Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

This is a positive day for our country. This bill is incredibly important, and it is an effort from our government to wipe $3 billion of student debt. Three million Australians right across the country will benefit from this, including 22,264 people in my local community.

This bill will reform our HECS-HELP system to ensure that outstanding student loans never again grow faster than average wages. In doing so, our government is making it easier for young Australians with student debt to prepare for their future, to save for a home deposit, to set themselves and their families up for the best possible future. Our government does understand that at the moment people are feeling cost-of-living pressures. We are determined to support Australians, and we are, through measures like this, reducing student debt through tax cuts for every taxpayer, energy bill relief, cheaper medicines and much more. We also understand that higher education is transformative and that access to it is important not just for individuals but for us as a community and a country as a whole. So, for all of these reasons, this bill is very important.

Through this bill, our government is providing direct cost-of-living relief for students who in the past were facing the impost of having to do prac placements that they weren't paid for. The introduction of a weekly Commonwealth prac payment will support around 68,000 teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students a year to help them complete their university placements. It is absolutely clear to all of us that people in these sectors are essential to keeping our communities going, so our government is backing them in, demonstrating how much we value the contribution they are making as students and also the contributions we know they will make over time to our country.

This support will help students directly where the financial impact of a mandatory prac placement may otherwise mean they have to defer their studies or withdraw altogether due to those increased costs and the reduced capacity to undertake paid work. We've heard about this directly from people who have been affected by this—for example, Elijah, a nursing student who lives out of home. He said that having a paid placement would mean a great deal to him because over the six weeks of the prac he'd still have money coming in, even if he couldn't do his part-time job, and that would help take some of the financial pressure off him during a busy time. Claire, a midwifery student, is also a mum to two young kids. Claire was facing the juggle of 16-hour days between her placements and casual work while also caring for her kids. Claire said the paid prac is going to be life changing for her and an incredible opportunity for her and other mature age students to help make the switch into a degree that they're passionate about.

Teaching, nursing, midwifery, social work—we rely on all these professions as a community and country. Our government is backing in students to undertake this work, to undertake these paid pracs and to make sure that they are getting jobs and getting into the industries that we need them in for the future.

Through this bill, we are also effectively uncapping fee-free uni-ready courses across Australia, which will help more students make the jump to university study and succeed when they get there. We are establishing the Commonwealth grants scheme funding cluster for these courses, which will act as a bridge between school and university to provide foundational skills. We're also supporting students by requiring that higher education providers allocate a minimum of 40 per cent of their student services and amenities fees revenue to student led organisations. This will ensure that students have a significant voice in how their services and amenities fees are spent. I know that that's a development that will be welcome news for students in my local area, including at La Trobe University.

This bill represents a significant step forward in implementing the recommendations of the Universities Accord and building a better and fairer education system. The accord is the largest and the most wide-ranging review of higher education conducted in this country in 15 years. I think it speaks to how this government approaches the challenges that are before us. We do the hard work. We look at what needs to change, and then we get on with it. We do recognise how important it is to be planning for our country's future, ensuring that we're supporting Australians not just for today but for tomorrow. This is the work that will make sure that our tertiary education system is not just fit for purpose now but is actually fit for purpose for the generations to come. I know that will be important to many people in my community, not just to students at the moment but also to those who are thinking about that intergenerational piece and the fairness and the opportunities they want for those to come.

Our government's wiping of $3 billion worth of student debt will be a game changer for so many Australians. I want to highlight that that will include a number of women. This reform will benefit more than 1.8 million women with an outstanding student loan. As of June last year, women represented around 61 per cent of all people with a student debt. They held around 59 per cent of outstanding student debts. Again, this isn't just good on an individual level; it is good for our entire country and good for Australian women.

I know the Commonwealth prac payment in particular will have a very positive impact on gender equality. As I mentioned earlier, this payment is supporting around 68,000 teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students a year to complete their university placements, targeting cohorts of people who can be typically disadvantaged and helping to address these gender-segregated industries. We know that these are workforces that are dominated by women and that women want to work in, and that this payment will make such a difference to them. Female education is concentrated in female-dominated occupations, and these occupations are too often characterised by lower levels of status and earnings. According to 2022 higher education enrolment data, women make up 88 per cent of nursing, 75 per cent of teaching and 85 per cent of social work enrolments. These women training to do this critical work in our community will be receiving direct support through the Commonwealth prac payment. I hope not only that it will support these women but also that we continue to have more men seeing that they can take up roles in these industries and that they can do it without financial disadvantage. I hope we see men pursuing careers in teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work.

