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

I thank the member for Kooyong for her question and for her passion in this area of higher education. Like me—like all members of parliament, I think—she understands the power of education to change lives. The truth is that we've got a good education system in Australia, but it can be better and it can be fairer, and that's what the reforms that we're implementing across early education, across school education and across higher education are all about.

Particularly in higher education, we're driven by the recommendations of the universities accord. We've now implemented 36 of the 47 recommendations in the accord in full or in part, and we'll continue to work through that report. As you rightly point out, that makes recommendations about the Job-Ready Graduates scheme. I have said it has failed. I've said work on fixing it is unfinished business, and I have said—and you all know—that the Australian Tertiary Education Commission has also pointed out the work they're doing on the cost of teaching and learning that they will finalise next year.

They are the facts. What is also a fact is that no government has done more to cut student debt than this government and this Prime Minister. We have cut student debt by 20 per cent for three million Australians, and by doing that have taken $16 billion off the backs of young Australians—something, by the way, that the Liberal Party described as 'profoundly unfair'.

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