Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion because I believe that students deserve a higher education system that's fair, affordable and genuinely accessible. Young Australians are not fools. They know when a policy is genuinely designed to help them and when a policy is designed to help a government's polling and win an election. Unfortunately, the policy this government stands here seeking praise for today falls firmly into that second category. The government's policy on student debt disproportionately benefits those with the biggest debts, regardless of their long-term earning capacity. This means that a lawyer or a doctor who graduated last year receives more relief than a social worker. Higher income postgraduates and those from more advantaged backgrounds can gain the most, while borrowers who worked hard and finally paid off their debt before the end of the financial year receive nothing at all. If you made significant repayments throughout the year, your relative benefit shrinks. That's not fairness. That is an untargeted, inequitable, reverse Robin Hood approach that economists across the board have called out. Economist Ashley Craig described this as 'an exceptionally bad policy which favours the rich, doesn't help with current cost of living and does nothing to encourage higher ed.'

Our HECS system is a national asset. It has enabled millions of Australians, including me, to gain qualifications and skills that are essential to our economy. Its integrity must be safeguarded. But what the government congratulates itself on today is not its safeguarding; it's sandbagging. With this motion, the Prime Minister wants a pat on the back for his temporary solution to a problem that he himself created. And let's be honest about why this measure was even needed. Turbocharged by Labor's poor economic management, indexation would never have grown so high if it weren't for their out-of-control spending, which drove up inflation. This $20 billion debt write-off isn't just money that just disappears. It becomes a cost carried by every Australian to benefit just a fraction. It becomes another line on the national credit card charged to future generations who had no say.

I spoke up when I was first elected to this place and I said that, as a representative of my generation, I feel obliged to speak about where we're at in terms of our national finances and the problems that this government has contributed to in terms of the generational debt that they are leaving. This is exactly an example of that—subsidising all degrees with no consideration of our skill shortages. That's not smart economics; that's desperate politics. And that's exactly what this measure was about, so let's call it out.

In this motion the government claims to be taking action on intergenerational fairness. Can those opposite explain how government spending, which is growing four times faster than the economy while national debt grows by $50,000 every 60 seconds—just on interest—is intergenerational fairness? How can this government even speak of intergenerational fairness while passing this exorbitant bill onto Australians who are not even old enough to vote yet?

Meanwhile, the deeper structural issues remain untouched. Our universities have suffered a 70 per cent fall in global rankings. Graduate employability is declining. PISA results show a long-term deterioration in mathematics, reading and science since the 2000s. The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students grows even wider, even as per student funding rises. Whilst the government subsidise higher education, supporting those most likely to move into higher earning careers, where is their action to strengthen the broader education system and ensure success opportunities for every Australian?

This package is not reform. Let's call it out for what it is: it's a temporary fix for the problems that this government has created and then failed to address. It's a bandaid on a wound that requires surgery.

Young Australians should not be punished for Labor's bad management. Labor's policies are shaped by what looks good on a press release: a cut here, a rebate there. The problem is not solved; it's merely shifted. You don't fix a leak by turning on another tap. Young Australians deserve better than gestures. They deserve genuine reform—reform grounded in fairness, discipline, productivity and responsibility. Labor's policy achieves none of these.

See this speech in context