Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Chelsea, a teaching student, wrote to me last year about unpaid placements.

There is a level of malpractice with not paying someone who is working within health care or teaching.

As a student renting and experiencing rent raises, I was forced to retreat to food banks multiple times just to feed myself.

There is something degrading about this experience of not being paid. It impacts your mental and physical health, leaving friends of mine burnt out before even commencing jobs within their profession.

Chelsea, of course, refers to the corrosive effects of poverty, particularly placement poverty.

Well, Chelsea, paid pracs for nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work students are on their way. Paying close to $320 per week, paid pracs will benefit 68,000 uni students and over 5,000 VET students each year and will go some way to helping these students complete—and 'complete' is the key.

We have enacted recommendations of the Australian Universities Accord report, a rigorous review designed to ensure that our universities are fit for purpose, competitive and student-centred. We are wiping $3 billion off student debt for three million students, and we are pegging HECS indexation to wage growth or CPI, whichever is lower, and then backdating it to 1 June 2023. We want to avoid that inflationary spike we encountered. For someone with an average HECS debt of about $26,500, this means their debt will be cut by around $1,200. First introduced in 1989, HECS has helped more people attend university, but it has also changed the mix of people who attend university, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

While free university sounds great, it came with a trade-off. It was nowhere near as inclusive as the user-pays system that we currently have. The caveat is: if you aren't certain about university, don't dabble, because debt is a risk. Instead, consider alternatives like TAFE, which is now embraced by over 500,000 Australians. We are creating a new student ombudsman, a watchdog in the students' corner. Why? We're doing it for so many reasons, more than I can mention—racism; antisemitism; sexual assault, which affects one in 20 students; and sexual harassment, which affects one in six students.

Finally, who can forget the breadlines outside food pantries during the early days of the pandemic? They were dominated by young people, international students and domestic students. This is partly a legacy of a previous Liberal government that gutted student unions. We are mandating that higher education providers allocate at least 40 per cent of student services and amenities fees to student led organisations. We want to strengthen these organisations in the best interests of students so that they can have a positive experience in universities.

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