Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The amount of student debt that is currently sitting in my electorate of Brisbane is $1.1 billion. This is a debt people are sitting on just for getting an education. When we're in the middle of a skills shortage and when over 50 per cent of jobs in the future will need a university degree, it makes absolutely no sense to be financially punishing people for going through higher education. A university degree is quickly becoming an expectation of employers in the same way a higher school certificate was just a few years ago. More and more employers expect prospective workers to have gone through higher education and to have specialised their skills. We're charging people tens of thousands of dollars for qualifications we as a society now expect them to have. It makes absolutely no sense, and it has to change.

We need to think big, and we need to be bold. It's what the future demands of us. We need to catch up with so many other countries in the world by finally making university tuition free again and wiping all student debt. We can do this. We've actually done it before. University used to be tuition free before Labor introduced the student debt system. This would free millions of Australians from billions of dollars in debt. It would increase their take-home pay. It would allow more people the opportunity to buy a home. And it would improve the mental health of people, especially young people, by removing the massive debts hanging over their heads.