Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to acknowledge the generous response by the education minister and express my significant and real gratitude to him for his willingness to negotiate, share and move with the crossbench over the last two years as we've talked about the issues with the tertiary education sector. I would have to say that he's been a good person to work with and that his mother's done well!

But, further to that, could I just make the point that, for those students who have started an arts degree in the last couple of years under the auspices of the Job-Ready Graduates Package, the cost of their degree has effectively doubled. Those young people, who are dealing with extraordinary costs which are not in keeping with the cost of running the course and not in keeping with their earning capacity or expectations subsequent to completing the course, are at this point left without any real hope that this egregious unfairness will be unrolled. The minister has previously been clear in his communications regarding the Job-ready Graduates scheme, and the Universities Accord was similarly clear in its expression of the fact that this is wrong. Those young people right now have no reasonable hope of this excessive debt being unravelled.

I acknowledge the fact that the bill before the House is going to make a huge difference to many Australians. As the minister said, it will unravel $3 billion of debt for three million Australians. But what consolation can we offer to those students who've been given this extraordinary, egregious and unreasonable debt as a result of Job-ready Graduates?

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