Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am thrilled to speak to the Universities Accord (Cutting Student Debt by 20 Per Cent) Bill 2025, which is a bill that will deliver real cost-of-living relief to over three million Australians. At the election, Labor made a promise to cut student debt by 20 per cent. Now, with this bill, we are delivering on that promise. The Prime Minister said that it would be the first bill introduced to the House of Representatives upon returning to parliament. We said that it would be our top priority, and that's what we're doing. While the Liberals and Nationals are yet again standing in the way of real cost-of-living relief for Australians who need it, the Albanese Labor government is turning promises into progress.

For anyone with a student debt, this means you will be thousands of dollars better off. It's a one-off reduction, automatically applied—no forms, no applications, no paperwork, just a lighter debt load for millions of Australians. For Western Australians, some 264,000 of them will save a total of over $1.3 billion—an average saving of $5,500. It's reducing pressure on people when they can least afford it. This bill also, as others have said, raises the repayment threshold, which goes towards reducing that pressure. It means repayments won't kick in until people start earning more. This comes on top of Labor's earlier moves to cap indexation on student loans so they can no longer rise above wages.

We are doing what we said we would do, taking pressure off the cost of living and making the student loan system fairer, because we know that people are doing it tough. Seventy per cent of people repaying a HELP debt are 35 years of age or younger. They're just starting their careers and getting into the housing market. Perhaps they're thinking about starting a family. For many of them, a growing student debt has been a source of stress and anxiety. Labor is fixing the mess that we were left by those opposite. We believe education should be a ladder of opportunity, not a burden that you carry with you for decades. That is why this bill matters.