Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As the senator would know and as colleagues would know, last year the Prime Minister came to South Australia, to the electorate of Sturt, and announced that a re-elected Labor government would cut student debts by 20 per cent. We promised that this would be the first thing we would do when we were back in parliament, and that is exactly what this team has done. That's exactly what we have done, because we understand that getting an education shouldn't mean a lifetime of debt. Three million Australians are getting a 20 per cent cut to student debt, and millions more will benefit from our changes to the repayment threshold so that Australians can earn more before they start paying off their debt. This is on top of our policy last term to cap indexation.

Whilst we are cutting student debt, what are they doing? When this vote came on in the chamber, they were so divided they couldn't even bring themselves to vote. They couldn't even—