Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, I met with a group of students at La Trobe University, on the border of my electorate of Jagajaga. I met with a diverse range of students including Betty Belay, Jenny Stramilos, Jasmine Ingram, Marie Trevithick, Sebastian Horey and many others. They made one thing very clear to me: they do not want Abbott's plan for $100,000 degrees. Instead of planning their future careers with confidence, these students are very worried about how much more they are going to have to pay in their higher education loans. This is particularly so for those students who are already carers, young people caring for their older siblings or, in some cases, their parents, and students worried about starting a degree which might end up costing them a lot more than they had anticipated when they first enrolled. At La Trobe we have many students who are the first in their family to go to university. Many of these students are now worried that they could be the last. If ever you needed a better illustration of the threat posed by deregulating our university system, look no further than an 18-year-old student who thinks they will be the last person in their family to go to university. Labor will continue to fight this Liberal government's plan to price Australians out of a university education.