Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's very kind of you, Speaker; it is a good one. My question is to the Minister for Education. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to ease cost-of-living pressures on students and build a better and fairer education system?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Herbert is warned.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the magnificent member for Macnamara for his question. This morning, I introduced legislation to wipe $3 billion of student debt for more than three million Australians, including more than 27,000 people in the member for Macnamara's electorate.

As members know, I asked the Universities Accord team for advice on this and they advised that we should set indexation at either inflation or wages, whatever is lowest. We're doing that and going further than that: we're backdating it to last year. In other words, we're wiping out what happened last year and making sure that it never happens again. For someone with an average HECS debt of, say, $26,000, it means it will cut their debt by about $1,200. For someone with a HECS debt of about $45,000, it will cut their debt by about $2,000. It's an important reform to make HECS fairer.

But that's not the only thing the bill does. The legislation also establishes, for the first time ever, paid prac. For the first time ever, the Commonwealth government will provide financial support for teaching students, nursing students, midwifery students and social work students while they do their practical training. These are people who have signed up to do some of the most important jobs in this country, people who are going to help educate our children, look after us when we're sick or when we're old or support women in domestic violence refuges. A big part of becoming a teacher or a nurse or a social worker is that practical training. Sometimes they have to give up their part-time job to do it. So this is a bit of practical help to do your practical training.

This legislation also uncaps funding for FEE-FREE Uni Ready courses. These are the short courses that act as a bridge between school and uni that help to give you the skills you need to do a university degree. The advice from my department is that this has the potential to double the number of people doing these courses by the end of the next decade.

Wiping HECS debt, providing paid prac and funding fee-free university courses helps with the cost of degrees, helps with the cost of living and, most importantly, helps with the cost of young people missing out on the chance to go to university in the first place, in particular young people from poor families, young people from the outer suburbs and young people from the regions and the bush. It's just one part of the reforms that we're making to build a better and a fairer education system.