Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Brown for her question. It is lovely to hear from Senator Brown. We are making some very important changes in these education reforms, as the chamber would be aware. I have spoken about them before in terms of making Australia internationally competitive—in fact, a world leader in higher education—making sure that we open up the sector to competition and to quality providers, making sure that students who are perhaps challenged in entering bachelor degrees have a pathway into tertiary education, maybe through a sub-bachelor degree or a diploma or something like that. All of those positions, for the first time ever, will be funded by the Commonwealth government, as I have said before.

In relation to HECS and the loans scheme, a number of targeted decisions have been taken by the government to secure the scheme into the future, both through the budget process and the identification by the Commission of Audit of the need to reduce the cost to the Commonwealth of HELP through changes to the interest rate and the repayment thresholds applying to HELP loans. This will be particularly important given this budget's historic extension of funding to all higher education students for the first time ever. I referred to that earlier.

There are two important changes which will make a HELP more financially sustainable. There will be a fair interest rate on HECS. The interest rate applied to a HELP loans will be, as we know, the 10-year bond rate. This rate reflects the costs to government of borrowing to fund the loan and is less than for a loan that anyone is able to obtain from a banking institution, of course. The new interest rate will apply to all HELP debts from 1 June 2016. A fair repayment— (Time expired)