Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks very much, Senator Hanson. You talked about people who don't go to university in your question, and also people who do, and how this affects them. I want to be really clear that this bill applies to people who have loans that they have accrued through vocational education and training as well as through their apprenticeship loans. It's really important that those Australians also get the 20 per cent cut on their VET course debt and on their apprenticeship debt. We are also extending free TAFE to hundreds of thousands of Australians and benefiting hundreds of thousands of people through both of those measures.

The government is providing considerable cost-of-living relief that goes to all Australians on a range of measures and in a range of ways. In terms of how the repayment methods that we are introducing help people, in addition to cutting $16 billion of debt, 20 per cent debt relief for three million Australians, we are raising the minimum repayment threshold to $67,000 a year. That means people get to earn more before they have to start dealing with their debt. When they do reach that threshold, their HECS debt repayments will only be calculated on the proportion of their income that is above that threshold, and that is going to give people quite a significant saving. For example, someone earning a few thousand dollars above the threshold—say, $70,000—will have their compulsory repayments reduced by $1,300 a year down to just $450 a year, which is a really huge benefit to those people. Of course, the term 'compulsory repayments' is really important. People can make voluntary repayments to reduce their debt at any time they would like to. Again, this is really significant reform—20 per cent off HECS, $16 billion wiped in addition to the $3 billion wiped in the previous parliament, helping three million Australians.