Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my friend the legendary member for Lyons for his question. We're wiping $3 billion of student debt for more than three million Australians. The legislation to do that is in the House right now and will be debated this afternoon.

The big hike in student debt that happened last year hit a lot of Australians hard—a lot of young Australians in particular. They made their voices heard and we have heard them. It's why I asked the Australian Universities Accord team to look at this last year. They recommended that we change the current system and set indexation of student debt at either inflation or wages—whichever is the lowest. The legislation that's in the House does that, and it goes further than that. It backdates this to June last year, which means that it'll wipe out what happened last year and make sure that it never happens again. This will happen once the bill is passed by this parliament.

After that happens, the ATO will automatically apply this to your student loan. It means that, for someone with a student debt of, say, $26,000, their debt will be cut by about $1,200. For someone with a HECS debt of, say, $45,000, their debt will be cut by about $2,000. It's an important reform to make HECS fairer, and it's just one of the things that we're doing to make our education system better and fairer.

We're also introducing, for the first time, paid prac for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students, to provide them with a bit of cost-of-living support while they do the practical part of their degree. We're also massively expanding the fee-free university ready courses that help young Australians get the skills they need to take on a uni degree. We're also introducing an independent, national student ombudsman to give university students a stronger voice when the worst happens and to make sure their universities are held accountable. All of this is in the parliament right now.

Also in the parliament is legislation to deliver a 15 per cent pay rise to our early educators—people who do some of the most important work in this country. Tomorrow, I will introduce legislation to increase funding for our public schools and to tie that funding to real, practical reform to turn around the drop in the number of students finishing high school. For about 10 years the Liberal Party neglected education. Worse than that, they ripped the guts out of it. This is about fixing that. That's what these reforms are all about.

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