Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prime Minister, your government's 20 per cent student debt reduction will be welcome by some, but many more will miss out. Last term I introduced my bill, Higher Education Support Amendment (Fair Study and Opportunity) Bill 2024, to reverse the Morrison government's punitive fee hikes for arts students, which saw costs double from around $20,000 to $50,000, hitting students in Fowler the hardest. Your one-off reduction doesn't fix this. Will you support my bill when I reintroduce it or allow this 80 per cent increase to unfairly burden many students?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fowler for her question, and, of course, she wasn't here when the Morrison government made those changes to education, which is what she is talking about. She has been here in the chamber and, I know, supported the reduction in student debt that passed this parliament today and will pass the Senate as well, if it hasn't already. That will benefit 23,000 people in the electorate of Fowler. Twenty-three thousand people will benefit by an average of $5½ thousand each—students who have studied to get a better start in life at university and people either training or retraining through TAFE, making an enormous difference across the board. What's more is that people will benefit from the changes in the thresholds that we have made and the changes to indexation that we have made. The students in her electorate and others will benefit as well from free TAFE that we are making permanent, which has already benefited over half a million Australians, many of whom would have been in the member's electorate.

We will continue to support good government legislation. We have come into this place in the first fortnight and have concentrated on the first introduction being things that make that practical difference to people's lives and that we were re-elected on, whether they be the changes to student debt and that reduction; the changes in the threshold; the changes to how much people have to pay back and when, which will put more dollars in people's pockets; or the support for cheaper medicines that we've also done in this parliament that will benefit so many people in the electorate of Fowler. What we are determined to do, each and every day, is to focus on the issues that people in her electorate and electorates like hers are most concerned about. That is how we make their lives better, how we increase opportunity, how we support aspiration and how we make sure that no-one gets left behind and no-one gets held back.