I have heard from many people in my community concerned about HECS debt. It comes from young people who are studying at the moment at La Trobe University, which is just over the border in Bundoora; those who are jumping on the train to the University of Melbourne or RMIT; and those heading across the city to Monash. They have all been clear with me that the prospect of student debt is has genuinely made them worry about their future. Since our government made the announcement earlier this year that we would be wiping $3 billion worth of student debt, I've spoken to many students, and I know that this decision is one that comes as a huge relief for them. This reform is not just for current students; it is for those with an existing HECS debt as well. People in my community who have had student debt for several years will also benefit from this debt relief our government is delivering.

More broadly, I know that parents and grandparents have been worried about this issue of HECS debt, and I've had some of them stop me in the street or write to me, telling me that they want to make sure that their kids and their grandkids can set themselves up for the kind of future that they were able to set themselves up for—that intergenerational peace of fairness. I know that they will be relieved to see this, and I want to highlight some of the locals who have contacted me about this, like Paul from research, who sent me an email earlier this year. Paul told me he had never written to a local member before but was compelled to reach out to tell me about his son. Paul's son is undertaking his first year at a university in the city, studying a business degree. Paul told me, 'We're proud of him achieving a solid result after a torrid time in COVID, and getting a placement in the course he wanted. Tempering that result is the absolute horror I now feel about the burden he will face in regard to his HECS debt.' The bill is good news for Paul and his son.

For someone who is at the end of their degree—maybe in business or something else—who in the past would have been looking at a HECS debt of about $60,000, their debt will be cut by $2,700 this year alone. Someone with an average debt of $26,500 will see about $1,200 wiped from their outstanding loan this year. For someone with a debt of $45,000, it will mean that their debt is cut by about $2,000. I know that this will make a real difference to those students. It will make a real difference in how they can approach their studies and also in the certainty with which they can approach their future.

It's not just a one off; it is for this year and for the years to come. Janine from Eltham contacted me in 2023 about the impact of the indexation rate then on her ability to pay her student debt. Janine told me that at that time it meant that she needed to find in excess of $4,000 a year simply to stop her HECS debt growing. Without paying it down, she felt like she would need to do this every year, forever. Janine, I am very pleased to say that our government's changes mean that not only are we cutting your HECS debt but also that we will backdate it to last year. We will wipe out what you were writing to me about last year when that indexation came into place. We will make sure it never happens again by setting HECS at either inflation or wages, whichever is the lowest.

There are others in my community who've contacted me about this. Todd and Sally from Viewbank—who responded to my community survey earlier this year and told me they were concerned about the impact of indexation on their two daughters and their study—Christine from Eltham, Tim from Watsonia North, Wendy from Viewbank, Ian from Heidelberg and Margaret from Rosanna are just some of the locals who have written to me to share their thoughts and who I am very pleased to be able to tell today that our government has listened, that our government recognises how important access to a higher education degree is for them, for their children and for the future of our country, and that we are doing the reform work that will set us up to be able to do that.

As I said, we will be wiping around $3 billion in student debt for more than three million Australians, and that will ease pressure on workers. It will ease pressure on students right across the country. It provides significant relief for students while continuing to protect the integrity and the value of the HELP and other student loan systems, which, again, all the evidence shows us, have massively expanded tertiary access for more Australians. It's a system that is worth protecting and sustaining.

This bill does cap the HELP indexation rate to the lower of either the consumer price index or the wage price index, and it backdates these changes to 1 June 2023. For students, once this legislation passes, individuals will receive a credit to their outstanding student loan debt balance for the difference between the indexation rate under current legislation and the new indexation rate. These changes cover HELP, VET student loans, Australian apprentice support loans and other student loan accounts that existed on 1 June last year. This will benefit all of those Australians with a student loan. It will fix the issues of last year's spike in the CPI indexation rate of 7.1 per cent, and it will prevent future growth in debt from outpacing wages. As I've said, that is not insignificant for an individual with an average HELP debt of $26,500. Around $1,200 will be wiped from their outstanding HELP loan when this legislation passes. This change provides relief for students at the moment while also making sure that we are setting our higher education system up for the future.

Of course, again, we are backing in students who are studying in some of the most important areas for our country. I am particularly pleased to see the prac payments coming into place, recognising that we do need students to be studying nursing, we do need students becoming midwives and we do need students becoming teachers. We need to recognise that there is a burden that has been put on those people. As I've said, many of them are women choosing to take up these professions and facing a really difficult choice as to whether they can make decisions to study, continue to work part time and also care for their children at the same time. I know that, for all of those people, this decision is going to make a huge difference.

It is a good day when we get to set up our higher education system for the future of this country. It is a good day when we get to support students with very real cost-of-living relief. It is a good day when we get to continue to make sure that our country is a fair place into the future and that we are offering the opportunities of higher education, with all that that entails, to Australians now and into the future. I commend this bill to the House.

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