Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. It was reported today that the Australian Tertiary Education Commission won't advise on the reasonable costs of degrees until mid-2027 at the earliest, which means that the Job-Ready Graduates scheme will continue at least until 2028. Next year, 285,000 students will pay more than $54,000 for arts, law and commerce degrees, and $90,000 for double degrees. How can you justify this when you've acknowledged on many occasions that the Job-Ready Graduates scheme isn't working?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) | Link to this | 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'.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

They said it was vote-buying.

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

You said it was vote buying, did you? Yes—they still don't get it. But it sort of explains why they are over there and we're over here. The other point I'd make—

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Members on my left will cease interjecting.

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

is it's not the only thing we are doing to make our education system better and fairer, because there's also legislation in the parliament at the moment to invest an extra $3½ billion into our system to help more kids get a crack at going to university and, in particular, to help more kids from poor families, from the bush and from the regions to get a crack at going to university—something that the Liberal Party has just said they think is 'socialism'. I actually think it's fairness, and I hope that my friends in the National Party whose kids in their communities will agree, will do what they always do when they think the Liberal Party gets it wrong—that is, roll them and vote for legislation that will help kids from the bush.