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

I thank the cracking member for Corangamite for her question. On the weekend the Prime Minister announced that, if we win the next election, the first piece of legislation that we'll introduce will cut all student debts by 20 per cent. If you're somebody who today is earning about $75,000 a year, with an average student debt of about 27 grand, this is what it means for you. It means we're going to cut your debt by more than $5,000, and we're going to cut the amount of repayments you have to make every year by more than $1,000.

I spoke to some uni students yesterday about what this really means for them. This is what Sam said: 'This makes a big difference to how quickly I pay it off. But also not having to pay as much week in, week out—it's going to really make a difference when I'm trying to get on my feet straight out of uni.' This is what Giorgia said: 'When I want to buy a house, having the amount of money that I'm going to have taken off by 20 per cent is going to be huge.' And this is what Adam said: 'It's going to make me able to buy a house sooner and to do all of the things I want to do.' That's what it means for so many young Australians right across the country. The Liberal Party want them to burn through their superannuation to buy a house. They want them to have to cut into their retirement savings. We want to cut their debt.

Remember, Mr Speaker, when most of us were at university back in the last century, university was a lot cheaper than it is today. Even in the early 2000s, it was cheaper. Back then, students contributed on average about 30 per cent to the cost of a degree. Now students contribute more than 40 per cent, and this fixes this for a generation of Australians who got a uni degree in the last decade or so—three million Australians. That includes 18,000 people in the electorate of Corangamite, 20,000 in the member for Lindsay's electorate, 20,000 in the electorate of Deakin, 20,000 in the member for Bradfield's electorate, 22,000 in the electorate of Blair, 23,000 in Fadden, more than 23,000 in the electorate of Chifley and more than 26,000 in Werriwa. They all now know that, if Labor wins, they win, and, if the Liberals win, they won't.

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