Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Hansard source

I've said before that I didn't know what a high-school drop-out was until I went to the United States to live and discovered that I was one. Despite the lack of education—leaving school at 15 to join my local newspaper—I feel strongly about young Australians getting the best, most thorough educations they possibly can. I applaud some new programs in Queensland and the Northern Territory to get more Indigenous students through high school and then, importantly, through university, for better jobs.

I see that across the ditch Prime Minister Ardern has a whiff of Gough Whitlam's dream of free universities. It won't happen here again, but at least the government should be doing its damnedest to make life easier for university students to have enough money to eat, to pay the rent and to start their careers without worrying about the pressures of HECS debt repayments. Australians want young people to have every opportunity to continue their education, regardless of their socioeconomic standing, to get into great jobs both here and overseas and to contribute positively to the economy and to our society. They are, as other speakers have said, our future.

The reform package now boils down to two key measures—one I can live with, and one I can't. The introduction of a replenishable cap on HELP loans makes good, practical sense. I know it doesn't always pass the pub test to give students access to an endless stream of money to collect more and more degrees—what I call professional students. But people who pay down their debt will be able to borrow again for another degree. It's that simple, and it's that good. On the other hand, lowering the HELP repayment threshold to $45,000 is plainly unfair and, I believe, unjust. The government—remember—started the bidding at $42,000. They may believe that $45,000 is a fair compromise. Well, I don't. Pauline Hanson's version of chopping the threshold to under $30,000 is simply cruel, blinkered—even obscene—and not worth discussing.

Many young uni graduates who are for the first time earning a real adult salary are at the same time discovering our very high cost of living. They're moving out of the family home. They're paying bills. They're paying rent. They're paying for public transport, maybe trying to buy a car. On top of that, they need to find money for a new suit, new shoes, a new work uniform, and they still need to be able to eat. I'm not talking about overpriced smashed avocado on sourdough drizzled with balsamic vinegar; I'm talking about baked beans, bangers and mash, and scrambled eggs.

I'm also concerned that the government has not sufficiently factored in the impact this change will have on women, as other speakers have also mentioned. The President of the National Union of Students, Mark Pace, told a Senate inquiry that 60 per cent of all Australians with outstanding uni debts are women, and two-thirds of the Australians who will be dragged into the debt pool with the new proposed repayment threshold will also be women. Women, returning to work part time after having kids, would also be hit at a time when every single dollar counts. Now, I believe that people need a bit of breathing room, and that's what I'm hoping to give them with my amendment. My amendment is to lower the repayment threshold, but only very slightly, to bring it down from around $52,000 to $50,000.

This compromise acknowledges that national debt does need to be paid down and that HELP debt is part of that. When HECS was first introduced it was intended that students would begin to repay their loans when they started to get a direct, private benefit from their education. The community rightly expects that those who are earning decent salaries pay the government back—pay the taxpayer back. Starting to pay back your HELP loan at one per cent when you've reached a $50,000 salary, to me, seems fair. I remember people like the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann, told me two years ago this month, when I was sworn in: 'Remember, Derryn, compromise is what Canberra is about. Seventy per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing.' Government ministers are always saying this. I hope they'll support my amendment on this. If my amendment does not get up, if the government turns its back on me, I'll join with the Greens, the ALP and some of my crossbench colleagues in attempting to excise the change to repayment thresholds from this bill to get rid of it altogether. I'll finish by saying, 'That's not bad for a high school dropout.'