Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that if the Government can legislate its promises on Fee-Free TAFE right now, it can also legislate to wipe student debt; and

(2) calls on the Government to legislate its promise to wipe 20 per cent of student debt and raise the repayment threshold now, not wait for an election".

The Fee-Free TAFE Bill 2024 and the moves that we are seeing to wipe 20 per cent of student debt are welcome and they are a recognition that pressure from the Greens and the community is working. We have been the party of public education, fighting for free TAFE and free university, and it was the Greens that put the massive burden of student debt that people are under on the electoral agenda. At the last election, our push to wipe student debt and to make university and TAFE free was incredibly popular and agreed with, I would suspect, by the majority of people in this country, who understand that, if the Prime Minister was able to go to university for free, so should be everyone else now.

The situation that we have at the moment is that people are finding themselves—after having completed university, for example—with debts that are impacting on their ability to live a full life. It makes it harder to get a home, because you've got debt that gets taken into account when you front up and seek a mortgage—plus you just have less money available. Critically, it's impacting on other areas of people's lives as well, because it has a cascading and flow-on effect. If you're unable to get secure housing, in part because of the massive debt that you've got, it means that decisions about whether you start a family are also affected. And so the situation that we have in this country at the moment is that the massive education debts that people have accrued under the Liberals and Labor are now cruelling their lives. People are denied what they need to live a good life.

Now, we could fix that in this country. We can fix that in this country by making public education genuinely free at all levels, and we've been arguing for that for a very long time. It is a welcome move that the government is taking partial steps towards free TAFE, and that's why we support this bill. It is a welcome move and something that the Greens—and only the Greens—have been calling for for some time. But earlier on in this debate, many of the Labor speakers have said very clearly and very eloquently, 'We've got to get this done and we've got to get this done now because people are under pressure.' The current member for Perth, the minister, said in relation to another bill that was before us—the electoral reform bill that the government's trying to rush through without an inquiry—'No-one in this place is guaranteed being returned after the election. If we've got an opportunity to do something, we've got to seize it. We've got to make the most of it. We've got to enact it.'

Speaker after speaker on this important TAFE bill has said, 'Let's lock this in now,' and we agree. But I ask the government a simple question: If it's good enough to lock in free TAFE now, why isn't it good enough to wipe student debt now? Why is that being held ransom to an election? As the member for Perth said, who knows what the parliament is going it look like afterwards? If we can make TAFE free now before Christmas then we should be able to wipe 20 per cent of student debt before Christmas.

Now, the Greens have put forward a costed plan that would mean we could wipe student debt in full. We could have free education in this country just like the Prime Minister enjoyed, and we could wipe student debt in full. That would go a huge way to making our country more equal and fairer, because it would mean people wouldn't be deterred by the prospect of racking up a huge debt before jumping into tertiary or vocational education.

My dad was the first person in his family to go to university. He went and studied social work, and he was able to do it because university was free. He was able to do something that was unusual in his working-class family, because university was free.

This changes lives. This would change lives if we did it. We can fund this, too, by making big corporations pay their fair share of tax. Madam Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou, did you know that under this government one in three big corporations pays no tax at all? And they're making excessive profits off the back of price gouging and putting up prices at the supermarket check-out and from electricity and power They're price-gouging people and they're making excessive profits, and then one in three of these big corporations pays no tax at all. Make them pay their fair share of tax and you will raise the revenue to do things like making university free, making TAFE free and being able to wipe student debt.

Now, we would like to do all of those things, and they're things that I think the majority of the population would like to do as well. If you can wipe student debt and make university and TAFE genuinely free, then you open up huge opportunities for people and, most critically at the moment, for people who are working their way through tertiary education or who've recently graduated. Under Labor you can end up having a $50,000 debt for an arts degree, because Labor has not reversed the Morrison-era fee hikes for arts. So some people are graduating now, under Labor, with a $50,000 debt for an arts degree. If you wipe that debt, then you give people a chance to live a good life.

In my electorate and right around the country, parents are telling me that things are just very different now to what they were 20 or 30 years ago and they are incredibly worried that their kids are never going to be able to get ahead. They're never going to be able to own a home, not only because of the massive tax breaks for wealthy property investors, which are pushing house prices out of the reach of first home buyers, but also because, if you graduate, you start behind the 8 ball because you've got a big debt that you've got to pay off. That gets in the way of being able to own a home. House prices are out of reach and you never catch up.

