Rami Abouchedid is one of 200 Catholic College Wodonga pupils, gap year students, parents and staff to sign the Australian Greens’ petition to lobby the Senate to urge the Federal Government to reassess the proposed changes.

Mr Abouchedid, 18, said he rejected the Commonwealth accommodation scholarship, worth about $13,000, when he deferred his bachelor of business information systems at Monash University this year, in the hope that working full-time as an IT assistant at his former school would qualify him for the independent youth allowance rate.

“...Now that’s out of the question,” he said.

“I have lost everything.”

Under Federal Government proposals due to start next year, students who have earned $19,532 within 18 months or worked 15 hours a week for two years will no longer qualify.

Instead they will have to work at least 30 hours a week for 18 months.

From next year the accommodation scholarship will also be replaced with the relocation scholarship which offers the lesser amount of $4000 in the first year and $1000 in later years, but is only available to students who qualify for youth allowance.

Mr Abouchedid said he still planned to go to university next year and would do whatever it took to get there, but he hoped lobbying the Government would at least see the 2008 student cohort exempt from the changes.

“I signed this petition knowing that thousands of country students are being unfairly disadvantaged,” Mr Abouchedid said.

Barnawartha’s Millie Backway has also vented her anger at the changes via art, painting a picture of a “godzilla-like” Kevin Rudd, complete with tail, tightly clutching a group of students.

Miss Backway, who completed year 12 at Wodonga Senior Secondary College last year, is currently on a gap year and working three jobs in an effort to raise enough money to qualify for the independent youth allowance rate.