Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If Labor are re-elected, we are cutting a further 20 per cent off student debt. In New South Wales—that includes, of course, the Blue Mountains, the Hawkesbury and the plains—university students and graduates will see an average of $5,703 wiped from their HECS debt. If you have a student debt of $50,000, that will mean a cut of $10,000. Whether you are still at uni or tertiary studies or have long since finished, that 20 per cent will disappear from your debt, and we know that'll make a real difference.

We're also providing cost-of-living relief by letting you wait until you're earning more before having to start paying your HECS debt off. The threshold for repayments will lift from about $54,000 to $67,000, and so, for someone on $70,000 a year, that means you'd pay around $1,300 less a year in repayments. This is on top of our reforms that have fixed the indexation formula which have cut around $3 billion from student debt, with most people receiving their credit or their refund last December. All up, the Albanese Labor government will cut close to $20 billion in student loan debt for more than 3 million Australians.

Let's compare that to the Liberals. The opposition leader says he'll scrap our plan, and that means, if you've got a student debt or your kids or your grandkids have a student debt, you'll be worse off under the Liberals.