Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How will the Albanese Labor government help ease the cost of living for students and young people in a responsible way, and what alternatives are there?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for Moreton for his question. We're going to miss you, mate, when you retire at the first half of next year, but young Leo and young Stan will get a bit more time with the old man, and that's a good thing as well.

The member for Moreton understands, as we do, that, even with inflation coming off considerably and the progress that we've made in the economy, people are still under pressure. We also know that that pressure is often felt disproportionately by young people, including people who are carrying a lot of student debt. This is part of the intergenerational unfairness in our economy, which we are determined to address in a responsible way. It's why we made the tax cuts fairer for young people. It's why we increased rent assistance twice and are building more homes. It's why we're already legislating to make the indexation of student debt fairer. And it's why I want to pay tribute to this Prime Minister, this education minister and this skills minister for the three important announcements that they made on the weekend: firstly, to make fee-free TAFE a permanent feature of our system; secondly, to lift the amount of money people can earn before they start paying student debt back; and, thirdly, to slash that debt by 20 per cent. This is all about easing cost-of-living pressures and lifting some of the burden on young people. It means more Australians keeping more of what they earn and paying back less debt.

Not everybody in this House thinks we should help students and graduates with the cost of living. Those opposite want Australians to have more student debt, not less. They couldn't care less about the pressures that young people are facing in our country. These are the same characters who say they oppose these changes on economic and fiscal grounds and the same people who left us with much higher inflation and much more debt in the budget. When they were in office, inflation had a 6 in front of it, and now it has a 2 in front of it. It was much higher and rising under them, and now it's lower and falling under us.

We've more than halved inflation in our time in office, and debt is $150 billion lower under us because our responsible economic management has been cleaning up the mess that those opposite left behind. Our responsible economic management has meant that we can get the budget in better nick and make room for what really matters, for the things that our society really treasurers and values. Easing the cost of living and lifting some of the debt burden on young people is a really important part of that effort.

Those opposite would throw it all away and they would make life harder for young people and for Australians more broadly. That is one of the many real risks and one of the many real costs of the reckless arrogance of this opposition leader. This side of the House wants to make life easier for young people; that side of the House wants to make it harder. That has been made very clear in the last 24 hours.