Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I refer you to the answers I gave to the member for Clark last week as well as to the member for North Sydney yesterday, where I directly answered that question. The fact is that there is a cost to getting a university degree, but there is also a value. The average income of somebody with a university degree today is about a hundred grand, and the average income of somebody whose last year of education was year 12 is 70 grand, so that's a $30,000 difference each and every year. The average amount of HECS debt amongst people who have a HECS debt today is $24,000.

People's repayments today don't change. It's important to make this point. This is not the way HECS works. It's not like a loan from a bank, where when interest rates go up your repayments go up. Repayments don't go up unless your salary goes up.

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