Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Uni should deliver optimism rather than fear for young people over their financials. That's why we will be considering all 47 recommendations from the 12-month review of the universities that we initiated, called the Universities Accord. HELP needs to be made simpler and fairer; that's the take-home message. The report recommends that HELP needs to be modernised to reduce the financial burden on lower-income workers, like young people who are usually starting out; the timing of indexation should be changed; and HELP debt should not grow faster than someone's wages.

Fixing HELP is in our national interest because going to uni or TAFE is linked to higher wages—in fact, $30,000 more compared to if you just finish year 12. We won't be abolishing it because there's no such thing as a free lunch; someone always pays. But we want to make it fairer and simpler. That's why we'll be giving these recommendations the consideration they deserve.

In the meantime, we are delivering the intergenerational dividend through our tax cuts. Ninety-eight per cent of the 1.5 million 18- to 24-year-olds will be receiving a bigger tax cut under us—$1,000 on average—when before they would have mostly received nothing. If that is not the intergenerational dividend, I don't know what is. Add free TAFE to the mix and we then create pathways for young people into well-paid careers, enabling them to earn more and keep more of what they earn.