Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Nothing is a greater demonstration, perhaps, of the hypocrisy in this place than when it comes to HECS debt—the fact that so many politicians in this place got to go to university for free, graduate without any student debt and often buy a house for a much smaller fraction of their income than people do now, and then those same politicians in this place turn around and declare that it's okay for students to cop tens of thousands of dollars in HECS and HELP debt, in student debt, and pay tens of thousands of dollars just to go to university, often when they're told that the only way they're going to get a job is by going to university. Nothing is a better demonstration of the rank hypocrisy in this place than both Labor and the Liberals declaring that it's okay to charge students tens of thousands of dollars to go to university and cop massive HECS debts that are barely being changed by this government bill, the Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024.

The idea that this is something to crow and brag about, to make a marginal reduction in the indexation rate for HECS debt—that's still going up, by the way. We know that student debt in this country is $78 billion. The government are crowing about a $3 billion reduction, which will be about a four per cent reduction on student debt, which will then go up next year anyway when it is indexed again because the government have not got rid of indexation; they have just tweaked it—as if rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The consequences are very real for students in this country, because when they graduate, they cop a massive HECS debt. Then, when they have to get a loan from the bank, they are told—

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