We're becoming a society where, while it says all the right things, even if you do everything that is asked of you, a whole generation—a whole class of people—is saying very clearly that they're finding it impossible just to get the basics of life. Parents are telling me that, for their 20- and 30-year-old kids, they know—they can see—that it is very different to the way that it used to be. Wiping debt would give people a very good chance. It would make a material difference right now. For all of those reasons, we would like to see debt wiped fully, but wiping 20 per cent of HECS debt is something that we could do right now, given that, under pressure from the Greens and from the community, Labor has shifted its position.

We welcome that shift, but we don't understand why you're making people wait till after the election. If we can do fee-free TAFE now, why can't we wipe that 20 per cent of student debt now? We've got next week; that's what's left—another day here and then next week. That's it for this year's parliament. All of the rhetoric from the government about how we've got to act on this now and lock it in now and why it's important now applies just as strongly to wiping that 20 per cent of student debt. Mehreen Faruqi, our deputy leader and education spokesperson, and I have written to the Prime Minister offering support to pass that 20 per cent cut now. We haven't heard back, but we've offered support to pass that 20 per cent cut right now.

We've got a week and a bit left, so I'm pleading with the government, saying that, if it's good enough for TAFE, it's good enough for university debts. Let's do it right now. Let's do it next week. The government loves to come in here and talk about bad legislation of theirs that is having trouble getting its way through with the support of the parliament. Mind you, they look ready to do a deal with the coalition and rush through electoral reforms. Like, there's always time to rush through legislation when it's supporting the major parties' interests. They're very happy to do that. Why can you find time to rush through legislation to support the Liberal and Labor parties' interests—the major parties' interests—but you can't find time to pass legislation to cut student debt in this parliament?

So I am again asking the government, through this amendment, to say, yes, let's pass this bill; let's get this TAFE bill done. But let's also pass that 20 per cent cut to student debt now. You have an opportunity to vote for it. We're going to give the government an opportunity in the Senate as well, to vote for it there, because there's legislation there that's dealing with HECS, where the government could actually just pass our amendment and it could be done by Christmas. What a way to end this year—to pass legislation that delivers people not only fee-free TAFE but also the 20 per cent cut to student debt. I hope the government reconsiders, because I haven't heard a good answer yet. I'm sure the next government speaker will talk about how we need to lock this in and lock it in now. Well, if that's right, do it for universities as well.

On TAFE, as I've said, TAFE should be free. It should be fully funded and it should be properly resourced. We need staff in TAFEs who are paid properly and valued and respected for the incredible work that they do. We know that this government has made some important changes to TAFE, which we do welcome, but they're still not enough to overcome the nine disastrous years of the coalition government's gutting of our TAFEs and public education and training system. So, yes, it is welcome that there are some steps being taken to repair and restore our TAFEs, but it is not enough to undo the damage that the coalition government did. We're going to need some bold reform to deliver the change that we need for free and universal public education and training, and that is something that we're going to push for.

I welcome the element of this bill that is in many respects a win for First Nations communities, by allowing funding to flow to Aboriginal community-controlled organisations that are VET providers, and I welcome the fact that part of the rationale behind free TAFE places is to increase places for marginalised groups, including First Nations students.

So let's get this bill through, but let's get it with the 20 per cent cut to student debt for those people who've got HECS. Both of those policies—this bill and the 20 per cent cut—were announced by the Prime Minister on the same weekend, yet only one has made its way into legislation that we're being asked to push through the parliament. If the government do not support our amendment to cut 20 per cent of student debt now, when they could make people's lives better right now and send a very strong signal that their debt is going to be cut by 20 per cent—not after the election but right now—then people are entitled to conclude that it's just a cynical election ploy, that people with student debt are being held ransom to the outcome of an election when the government could act right now.

There's no good reason not to cut it right now other than that you want to hold people with student debt to ransom and say, 'We'll give you some things now, but you only get this depending on the outcome of the election.' Students and people who have graduated and have got student debt are struggling right now. Their fates, their ability to own a home, to rent a home, to start a family, to live a good life should not be held to ransom to the political will of a government that is more interested in playing politics than actually doing right now things that would help people live a better life.

We can do this right now, and I urge the government to stop holding people with student debt to ransom and to not only pass this legislation but wipe student debt by 20 per cent before this parliament rises.

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