Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When you think about the great leveller in this country that allows people to have social mobility and allows migrants the ability to change the destination and the journey of generations, it is education. It gives people the ability to create skills and qualifications, to learn and to finish their studies with the opportunities of making a better life for them and their family.

We know that the HECS system has meant, over time, that thousands more Australians have been able to go to university. My parents' generation went to university for free, but the HECS generation—my generation and the generations that follow—are part of a generation that has a pact with each and everyone of us that says: 'We will contribute to education because it will mean more of us can go and get an education. It will mean the HECS system that we are all buying into enables more people from right around the country, regardless of where we come from, to access high-quality Australian education, whether it be at our universities, our TAFEs, as apprentices or any of the other incredible higher education services and institutions that we have in this country.'

But we also know that the balance, over time, has meant that people are leaving university with higher debt. They are leaving university with debt that has meant that it's having an impact on how they can borrow, it's having an impact on how much they have to pay each and every pay cycle. It's a debt that is having a real impact on the lives and the journeys of Australian students and young people.

That's what this bill, the Universities Accord (Cutting Student Debt by 20 Per Cent) Bill 2025, addresses. Cutting 20 per cent off student HECS debt is something that we took to the election. We said we were going to do it. I remember the countless stories of young people lining up, going in to vote. I asked them a simple question: 'What matters to you? What do you care about?' Often the response was, 'Well, you know, I'm a student' or 'I just finished university.' I said, 'Have you heard about our 20 per cent off HECS?' And they said, 'Yes; actually that's one of the things I'm weighing up right now.'

There was an amazing moment I shared with a lot of students and former students: 'If you give us this opportunity, we'll get this done for you.' I'm extremely proud to be standing here in this place keeping up our end of the deal, because so many of those young people and so many people who have a HECS debt gave us this opportunity. They said that they needed a bit of help, they needed some meaningful change, and that is what this bill is all about.

It does not wipe every part of student debt. What it says is actually there is a meaningful amount of student debt that we're going to take off, as well as how those repayment systems are calculated so that at each and every pay cycle, you're going to pay a little bit less than you otherwise were before.

This builds on the reforms we made to HECS which changed the indexation system. Traditionally HECS was set up in a way that meant we were always calculating the HECS repayment system with the lowest interest loan available; but with the high inflation that presented itself to Australians recently it meant the indexation on HECS was extremely high and students were accumulating more and more debt. We fixed that. We also wiped off the differentiation between the higher repayments verse the recalculated repayments.

This bill takes it a significant step further. This bill says that if you have a HECS debt of $27,600, which is the average HECS debt, you're going to have $5,520 wiped off that debt. That is a meaningful amount for that person with the average amount of HECS debt. It isn't just for university debts. It also includes debts from TAFE courses and apprenticeship loans.

In my community of Macnamara, we have a real commitment and passion for education. We have a very high number of people who go to university and we also have a very high number of people who have higher educational qualifications from other institutions, especially from our incredible TAFEs in Melbourne, which give people these amazing skills. We know there is no substitute for learning on the job, and some of the closest people in my life have started their careers as apprentices and have gone on to do amazing things in construction and in other parts of our community. I know that they have worked extremely hard to get where they are and that being an apprentice meant they were able to start their journey.

To the 26,948 people who live in Macnamara who have a HECS debt: this bill is for you. This is the bill we committed to at the election, and this is the bill we said we were going to deliver for you. I just want to say that I am so grateful to everyone who gave us the opportunity to implement this policy. I know there are young people who have a whole range of competing interests in their lives and there are a whole range of issues that confront them. But I think the last election was about the simple things that were going to create meaningful change for people in my community and communities right around the country. Ultimately, that's what the election was about: those practical things that people knew were going to make a difference in their lives.

Being representatives in this place is a huge honour, and I know each and every one of us feels that. But to be able to repay the awesome gift of being in this place and representing our communities by making meaningful policies such as this is something I'm incredibly proud of. It's one of the reasons to get up in the morning: to be a part of this team and to work extremely hard for the communities we are privileged to represent.

There are a few changes in this bill, as I said. It's about reducing the overall amount of HECS debt. It's about changing the repayment system so people are paying less in each and every pay cycle and can keep more. It is also part of our broader reform package to HECS to make it fairer, to make sure students aren't penalised and to make sure more Australians can access world-class education. That's because, ultimately, pathways to education mean pathways to prosperity. They mean having social mobility.

This wonderful country that we are all part of is a country of opportunity, and that is something I'm incredibly proud of. It changed my family's life and trajectory. That is why I'm so proud to support this bill, and I commend it to the House.

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