Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens of course think that the 50 per cent rule, which saw students lose government funding if they failed more than half of their subjects, should be scrapped. It was punitive and unfair and hit students who lacked support the hardest. And the Greens support improving access to universities for First Nations students. But, really, if the government were serious—if Labor were serious—about improving access to universities, they would do two things: take a leaf out of Whitlam's book and bring back free university education; and wipe the scourge that is the skyrocketing and surging student debt. Indeed, we know that free university education would be transformative for millions of Australians. In countries like Germany that provide free university education to both domestic and international students, we see a population highly trained in the most successful economy in Europe, where, regardless of your circumstances, your income or your fear of debt in the future, you can get a good-quality university education. In a wealthy country like Australia, there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be able to do the same here.

Student debt has become a giant, huge problem for millions of Australians right now, and it is, frankly, destroying many of their lives. On 1 June 2023, student debts were indexed by a staggering 7.1 per cent, effectively an interest charge on debt of 7.1 per cent. It was 3.9 per cent the year before. That means for many students their debt is rising faster than they can afford to pay it off. In fact, for those on low incomes it is worse. Take this from the Australia Institute. For someone with a debt of $24,000—that's the average debt—and earning $50,000 a year, their debt will increase by $1,259 after repayment of $500, which means that their debt is going up faster than they can afford to pay it. For someone on $50,000, they are copping a $500 hit to their income come tax time and at the end of it their debt will be higher. In fact, using the average debt, anyone earning between $48,000 and $62,000, roughly, will go backwards this year because of indexation. That is remarkable. That's just on the average debt. But, of course, the higher your debt is, the higher income you need to avoid going backwards.

Take Zoe, whose story was reported in the Guardian. Despite earning a salary of $100,000, she was forced to pay back $10,000 in student debt payments this year. But the kicker is that indexation saw her debt increase by $9,000, which means that in the end she was able to take only $1,000 off her debt. Her total debt of $124,000 has only reduced by $4,000, despite spending $15,000 in the last five years paying back against her student debt.

We already know that only 13 per cent of houses in Australia are now affordable for people on $103,000. For people on lower incomes it is even worse. But what's worse is that larger student debts make it harder to even get a home loan in the first place. Student debt held by the government is now $74 billion, and with indexation they will get an extra $5 billion on that student debt. In comparison, their so-called tax on gas operations will raise only $2.5 billion over the next four years, which means that Labor are raising more money off indexing student debt than they are from taxing massive gas operations.

Of course, student debt could be wiped and we could bring back free university education, especially when you compare it to the cost that the government is going to incur on the stage 3 tax cuts and the nuclear attack submarines alone. Over the next 10 years Labor will spend $313 billion on tax cuts for politicians and billionaires via the stage 3 tax cuts and Labor will spend $368 million over the next few decades on the nuclear attack submarines. For a fraction of that, we could bring back free university education, wipe student debt and transform millions of people's lives. How many working people right now are deciding not to go to university because they do not want to incur a student debt? It's money that could have been used to help cover the rent increase—and that, I think, is crucial. Think about what that extra $500 means for someone on $50,000 a year. For someone on even $100,000 a year, think about what $10,000 could cover. It could cover the rent. It could mean you are able to buy the fresh vegetables that have been price-gouged by Coles and Woolies.

At the end of the day, we have a financial and political system completely rigged against people who haven't already been able to buy a home or certainly investment properties. And you wonder why people are upset and frustrated by politics. Not only are real wages going backwards, not only is it becoming almost impossible for many to buy a home and not only are more people being trapped renting for longer than they would like and being smashed by skyrocketing rents; at the end of that, three million Australians also have a giant student debt that, in many cases, is increasing faster than they can afford to pay it off.

This is a student debt incurred for what? It's for doing what we are told these days you basically need to get to get most jobs or an increasing number of jobs in the Australian economy, which is a university degree. We just had Labor members previously speak about the fact that, with a changing and shifting economy, being able to access a university education is crucial to being able to get many of the jobs of the future, and yet now we have a system where, if your parents can afford to pay for your university education, you can avoid that massive student debt but, if you are in the vast majority of people who have to cop a massive debt just to get it, it then sticks with you potentially for decades, often increasing faster than you can afford to pay it off. We essentially have a two-speed economy where, if you were lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, you can get that start you need to go and live a good life. But, if you're from a middle- or lower-income family, you have to cop an average debt of $24,000 that often increases faster than you can afford to pay it off, be denied access to ever being able to afford to buy a home and be stuck renting in a rental market that sees rents go up by as much as a landlord wants. I think the gall of it all, the thing that frustrates so many people, is how many politicians in this place got to go to university for free, how many politicians in this place got to buy a house for a fraction of what it costs to buy a house today and how many politicians in this place—Labor members in particular—have the power to change that system. They could, for instance, introduce a bill into this place to scrap student debt and bring back free university education. They could phase out the stage 3 tax cuts and spend those hundreds of billions of dollars in building good-quality public homes, providing relief for renters and providing the sorts of things that previous generations, including the Prime Minister's generation, got to enjoy, like free university education and cheap and affordable housing.

The bottom line is that education should not be a debt sentence. In a wealthy country like this, we should be able to provide a free university education to anyone who wants one. Indeed, if you think about it, it is deeply illogical that in a fast-changing economy we put giant debt barriers in front of people who want to retrain. Germany, which has a very successful economy with a very high tech manufacturing base, understand that it needs to provide the opportunity to its population without any barriers to go and retrain. It has enormous flow-on social benefits. The bottom line is thinking about the benefits to those individuals. How many people, if we were to wipe student debt right now, would get that little bit of extra money and maybe that slightly bigger home loan to go and buy a house? How many more wouldn't have to choose between feeding their kids and paying the rent? How many more, come tax time, wouldn't be lumped with that extra $500 or $1,000 to pay off from their student debt, which ends up rising faster than they can pay it off anyway? What could that money be spent on?

We're an enormously wealthy country with an abundance of resources, and the fundamental question for us in this place is: how do we distribute those resources? How do we spend them in a way that maximises them and ensures that the greatest number of people get the things that they need to go on and live a good life? It's hard to think of something more grossly unfair, and more representative of how rigged our political and economic system is against the vast majority of people, than student debt. They have to pay for something that so many politicians in this place got for free. For so many today, student debt means tens of thousands of dollars of debt that is almost impossible to pay off. It makes it harder to buy a home, harder to make ends meet and harder at the supermarket, and it makes their lives and the lives of future generations harder. I couldn't think of anything more grossly unfair than student debt and the price of a university education.

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