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

I thank my good friend the member for Hughes for his question. On 3 May, Australians voted for tax cuts, they voted for free TAFE, they voted for urgent care clinics, they voted for the biggest investment in Medicare ever and they voted for this—to cut student debt by 20 per cent. And, today, we delivered. This will help 17,000 people in the electorate of Hughes, 22,000 people in the electorate of Barton, 18,000 people in the electorate of Lindsay, 23,000 people in the electorate of Cunningham, 19,000 people in Wright, 20,000 people in Greenway, 15,000 people in New England, 21,000 people in Tangney, 17,000 people in Page, 21,000 people in Fisher and, in the great electorate of Oxley, 24,000 people. All up, that's more than three million Australians. This will save millions of Australians thousands of dollars.

The average HECS debt today is about 27,000 grand. This will cut that debt by about $5,500. A lot of those debts belong to young Australians. Young people don't always see something for them on the ballot paper when there's an election, but they did this year and they voted for it in their millions. For young people just out of TAFE, just out of uni, just out of home and just getting started, this will take a weight off their backs.

Now that the legislation has passed, the tax office can get to work. They've now got the certainty that they need to make this a reality. This is a big piece of work. There are about 50,000 lines of code that they've got to write. This will take a bit of time. But now the bill has passed this 20 per cent cut is locked in and will be backdated to 1 June before indexation happened. We are doing that for a reason—to make sure that we honour in full the promise that we made to the Australian people that we would cut their debt by 20 per cent. You will get a text message when it's done. After today, that 20 per cent cut is guaranteed. That's a great thing for millions of Australians.

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