Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "reading" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) students are being shackled by a lifetime of debt which is making the cost of living crisis worse, locking people out of the housing market, causing people to delay having families and crushing dreams of going to university;

(b) the Government's plan to provide student debt relief will still see student debts rise by 11.5 per cent in their first term and arts degrees costing over $50,000;

(c) the student debt system cannot be fixed because student debt should not exist and higher education, like education at every level, is an essential public good that should be free, universal and provided by the government;

(d) mandatory unpaid placements are causing students to forego paid work, choose between groceries, rent and medicine, drop out of universities and are taking an immense toll on students' health; and

(e) students experiencing placement poverty need urgent relief and should be paid for every hour of work they are required to do as part of their degree, at least at minimum wage, not a lesser supplementary amount; and

(2) calls on the Government to wipe all student debt, make university and TAFE free, and pay all students doing mandatory placements at no less than minimum wage rates".

My electorate of Brisbane has one of the youngest populations in the entire country. We are home to many, many university campuses, including very large university campuses, with thousands of students and countless young people starting out in the world post graduation. At the same time, though, we are a community with over $1 billion of student debt.

Student debt is making the cost-of-living crisis worse and is damaging our economy, in the now and over the long term. As the cost of going to university creeps higher and higher, people are concerned about their futures. Many constituents have told me that the soaring costs of going to university are making them question whether or not they should continue at uni, with some just writing it off as an option altogether. Education should be free at the point of use. It should be the same for early childhood, primary, secondary and higher education, to break cycles of poverty, allow people to pursue their dreams, improve our economy and allow people to specialise their skills or even retrain as our economy changes in the future. Education that is free at the point of use gives people economic freedom and social mobility. We need to make uni free again, and we need to wipe all student debt.

The bill before us today seeks to do a few things—namely, to tweak and amend the HECS debt system. It retrospectively ties the student debt indexation rate to the lower of either the CPI—the consumer price index—or the WPI, the wage price index, and provides an indexation credit to reduce the 2023 and 2024 student debt indexation rates from 7.1 per cent to 3.2 per cent and from 4.7 per cent to four per cent, respectively. In short, someone who has an average student debt of $26½ thousand will see a reduction of around $1,200 in their outstanding student debt as a result of these changes.

But setting indexation to the lower of the CPI or the WPI is akin to arranging deckchairs on the Titanic. The WPI is usually higher than the CPI, so this change will make little difference. In fact, in the last 25 years the WPI has been lower than CPI indexation only four times, including in 2022 and 2023. Big student debt indexation hikes can still happen. Student debts will keep going up. In fact, even after these changes, student debt will have risen by over 10 per cent in Labor's first term in government. We keep hearing that Labor is wiping $3 billion of student debt, but when you put that up against the $78 billion of student debt in this country it really is just a drop in the ocean.

Making university free once again and wiping student debt would forever change this country for the better. It would send a signal that we value education as a public good that everyone should have equal access to, regardless of their financial standing. It would make us a more prosperous country. Universities Australia recently noted that university educated workers make our economy $185 billion bigger and underpin a higher standard of living for all Australians.

Free university courses would boost our economy, reduce economic inequality and give countless more people the opportunity to follow their passions. We wouldn't even be trying something new. University used to be free in this country, and it still is free in numerous countries around the world: France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark—the list goes on and on. But right now we see university courses becoming more and more expensive. Student debt is growing larger and larger each year, and next year punitive fee hikes that were ushered in by the Morrison government—which Labor is refusing to change in this bill, I'll add, despite the recommendation on the Universities Accord panel—will kick in, and some degrees will cost more than $50,000. Allowing Australia to continue down this path is bad for the economy and it is bad for our society. We keep hearing that a university degree today is what a high school certificate was 30 years ago. If that is the case, we have to act like it. We need to make university free and wipe all student debt.

This bill also allows for grants to be paid to higher education providers for the new Commonwealth placement payment. This payment is $319.50 per week for eligible teaching, nursing and social work students—$319.50 a week. Students are expected to be studying full time while doing placements up to full time while also paying for groceries, ever-increasing rent and all their other bills. It is impossible. I want to share the story of my sister, Emily, who had to go through unpaid placement through her time studying to be a midwife. In her first few years of studying nursing and midwifery she had to complete two eight-hour days of placement, one eight-hour day of uni lectures and one eight-hour day of tutorials, totalling 32 hours of unpaid university-required learning and placement. This left her with the ability to work one shift per week at her job so that she also had enough time to study and complete assignments so that she could pass the course.

Her final year of study saw her doing 32 hours of unpaid placement a week, including night shifts. On top of this were the continuity-of-care shifts, where students were required to follow expectant parents through their antenatal visits, births and postnatal visits. Emily needed to complete 20 of these, regardless of the day and regardless of the time. She was essentially on call 24/7, unpaid. Because of this, Emily did not have time to also work a job that actually paid her. So she couldn't afford a car. She couldn't afford a place to rent in Brisbane without our family helping her. And this was back in 2017. Adding in the current cost-of-living and housing crises, I genuinely do not know how we expect anyone to be able to make this work.

The government's proposal of $319.50 a week is not enough. It is $8 an hour if you are doing a full-time placement. Students experiencing placement poverty need urgent relief. Labor has said this policy will only commence on 1 July next year, so what are people supposed to do in the interim? Every student should be paid for every hour of work that they're required to do as part of their degree, yet the government is excluding so many of them. Students should be paid at least the minimum wage for work on their placement, not a lesser supplementary amount. Wiping $3 billion out of $78 billion of student debt is measly and does not address the systemic issue of charging people to receive an education. Again, $319.50 a week for working a full-time placement is woefully low, and so many students in key fields like medicine and psychology completely miss out.

We need an overhaul of the way we do higher education in this country. We are left playing catch-up to so many economies who already experience the huge benefits of providing free university. But yet again it comes down to a matter of priorities. It is a choice of this government, of both major parties, and the priorities of this place are out of touch with the people out there in the community. There is always money for tax handouts to the megawealthy and there's always money for the fossil fuel industry. That enormous expenditure is never questioned. But when it comes time to fund education, to take a bold and courageous step towards creating a more equal and fair society and fair economy, the message from the major parties is that it's just too expensive. We keep hearing that a university degree, like I said, is now worth what a high school certificate was worth 30 years ago. If that is the case, we need to act like it in this place. We need to make university free once again, and we need to wipe all student debt.

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