Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024, which aims to bring in legislation that will give students a fairer go, uplift Australia's world-class higher education system and take the first steps in implementing the Universities Accord. This bill will wipe almost $3 billion in student debt for more than three million Australians. Students from across Australia have cried out for a fairer loans system after last year's indexation spike, and our reforms are addressing just that by capping the HELP indexation at the lower of either the consumer price index or the wage price index. We're backdating this change to 1 June 2023. If you're a student and you have an average debt of $26,500, you will see up to $1,200 wiped from your loan. If you have a debt of $45,000, you will see about $2,000 wiped from your loan. If you have a debt of $60,000, you will see almost $2,700 wiped from your loan. This relief is timely and well deserved by Australia's students past, present and future.

Our bill means more relief is on the way. If you're studying to be a midwife, nurse, teacher or social worker, you will receive practical support for your practical placements. Around 70,000 higher education and VET students will benefit from paid prac, and for many this will be absolutely life changing. Without this support, students have made the difficult choice to delay or even leave their qualification, unable to support themselves through their placements. Yet they're working towards careers in absolutely essential industries and in some of Australia's most important sectors. We absolutely can't afford to lose them. Universities gave broad support for paid prac payments, with our largest educator of teachers and nurses in Australia, Australian Catholic University, saying they are 'greatly supportive of this measure, which will help students in these fields of study complete their degree and reduce the bottleneck in the supply of higher education graduates in these critical fields of workforce shortage'. Similarly, the social work action group at RMIT University welcomed these changes as well, saying they were 'a long overdue step to address student poverty, inclusive education and workforce shortages'.

Recently in Gippsland, I met Louise Allen, a nursing lecturer at Federation University, and we had a long discussion about how these prac payments will help her students. She told me just how important these payments will be for regional and rural universities and students. Many of her students are taking up a degree later in life, so they've already got their cost structures set up. Many of them are some of the 40 per cent of Federation University's students who are the first in their family to study at university. These changes—these practical solutions, these prac payments—will allow students to focus on what is important, which is their studies, by giving them that little bit extra financial support. For a young mum from Morwell studying to be a social worker at Federation University, this will mean practical support for her practical training, so she can complete her studies and then go on and do what we really need her to do, which is to give back to her community, utilising her degree.

This bill not only delivers relief for students here and now, but it also paves the way for more Australians to achieve a tertiary education, with the expansion of FEE-FREE University Ready courses, which bridge the gap between school and university. We want to support and uplift the aspirations of all Australians, and this reform is expected to increase the number of people doing these free courses by about 40 per cent by the end of the decade and then double that number in the decade after that. If you want a university degree, these courses will help you get the skills to get there.

My own mother was a passionate teacher and she was the first in her family to attend university. I had no choice, and my brother and sister had no choice either, but to inherit the belief and the commitment that it is education that makes a real difference in life. That is a sentiment shared by this Labor government. So many of us are the first in family to go to university and so many of us are the children of the first in family to go to university, so we are absolutely passionately committed to making higher education accessible and more affordable to all Australians who want the opportunity to do it.

Whether you're the first in your family or the fifth to seek out formal higher education, you deserve a fair go and you deserve a system that will support you every step of the way. By wiping student debt, introducing paid prac and strengthening FEE-FREE University Ready courses, we are making progress, we are creating pathways and we are helping Australians into the good, secure jobs that await them at the end of their courses. After all, Labor is the party of education.