Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) | Hansard source

It's the Albanese government that is delivering some of the greatest savings to university students and graduates that we've seen in decades from any government in Australia. It is our policy that students in higher education should make a contribution towards the cost of their education in recognition of the significant benefits that they typically gain from that sort of higher education.

But I might borrow from my good friend Senator Farrell, from his answer to another question that you asked this week, Senator Payman, and point out that the platform that you were elected on, as a then Labor Party candidate for the Senate, was one that supported the notion that students should make contributions towards their education. But I'm pleased to say that in the time since then, since you decided to no longer be a member of the Labor Party, the Labor Party's platform has actually improved for students and for graduates of higher education to a point where we have now, in last couple of weeks, agreed and committed to reducing HELP debts, whether they be university or TAFE graduate debts, by 20 per cent. So there has actually been an improvement to our platform compared to the one that you stood on as a candidate for the Labor Party at the last federal election.

We've also made changes in that time to reduce the indexation for students' debts in recognition that inflation has been rising in a very big way and that students' debts should not be escalating to the same degree. So I'm very pleased that this government has made decisions to support students better than it had done at the time of the last election, or at any other time before—and we'll continue to support students in that way. (Time expired)