Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Lambie and Senator Faruqi, for your contributions. The government will not be supporting this amendment today. The Albanese government is taking action to provide significant relief to Australian students and workers with student debt. In this bill we're taking action to cut the cost of degrees through our changes to indexation. We've also announced that we'll cut 20 per cent off all student debts and that we'll raise the minimum repayment threshold so that repayments are lower and will kick in when you earn more. All up, this means that the Albanese Labor government will cut close to $20 billion from student loan debt for more than three million students.

As we've said before, the Universities Accord made a number of recommendations in relation to the HELP system, including changing the date on which indexation is applied. It also said that the former government's Job-ready Graduates scheme's changes had failed. We understand that there is more to do in regard to higher education. We've said from the beginning that we wouldn't be able to implement all parts of the accord's recommendations in one go, but we're making substantial progress with this bill tonight.