Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Student HELP debt hangs over entire generations, adding more financial stress to people already struggling through the cost-of-living crisis. If the government can afford the $254 billion stage 3 tax cuts and to spend $368 billion on nuclear submarines, why can't we afford to wipe student debt?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for his question. We understand that students and young Australians are under pressure at a time when we've got inflation which is higher than we'd like and will hang around for longer than we'd like. Our job is to try and strike the right balance between the most responsible budget possible and doing what we can to ease the pressures on people.

We've got a system, as the honourable member knows and all honourable members here know, where people repay their student debt when they reach a certain income level; they pay a portion of their university costs. We think that that is a good system because it means people don't start to repay that debt until they're beginning to earn what is approaching a decent wage. Obviously we are aware that in the last few weeks there have been stories about the pressures on students in particular, reports about students and former students under pressure. We take that very seriously. When it comes to the broader pressures on the budget, we've been upfront about those as well. We need to manage those carefully in the context of high inflation—which is impacting disproportionately, including on the people on whose behalf he asks that question.

One of the other things which is really important is to make sure that we are building more social and affordable housing for people. That's why it is so disappointing that, when the Greens were given the opportunity to vote in this place for more social and affordable housing, they scurried for the door. They ran for the door. That was disappointing because you would have thought that, for a party that talks so much about younger people and about affordable housing, the least they could have done is support the minister's efforts to put in place this $10 billion fund to build more social and affordable homes for people. That's so we can get the supply up, so we can build more homes and so we can begin to take some of the pressure off people. So it was disappointing.

On the specifics of the question about pressures on students and former students in particular, I think I've answered those. The least the Greens could do, when the government puts forward a sensible, important policy to make life a bit easier for those people, is to vote for it.