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

FARUQI () (): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to student debt.

I rise to take note of the government's woeful response to my question on student debt, which proves beyond doubt that they simply do not care about the toll student debt or rising university fees is taking, especially on young people. Literally every day student debt is crushing dreams of study, locking people out of the housing market, forcing people to rethink starting a family and making the cost-of-living crisis worse.

This week year 12 student Saria Ratnam wrote an article titled 'As a year 12 student, I dream of doing an arts degree. The price could be a lifetime of debt.' Things are only getting worse under Labor, who, against all evidence, logic and community sentiment, are stubbornly maintaining the disastrous, punitive Job-ready Graduates fee hikes. Next year, for the first time, arts degrees will cost more than $50,000—and we have Labor to thank for that. As ACU honours student Bridget said:

It is morally reprehensible that the labour government is forcing people to choose between educational achievement and enjoyment over being able to live. They claim to be better than their predecessors and yet my HECS debt has nearly doubled.

And don't let their gaslighting fool you. Labor say that they are wiping $3 billion of student debt, but all they are doing is shaving a tiny bit of indexation off the top of a giant, swelling pile of student debt. Three billion dollars off $78 billion is peanuts. Setting indexation to the lower of CPI or WPI is really akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. WPI is usually higher than CPI, so this change will make little difference. Labor's little tweaks to student debt won't provide an ounce of cost-of-living relief to the millions of people struggling under the weight of ballooning debts in a cost-of-living crisis, when student debt is still rising faster than people can pay it off and the root of the student debt crisis remains totally untouched.

If those in this government are serious about easing the student debt crisis then they need to reckon with the reality that you can't fix a system that shouldn't exist. Student debt simply shouldn't exist. Students are graduating with bigger and bigger debts—in large part owing to the Morrison government's disgraceful fee hikes. Labor is backing those—against the advice of their own Universities Accord panel, which said the scheme needed urgent remediation.

What makes this all so much more frustrating is that at the helm of this government that's shackling students with tens of thousands of dollars of debt is a prime minister who went to uni for free. As Harrison Brennan, President of the University of Sydney Students Representative Council, says:

There's palpable anger among students who feel they've been cheated—forced to pay even more for an education that many in parliament received for free.

Harrison is midway through a politics and philosophy degree and already owes $33,000 in student debt. It beggars belief that someone like the Prime Minister, who is literally a walking, talking example of the benefits of free higher education, is charging students $50,000 to get an arts degree. But I suppose this is also the same Prime Minister who owes so much to public housing but refuses to fund it properly. Talk about pulling up the ladder behind you!

Student debt should be completely wiped. Young people shouldn't be starting their working lives with tens of thousands of dollars of debt that shackles them for a lifetime. The money taken out of people's pay cheques to pay down their student debt is money that is so often desperately needed to buy food and medicine or to pay rent and other bills. Wiping student debt would save a person earning an average wage and with the average student debt almost $6,000 a year—a massive amount that would make a tangible, real difference to people's lives.

Higher education, like education at any level, is an essential public good. It should be free, it should be universal and it should be provided by the government. There is absolutely no doubt that we can afford to make university free for all and wipe all student debt. All we need is a better government.

Question agreed to.