Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

It is a privilege to introduce the Universities Accord (Cutting Student Debt by 20 Per Cent) Bill.

As promised, this is the very first bill to be introduced to the Parliament after the election.

And as promised, it cuts the student debt of three million Australians by 20 per cent.

On 3 May Australians made their voices heard.

They voted for the tax cuts that we are delivering.

They voted for free TAFE that we are making permanent.

They voted for us to build more homes.

They voted for us to roll out more Medicare urgent care clinics.

They voted for cheaper medicine.

They voted for the biggest investment in Medicare ever, to make it easier to see a doctor for free than ever before.

And they voted for this: cutting the student debt of three million Australians by 20 per cent.

Most of those are young Australians just out of uni, just out of TAFE, just out of home and just getting started.

They're trying to save to buy a home and thinking about starting a family.

They're nurses, teachers, tradies, doctors, paramedics, engineers, architects, IT workers and AI experts.

These are the Australians who will build Australia's future, who are already building it, and this will take a weight off their back.

The average HELP debt today is about $27,600.

When this legislation passes it will cut that debt by about $5,500.

If you have got a debt of $50,000 today it will cut it by $10,000.

All up it will cut student debt by over $16 billion.

When this legislation passes your debt will be cut by 20 per cent, based on what it was on 1 June this year, before this year's indexation occurred.

This will make sure that you get the maximum benefit possible and that we honour our promise in full.

And it will all happen automatically.

The Australia Tax Office will process changes at their end.

You won't have to do a thing.

It'll take a bit of time for the Tax Office to do this work.

But once this bill is passed the cut is guaranteed.

This is a big deal for everyone with a student debt today—three million Australians.

But it's not the only thing this bill does.

It also makes important structural changes to the way the repayment system works to make it fairer and to help with the cost of living.

This bill raises the minimum amount you have to earn before you have to start making repayments from about $54,000 today to $67,000.

And it reduces the minimum repayments you have to make.

For someone earning 70 grand, it will reduce the minimum repayments they have to make by about $1,300 a year.

That's real cost-of-living help—more money in your pocket, not the government's, when you really need it.

This is an important structural reform.

We're replacing the current repayment system with a new marginal repayment system.

At the moment the amount that you pay off every year is based on your entire wage.

That means once you earn above the current minimum repayment threshold of $54,435, you pay a percentage of your entire wage as a repayment.

Under the changes in this bill, you will only pay a percentage of your wage above the minimum repayment threshold.

So, for example, if you earn 70 grand at the moment you currently have to repay $1,750 each year.

Under these changes you'll only have to pay about $450 a year.

In other words, if you earn $70,000 a year, you'll have to repay $1,300 less a year than you currently have to.

If you earn $80,000 a year, you'll have to repay $850 less a year than you currently have to.

And if you earn $110,000 a year, you'll have to repay $700 less a year than you currently have to.

You can still pay off more if you want to.

But what this does is make the system fairer.

It means you start paying off your uni degree when uni starts to pay off for you.

It's a recommendation of the Universities Accord.

And it's a recommendation of the architect of HECS, Professor Bruce Chapman.

When we announced this reform to create a marginal repayment system, Professor Chapman said:

This is the most important thing that's happened to the system in 35 years. It's a marginal collection, it's much gentler and much fairer than previously—we should have done it years ago.

These are important reforms, that will help millions of Australians, now and into the future.

It's why it is the first bill that we have introduced into the new parliament.

As the Prime Minister said when he announced that we would cut student debt by 20 per cent and make these structural changes back in November of last year:

It will help everyone with student debt now and deliver a better deal for students in the year ahead. Permanent structural reform to boost take-home pay for young Australians, putting more money back into pockets. It's good for cost of living, good for intergenerational equity and good for building Australia's future.

Not surprisingly, the coalition immediately said that they would oppose this bill. Like everything else, their immediate reaction was to attack this.

I suspect they now rue that decision.

They called it 'terrible'. They called it 'unfair'.

In the electorates they represented, people saw something different.

In electorates right across the country, where one in four voters have a student debt, they saw an opportunity to get a load off their back to make their life a bit easier.

And they voted for it.

As one anonymous National Party MP told the Daily Telegraph after the election, 'My kids are paying off a university debt and I reckon they voted Labor.'

When even your own family won't vote for you, you know you've got it wrong.

Now the opposition have a chance to get this right, not just by voting for it but by actually speaking in support of it.

This is a chance for the opposition to admit that they got it wrong and that the Australian people got it right.

Education is the most powerful cause for good.

A good education changes lives.

A good education system changes countries.

It's changed ours.

We have got a good education system in Australia today.

But the truth is it can be better and it can be fairer.

This bill is part of that, so is paid prac that started this month for teaching and nursing students, for midwifery students and social work students, so are the university study hubs that will open up in our outer suburbs and in our regions over the next few months, and so is the new needs based funding system for our universities that starts next year.

It's also what the agreements that we've signed with every state and territory to fix the funding of our public schools are all about and tying that funding to real reform to help kids who start behind or fall behind to catch up and keep up, and help more kids finish school and then go on to TAFE or to university.

It also means making our childcare centres safer.

And I'll introduce legislation to help do that in a few moments time.

Once again, it is my privilege to make good on a promise that we made last year and that we repeated every single day of the election campaign in every seat across the country: to cut student debt by 20 per cent, to cut the debt of 3 million Australians, to take a weight off their back, to help with the cost of living and to help build Australia's future.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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