Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of this amendment from the member for Kooyong, and I thank the minister for the engagement on this bill. It is a happy day in this place to be able to make a difference to our young people. I think we are doing that today with this legislation and also with the Universities Accord (National Student Ombudsman) Bill 2024, which is being debated. These are critical changes for young people, who are under immense pressure. They're facing so much uncertainty and instability in the way that they view their future.

The change in the way HECS is calculated from CPI to wage price index, whichever is lower, is a suggestion that I and the others here on the crossbench made to the minister some time ago. The minister is, as the member for North Sydney indicated, very good at listening. So it's appreciated to have those conversations and to say: 'This is happening internationally. This is an alternative way that we could to it.' That makes a material difference to young people who want to study but who may be disincentivised from study because of the cost of education. We're a wealthy country, but we're also a country where, as the Universities Accord has identified, we need our young people to go through further education to skill up for the kind of economy that we need to have going into the future. We don't want to have any disincentives to those young people.

I have two teenagers. My son will be entering the university system next year, as will most of his friends. We don't want them to have to make a decision and, for all of those people who live in electorates that are unlike mine, to have to say, 'I can't do it, because it's too expensive.' We want people to thrive, to hit their straps and to take advantage of the system that we have. So these are good changes.

There is this outstanding issue—and I agree with both the member for Kooyong and the member for North Sydney—that this is still a partly-done job. I appreciate that we can't necessarily fix everything all at once all the time, but there is this issue where, when indexation that is patently unfair occurs, people shouldn't pay a debt that they appear to have when they've actually paid down that debt. I think it's pretty self-evident that it should be calculated based on what they owe, rather than what they potentially owed 12 months earlier.

My other point is that the cost of housing is a fundamental issue for our young people. I spoke at a primary school a couple of weeks ago, and we assessed the issues that the 11-year-old kids in the class thought were paramount to them. One of the top issues was housing. The fact that it's filtering through to kids at that age is really concerning.

That relates to this in the context that banks take into account HECS debt when deciding on mortgages. I think that's a conversation that we need to be having with the banks, be it through legislation or through simple policy negotiations. We need to say to the banks that HECS debt should not be applied in the same way that other kinds of debts are because, again, it disincentivises kids from studying and, if they have chosen to take that leap into studying, they are further disadvantaged when it comes to getting into the housing market.

I thank the minister for his engagement and for the team's work on this.

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