Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the member for Newcastle's motion to recognise International Women's Day, noting that its theme in 2024 is Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress. In doing so, I acknowledge several recent pieces of legislation which have addressed gender inequity in this country. These bills have lowered the cost of child care, invested in women's safety, improved pay and conditions in feminised industries, increased paid parental leave and, most recently, added a 12 per cent superannuation contribution to PPL for the first time. Along with my independent colleagues, I've been pushing the government to act on gender equity in this country. We have all been extremely supportive of this legislative program. However, the residual gender pay gap of 12 per cent is still 12 per cent too much. We have to continue to work to place men and women in this country on an equal economic and social footing.

Around the same time that the HECS student loan program was introduced, in 1989, several traditionally feminised professions, like teaching and nursing, were absorbed into the university system and immediately became much more expensive to study. Furthermore, degrees like teaching, nursing and social work often require hundreds of hours of unpaid work placements to complete. In contrast, male dominated trade apprenticeships, which remain in the vocational education and training system, are paid. In fact, they often attract government subsidies and even fee-free places.

Thirty-five years on, more and more Australians have a HECS debt which they are struggling to pay off. Those challenges are greater for women. While the average male HECS debt is higher than the average female HECS debt, most men earn higher incomes as soon as they graduate and repay their HECS debts much more quickly than women. To make things more difficult, in 2019 the Morrison government lowered the salary threshold at which compulsory HELP repayments kick in. Sixty-four per cent of those newly required to pay their HECS debts were women, and because repayments are calculated as a percentage of total income, not as a percentage of income above the threshold, those HECS repayments increase significantly even with small increases in income. The challenge is then exacerbated by the loss of supports like the family tax benefit at around the same time as the higher tax rates, HECS repayments and the Medicare levy kick in. That's not to mention that APRA now recommends that HECS debts be taken into account when assessing suitability for car and home loans. How this ends up is that, of those with student debts, 60 per cent are women, and women hold 58 per cent of the total debt. Teachers and nurses, both female dominated professions, carry the biggest repayment burden of any group in our society. Women generally have lower paying jobs. It takes us longer to repay our HECS debt, and our repayment periods are often extended by parental leave periods. The indexation of HECS debts during those extended repayment periods adds insult to injury.

Futurity, an independent finance company, recently reported that more than two thirds of university graduates have HECS debts into their 30s and 51 per cent are still paying off their HECS debt in their 40s. Almost 60 per cent of people report that their debt affects their ability to buy a home, and 16 per cent of young adults say that they are unable to afford medical and dental treatments because of their HECS debt.

The HECS-HELP system is actively exacerbating structural financial inequities in this country. We know what needs doing. Firstly and most urgently, we have to modify how HECS debts are indexed. We have to ensure that HECS repayments are based on the marginal income, like our income tax system, and we have to stop banks from considering them in the same light as other forms of debt. If this government is serious about addressing and remediating gender inequity, it needs to ensure that our tax and education systems don't disadvantage women who are trying to nurture their careers at the same time as they're trying to nurture their families.

See this speech in context