Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Sheldon for this really important question and for highlighting the work that's been done since we last sat to look at ways that we can continue to roll out both effective and responsible cost-of-living relief and also some support for young people in this country, particularly as we know that we need more and more of them to go to university and TAFE to make sure they can secure the job opportunities of the future and so that Australia can secure its economic opportunities ahead.

As our leader has said this afternoon, the Labor government wants Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn and not pay more than they should. So we've been really focused on ways that we can assist Australians with student debt, often younger Australians, and we did that in the budget by initially dealing with that indexation challenge that we had, which will wipe $3 billion off student debt and put in place a long-term, lasting reform around the indexation rate that applies to people with student debts.

By cutting the debt and increasing the repayment thresholds, which is part of this new announcement, we are freeing up money for other costs that young people face, like moving out of home, furnishing a home, buying a car or saving a deposit for a home. Our policy cuts a further 20 per cent off all student loans, which will benefit around three million Australians. This represents around $16 billion in cuts, reducing the debt burden for Australians with a student loan. Someone with the average HELP debt of $27,600 will see around $5,520 wiped from that debt from next year. In August, we introduced a bill to cap the HELP indexation rate to be the lower of the CPI or the WPI and impose that retrospectively— (Time expired)