Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the student debt and safety at universities.

I rise to take note of the deeply disappointing response of Minister Watt to my questions on student debt and sexual assault in unis. We are in the midst of a soaring student debt crisis. We are in the midst of an horrific crisis of sexual violence on campus. Yet Minister Watt chooses to dodge the questions, ignore the issues and effectively is saying to students: 'Too bad; you're on your own'—how heartless. Every week we hear from students whose debt is rising faster than they can pay it off. We hear stories of helplessness and despair as young people with their whole lives ahead of them get caught up in a debt spiral. We hear of people being locked out of the housing market and denied personal loans because of student debt.

Labor has the power to wipe student debt and make uni free, but instead they choose not to. Shame! The cruel Job-ready Graduates scheme has gutted our universities, massively hiked student fees and cut billions of dollars of funding for overworked staff. It was a blatant, pathetic attack on the humanities by the coalition, which will result in students, especially female students, graduating with exorbitant student debts. Labor knows this scheme is a disaster, calling it 'broken beyond repair' while in opposition, but are doing nothing to reverse it. It's a pathetic abdication of responsibility. They should have binned it the second they came into power.

No-one should ever have to experience sexual violence. It is so deeply harmful and traumatic, and it can totally upend and ruin lives. Yet every week at least 275 students experience sexual violence in university settings, and these numbers are from during COVID lockdowns. We need another survey to know the true extent of the rape epidemic now that students are back on campus. The government and universities have failed miserably in their duty to keep students safe. It was pretty outrageous and shameful that the minister could not even commit to ensuring another student safety survey would be conducted. What more will it take? The government must commit to funding the national student survey with universities and establishing an independent mechanism to hold universities to account.