Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge that the member for Canberra is a powerful and persistent advocate for students and young people, not just here in the capital but right around our country.

On this side of the House we take the intergenerational issues in our economy very seriously. We know that people are under pressure right around our communities, but often that pressure is felt disproportionately by young people and by people who are carrying a lot of student debt. These are some of the motivations for the changes we made to the tax cuts, to make sure that more young people actually got a tax cut. This is on top of what we're doing on wages, rent assistance and building more homes. We are all about making sure that more Australians, including young Australians, can earn more and keep more of what they earn. That's what our changes to student debt are all about, keeping more now to help with the cost of living and paying less back. We're trying to ease the burden where we can do that in a responsible way.

I want to confess I was a bit surprised when those opposite came out against it. I shouldn't have been, because they've got form when it comes to the cost of living. Every time we've tried to help people doing it tough, those opposite have opposed our efforts. There is always room in Liberal budgets for waste and rorts, but never room to help people who are doing it tough. This goes to a big defining difference here in this parliament. We want to slash inflation and student debt. They want to slash Medicare and funding for housing in our communities.

When in government, they gave us much more public debt and now, in opposition, they want much more student debt for people to contend with. On their watch, gross debt more than tripled. Even before COVID, it had more than doubled. We've been doing what we can to clean up the mess that we inherited by banking revenue, finding savings, delivering two surpluses for the first time in almost two decades—$172 billion turnaround in two years, $150 billion less debt and $80 billion less interest on that debt. That's because responsible economic management is not anathema to helping people doing it tough, it's central to it. It's about making room for the things that really matter in our economy and in our society.

This side of the House under this Prime Minister has found a way to repair the budget and deliver cost-of-living relief. Those opposite found excuses to do neither of those things. They want students to pay more debt. They want people doing it tough because they think it will serve their political purposes. That's why the opposition leader's reckless arrogance poses such a risk and comes at such a cost to Australians who are doing it tough, and especially young people in this instance.

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