Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my first speech, I spoke about the importance of higher education. I'm going to quote from myself here, which I don't do often. I said at the time:

If we can get this right, there is a kingdom that awaits us all, one made up of highly skilled and fulfilling jobs, an economy that is productive and makes the most of our talents and where imagination is valued.

I quote myself because I want all members to know how importantly I value higher education. Sadly, the Job-ready Graduates scheme has failed to do all of those things. It was introduced by the previous Morrison government and it didn't do the things that they promised it would do. It didn't improve job outcomes like they promised. It didn't boost enrolments in priority areas like they promised. It didn't deliver value for students like they promised. I agree with many of the points that the member for Clark has made.

But we have to be upfront about the challenges that faced this government when we came in in 2022. The higher education sector, under the leadership of the former Morrison government, had been treated with utter contempt. They didn't just neglect it; they undermined it, they underfunded it and they undervalued it.

But we're not standing idly by. We're rebuilding the higher education sector. We promised to fix the system and now we're delivering. We're taking bold, practical steps that will ease the burden on students and graduates. We made a promise to the Australian people to wipe 20 per cent off all student debt. Australians overwhelmingly voted for it, and now we're delivering on that. It was the first piece of legislation that we introduced when we came into this parliament, and, backdated to June this year, we're delivering $16 billion in student debt relief for more than three million Australians. And we're delivering a fairer repayment system. From this financial year, students and graduates won't start repaying their loans until they earn around $67,000 a year. That's more time to build your career, to get established, before you have to start making these repayments.

We've already delivered a fix to the broken HECS indexation system so that there's no more student debt growing faster than your wages. It's a structural fix that protects students now and into the future. This isn't just policy; it's progress. They're not just promises; it's delivery. When Labor says, 'We'll back you; we'll deliver for students,' we'll make it happen. But we're not just delivering change; we're making the system fairer—fairer for 70,000 students a year receiving a Commonwealth prac placement who would have had to give up paid work to complete mandatory placements in essential care professions such as teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work. No-one should have to choose between finishing their degree and paying their bills.

We're making it fairer for students in FEE-FREE Uni Ready courses who need a stepping stone to get into university. We're giving thousands of Australians the foundational skills and confidence they need to succeed at university. We're making it fairer for students in disadvantaged, regional and outer suburban areas studying in our new university study hubs, where access to higher education has been out of reach for far too long—because where you live should never determine whether you can go to uni. That is what a fairer system looks like. But reforming a system as complex as higher education, a system that has been neglected for more than a decade, takes time. As the Minister for Education has said, the Universities Accord isn't just about one or two budgets or short-term fixes; it's about delivering a sustainable tertiary education system that works for students and for our country. So we're working with universities, students and communities across Australia to build a system that's responsive, inclusive and future focused. And, yes, we should work through the accord's recommendations, and we're doing that the right way—systematically, sustainably, with students at the very centre of it.

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