Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Why is it so important we ease cost-of-living measures for Australians, especially younger Australians, and what alternatives are there?

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

CHALMERS (—) (): I thank the wonderful member for Dunkley for her question. I want to read for the House some comments from the Sydney Morning Herald editorial today, which said:

… young people are becoming increasingly sensitive to the prospect of finishing tertiary studies with a crippling level of debt. There is a real danger that many capable school leavers will be discouraged from pursuing further education, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Policies that limit the debt burden on young Australians are a worthwhile investment in our future.

We couldn't agree more, and that's why this side of the House is for lower student debt and that side of the House is for higher student debt. We want to make sure that we're supporting young people and people with a student debt where we can do that in a responsible and affordable way. That's why we're making fee-free TAFE a permanent feature of the system. It's why we're changing the indexation of student debt. It's why we're making it so you have to earn more before you start paying it back. It's why we're slashing student debt by 20 per cent. And when you put that together with the steps that we took to make sure that young people got a proper tax cut, and with what we're doing on wages and housing and rent assistance, this is all about ensuring that Australians, and particularly young Australians, earn more and keep more of what they earn, and that we get prices in our economy under control.

As I said before, those opposite don't want us to help young people. They don't want to help people with a student debt. They can always find room in their budget for waste and rorts but they can never find room to help people who are genuinely doing it tough. This does go to a big difference, at the election and in this parliament in the interim: we want to slash and we are slashing student debt, and we're slashing inflation; those opposite want to slash Medicare, investment and housing, and that will make life harder for people. The last time they were in government they gave us much more public debt, and now in opposition they want to give young people much more student debt.

We've spent a big part of our time in office cleaning up the mess that they left behind—not for its own reason, not as an end in itself, but so we can afford to help young people who are doing it tough. When we gave a tax cut to every taxpayer, those opposite said it was too broad. They said it helped too many people—they won an election over that. Now, when we want to help young people, they say it's too narrow. They need to make up their minds. This government under this Prime Minister has found a way to repair the budget and help people with the cost of living—those opposite find excuse after excuse to do neither of those things.

The progress that we're making on student debt is at risk if those opposite are elected. This is one of the many costs of the risky and reckless arrogance of this opposition leader—long on risky arrogance and short on economic credibility. We see that time and time again. (Time expired)