David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this very important bill, the Education Legislation Amendment (Overseas Debt Recovery) Bill 2015. University degrees and tertiary qualifications are a key to a much better life. All of us in this chamber have had some tertiary education, whether it is in the school of hard knocks, a sandstone university, a TAFE college or on-the-job training. We have all benefited from tertiary education. In Australia we are blessed with a very generous scheme to facilitate that. The HELP scheme, whether it is in the form of the HECS debt, the VET FEE-HELP, the OS-HELP, the SA-HELP or any of the other schemes, is very generous. It is provided by the taxpayers of Australia to young or middle-aged Australians who want to better themselves and add value to our nation. But we do have a demand driven system that has increased the number of graduates by half a million.

When I went to university, the number of university places was capped, and our generation benefited from the government funding 100 per cent of the costs of a university degree. But that meant the number of students able to attend was vastly smaller than now.

As well as the expansion in the number of places, the loan system has allowed more people to attend university by getting up-front help from the government. But being allowed to repay their Higher Education Contribution Scheme debt at a deferred time, when they are earning money, has had consequences for the taxpayers of this country. It has been very generous. However, due to a lack of will and sometimes because we have let it slide, as a nation we have now accumulated a debt of just over $30 billion. That estimate of what has been lost by not claiming back the various HELP debts is not a small number—it is a huge number—and the initiative behind this legislation is to recover some of that debt.

Until the legislation is passed, former students with such loans who are overseas at the moment have no legal obligation to declare or repay their debts whilst they are overseas. In fact, some of them have gone overseas for their careers and never paid anything back. So, on behalf of the Australian taxpayer, we really need to put in place a system where that money will be recovered.

This legislation means that, between now and 2018-19, at least $25 million a year will be recovered. It may be more. That is $150 million over 10 years. It is estimated that since 1989, when HECS was first introduced, $800 million has been lost to the Australian taxpayer. So we really do need to get on top of this issue.

Travel and Australians are synonymous. We are great explorers. We come from down under but we go everywhere around the world. I do not know of any nation that has had as many young people—including now mature-age, middle-aged and senior people—travel the world. I think it comes from the fact that it takes so long to get over there that, when you get there, you travel extensively. It is a rite of passage for young people, whether it is in their gap year before university or, in my case, in our generation, after finishing university or your trade and other certificates. We want that to continue, but we cannot afford to have this huge accumulation of debt just sitting there without a system in place to recover it.

I will say a few words about the technical nature of the legislation. This legislation means that five schedules of previous acts will be amended, including the Higher Education Support Act and the Trade Support Loans Act. The amendment of the Higher Education Support Act will allow the Department of Education and Training to get tax file numbers from the tax office. Overseas, similar systems will be in place. The amendment of the Taxation Administration Act will allow officials to give taxpayer contact and income information to foreign countries or parts of foreign countries, and this will be quid pro quo. It will work with the United Kingdom and with New Zealand. This legislation amends those acts to allow our tax office to give information to those countries. It also amends the Income Tax Assessment Acts of 1936 and 1997 so that HELP debts and trade support loan debts are not allowable tax deductions. Those are the amendments that will be put in place.

As I said, we as a nation have benefited from thousands—in fact, millions—of our citizens who have travelled the world. They have learnt from overseas cultures, set up contacts, had business experience, done further higher learning and broadened their minds through travelling. There are all sorts of benefits, and I do not want those to stop. Australia soaks up so many initiatives from overseas. We pick up all sorts of new technologies and we apply them more quickly than most other nations. The spheres of education, business, economics, engineering, architecture and the humanities all benefit from overseas experience. But this bill is morally justifiable. It is not hard for people to start paying back their debt once they are earning over $50,000, a good income. We make the citizens that stay here and work and do not travel do that, so we should apply that to those who are overseas, particularly since I know that some of my younger colleagues went from university and used their Australian qualifications to get jobs in New York and in London, in the markets, in the city, on Wall Street. They can certainly cope with repaying their debts. But, if we do not have a system in place, it will not work.

We know from the UK experience that this works quite well. They have had trials with Sweden and the Netherlands, and they get 75 per cent of people paying back their debts voluntarily once they are registered. As I said, this agreement starts off working with the UK and New Zealand, but over time we hopefully will expand it to other countries where Australians with HECS debts work.

I think anyone who argues against this bill does not have the Australian taxpayer in mind. It is pretty straightforward. It is pretty transparent. We need to address this $30 billion worth of accumulated debt. We are very generous as a nation, and I want that to continue. But the issue at hand is very pressing because we have a trajectory of debt that will reach $660 million if we do not address this. We have addressed the debt trajectory that the nation faces; we have halved it. There is no plan from the other side. This is our initial manoeuvre to recover a huge HECS debt, loans that Australians have benefited from, and no-one should object to this bill. I commend the bill to the House.

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