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

I thank my friend the member for Forde for his question—and that handsome mo he's growing there and all the work he's doing to promote Movember! On the weekend, 100,000 Australians had their student debt cut by 20 per cent, and that is just the start, because, this Thursday, 1½ million more Australians will get their student debt cut by 20 per cent. Next week, another 1½ million young Australians will get their student debt cut by 20 per cent. You don't need to do a thing; just wait for the ding, wait for the text message, wait for the email that you will get from the office to tell you that it's done.

This is the biggest cut to student debt in Australian history. The average Australian with a student debt will see it cut by about $5½ thousand. That's a lot of money that's going to help a lot of Australians. We promised it, Australia voted for it and now we're delivering it. And the Liberal Party, remember, are still opposed to it. In fact, they hate it. Today, earlier in parliament, the member for Goldstein described this as one of the most despicable things that he has ever seen a Labor government do. I think I know three million Australians—and their mums and dads, and their grandparents—who might disagree with him.

But it's not the only thing that we're doing. Next year, we'll train more doctors than ever before. Today, the Minister for Health and Ageing and I are announcing more medical places to train more doctors at 10 universities across the country. Next year, more Australians will also start a university degree than ever before. We're funding an extra 9½ thousand places next year and an extra 16,000 places the year after that—and the year after that and the year after that. The number of Australians at uni will jump by 27 per cent over the next 10 years, to help build the sort of workforce that we're going to need: more doctors, more nurses, more teachers, more engineers and lots more. A lot of those young people will be from poor families and from our outer suburbs, from our regions and from the bush. That's what the reforms that we're implementing are all about. It's what the Prime Minister calls opening the 'doors of opportunity' for more Australians, building a country where your chances in life don't depend on how wealthy your parents are, where you grew up, what school you went to or the colour of your skin.

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