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

I thank the magnificent member for Melbourne for her question. There are 35,000 people in the electorate of Melbourne who are particular happy this afternoon, because we have just voted to cut their student debt by 20 per cent. As I said yesterday, young people don't always see something for them on the ballot paper, but they did this year and they voted for it in their millions. On 3 May, Australia voted to cut student debt by 20 per cent, and, today, so did we. We promised that this would be the first bill that we introduced into this new parliament, and, last week, we did that. About an hour and a half ago, we passed that legislation through this House, and now it heads to the Senate. As the Prime Minister just said, this will help three million Australians. A lot of those are young Australians just out of TAFE, just out of university, maybe just out of home—certainly just getting started. They're teachers, nurses, tradies, doctors, paramedics, midwives, vets, social workers, engineers, architects, IT workers and lots more. The average HECS debt today is about 27 grand. What that means is that, when this legislation passes, it will cut their debt by about 5½ grand. If you've got a debt today of 50 grand—and there are lots of people in that boat—it will cut your debt by $10,000. That's a big deal.

And it's not the only thing that this legislation does. It also makes structural changes to the way the repayment system works to make it fairer and to help Australians with the cost of living. It lifts the minimum amount that you have to earn before you start repaying your student debt from $54,000 to $67,000, so you start paying off your uni degree when uni starts to pay off for you. It also reduces the minimum amount that you have to repay every year. If you earn 70 grand a year, it will reduce the amount that you repay every year by $1,300. That's real cost-of-living help. It means more money in your pocket, not the government's, when you need it. It's something that Bruce Chapman, the architect of HECS, has described as the most important thing that's happened to the system in 35 years.

This is all happening because of this prime minister, because in November last year he promised to cut student debt by 20 per cent and because, on 3 May, Australians voted for this in their millions. Today, because of what we have just done here, we are one step closer to making this a reality.

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