his second year of a double degree in arts and law at Deakin University.
Joshua knew his rights — he was entitled to the assistance while studying.
He had done a gap year, earned an amount that left him able to claim, and met all other criteria, including having passed the parental income test.
He fit into the independent classification for regional youth payments and had supplied the necessary documentation.
But for three and a half months, that wasn’t enough.
“We got to the point where we went through and found the actual legislation for the Services Australia criteria, basically,” he said.
“And so no longer was it just ‘I'm looking at your website’, it was ‘I'm looking at the statute, it is this volume in this section, I'm reading it right now’.
“You can't argue with someone when they have that piece of legislation, which is such an excruciating standard to have to carry.”
From his first claim on March 8 to the time of his first payment on June 23, Joshua was balancing full-time study, exams and the pressures of scraping up enough funds to pay for rent and groceries, let alone the costs of university textbooks.
His part-time job was in a factory, which saw him beginning work as early as 4am to cram everything into his days.
But still, he considered himself lucky to have an income stream at all.
The alternative would’ve been dire to his education.
“It was that stress of knowing that my savings were dwindling, I'm working and studying full-time and if this doesn't come through, studying down here is unsustainable,” he said.
“I'd definitely have to move back home and switch to an online learning service, which I can't do because the internet's shocking at home.”
It has been shown regional young people defer university at twice the rate of their metropolitan counterparts.
They face greater barriers to pursuing university — having to move hours away, pay for student accommodation, keep up with the cost of living — the list goes on.
Students find themselves relying on payments to get by.
Services Australia general manager Hank Jongen said Youth Allowance claims generally took six weeks to process, depending on students’ circumstances.
Though Joshua’s case was an outlier.
“What we want is for people to find it simple to lodge a claim and, if they get a bit lost in the system, we’ll be there to help — that didn’t happen in Mr Jack’s case, and for that we apologise,” Mr Jongen said.
“We are very sorry for Mr Jack’s recent experience, but we’re glad he’s getting the support he needs now.”
Joshua said he went through “countless” operators over 17 phone calls and three in-office visits, and that he’d “exhausted every avenue“.
He felt his regional status made the process all the more difficult and found his application was being assessed against the metropolitan criteria several times.
It wasn’t until he coincidentally landed a call with a worker trained specifically in regional Youth Allowance that the cogs of his claim began turning.
After his experience, Joshua said he began hearing similar stories of students fighting against the system — especially those from regional areas.
“Because it's your first interaction with the public service sort of thing, none of us have a clue what we're doing,” he said.
He said while there was “overwhelming satisfaction” in receiving the acceptance, reform was needed.
“It was almost sort of liberating in a way just to know that I knew what I was doing, despite being told numerous times that you're not entitled, you don’t satisfy,” he said.
“And then at the end I sort of went well, I'm not copping this, I'm finding a way to get attention to the issue so that someone fixes it, because there are so many kids that just give up.”
∎ Caitlyn Grant and Megan Fisher are opening the conversation for young people on all things from mental health to success stories in their weekly column, Let’s Talk. If you or someone you know has a story, contact caitlyn.grant@mmg.com.au or megan.fisher@sheppnews.com.au