David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It is an indictment on both major parties and successive administrations that Australian governments collect more money from HECS than from the petroleum resource rent tax—not just a little bit more, a lot more. In 2022-23 petroleum resource rent tax collections totalled nearly $2.3 billion, compared to $4.9 billion in student loan repayments. If you want to know what state capture looks like, this is it: a country that is happy to be one of the top three gas exporters in the world, yet it collects more from students repaying their loans than from these gas companies in petroleum resource rent tax. It's disgraceful, and I think it should form part of this debate, because it goes to our priorities. It goes to the kinds of things that we're seeing this Senate and this parliament deal with and the kinds of things that are being kicked down the road and not being dealt with.

For those who might be asking what the petroleum resource rent tax is, it's what we should be getting for our offshore LNG exports. States and territories don't have a levy on that. I was up in Darwin for a Senate committee looking at Middle Arm. We were out on the harbour talking to some NT government officials. We were hearing about the impact that IMPEX and its export facility were having on the harbour. Fishers were saying that they're seeing a decline in sea life. Researchers were saying that they're concerned that dolphins and other sea life seem to have declined by about 50 per cent since IMPEX set up this facility. I said to the NT officials, 'What do you guys actually get out of having IMPEX here on the harbour?' They looked at me a bit sheepishly and said, 'We get payroll tax,' which I think is extraordinary. They said, 'Don't worry. Australia will get the petroleum resource rent tax.' But when you go to Treasury and ask them, 'How much PRRT have you got from offshore LNG exports?' it's zero dollars and zero cents.

This is nuts. It is totally nuts that we allow this to happen. What are our priorities as a country? Are we happy to saddle students with debt while, at the same time, we let all these multinationals basically take our gas for free, export it and then weave some crazy narrative about how much they contribute because they're paying payroll tax, which everyone does? You look at the experience of Norway—a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund—while Australia has $1 trillion of national debt. Come on! We have to see a change here.

I recently had a young man come into my office to talk about HECS. He had heard some of the debate and he said, 'After hearing politicians talking about HECS, I wanted to show you a real example.' He'd printed out a list of his HECS and his compulsory repayments. He'd completed a bachelor of arts degree and a masters degree, which he said ended up getting him the job that he has—he learnt that, because so many people applied, they basically excluded people who didn't have a masters. He has a HECS debt of over $83,000—a debt that, despite him making regular compulsory payments, hasn't gone down in almost a decade. Even the government's promised 20 per cent debt forgiveness won't cover the quantum paid in indexation. Clearly, the system here is broken. The cost of degrees is too high, and the way that we index students is not working. How we're indexing HECS is totally unfair.

I'll acknowledge that the Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024 goes partway to fixing it. The change in the rate of indexation is very welcome, but clearly more needs to be done. I don't understand why the government is waiting. I don't understand why they're kicking hard reforms that will make such a huge difference to Australians down the road. The Australian Universities Accord final report could not have been clearer. The Job-ready Graduates system needs to go. It's the primary driver of increased fees and long-term debt for students. It is fundamentally unfair and ideologically driven. The government were very happy to say that in opposition. Yet after almost a full term—we're in the last two sitting weeks of this year and probably of this term of government—what have they done? They've put off the hard task of reforming Job-ready Graduates and they've given it to the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, a body that hasn't even yet been established. How's that for a handball? How's that for kicking a can as far down the road as you possibly can? My second reading amendment goes to this issue.

It also goes to the issue of timing when it comes to the indexation of student debt. Changing the rate of indexation is terrific. It's a great, welcome move. Why, at the same time, aren't we changing the date of indexation? How can we in good conscience charge people with a HECS debt indexation, which is essentially interest, on repayments that they've already made? Can you imagine trying to do that anywhere else? Imagine if you had a mortgage and the bank said: 'Pay us all this back for 11 months, and then we're going to charge you interest. We're not going to include the 11 months that you've just paid off.' It's nuts. This makes no sense. How have we allowed this to happen? If banks tried that or if someone who gave you a loan to buy a vehicle tried that, it wouldn't cut it, and I guarantee you that this place would fix the problem in a matter of days. But, when it comes to students and to Australians who are really struggling in a cost-of-living crisis, why don't we see the same urgency?

I also think we should be considering and moving on pausing indexation until compulsory repayments kick in. It's one thing to delay when compulsory repayments start, but obviously, with compound interest, you're ultimately setting yourself up for more repayments. So the one thing is welcome, but we're not actually fixing this underlying issue. Again, to come back to the start of this, government and Treasury will say: 'Well, we can't afford everything you want. You're on the crossbench and you're not in government. You can't come up with all these airy-fairy demands.' Until we fix the petroleum resource rent tax, you have no argument to stand on. To give away our gas, to get more from HECS than from the petroleum resource rent tax and to be one of the top three LNG exporters in the world doesn't cut it.

I really think it's time to stop tinkering. It's time to put away the bandaids and bring out the serious policy reform options, because Australians are doing it tough. They're doing it incredibly tough, and there are a lot of people looking to the parliament and saying: 'What are you doing for us? You've got to know how hard we're doing it here.' Young people are putting off their future and delaying making decisions. Where has the reform been when it comes to competition? We know we have tragically condensed sectors of the economy here in Australia, whether it's supermarkets, banks, insurers or airlines, and it's no surprise that that's been overseen by the ultimate duopoly, the duopoly that is now telling us that they're going to ram through electoral reform to protect the duopoly in the land of duopolies in a matter of weeks, without parliamentary scrutiny, after we hear so much about the need for proper process and parliamentary scrutiny. When it's in their interests, stuff can happen very quickly in this place.

Well, I think we should be acting quickly in the interests of Australians, and I just want to put on the record how many Canberrans—I know a lot of people think Canberrans are wealthy—whom I've spoken to who are genuinely doing it tough. Coming up to Christmas, we all know there's expectation and there are more families than there should be in this country who are looking at Christmas, at the festive season, with a sense of trepidation and are concerned about what that means for their family.

I welcome a number of measures in this bill—I thank the government for them—but I urge the government to stop tinkering. Australians are looking to us for wholesale change on things that are fundamentally broken. If the system is broken, let's not just try and patch it up and say, 'Well, it'll keep going for a bit longer; she'll be right.' Let's actually change it. That seems like the reason that people put us in this place.