Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government's lazy accounting is costing students thousands of dollars. There's a simple fix, but the government just doesn't want to do it. Think about your home loan. Interest is based on what you owe the bank, so, when you make payments, you owe less; your interest goes down. But what if the bank held on to your repayments for a whole year before taking them off the mortgage—and if they still charged you interest the whole time? If banks did that, you'd think it was a rip-off, so why do they do it to people with a student debt?

When graduates make HELP debt repayments, the payments aren't counted before indexation, which is like interest, is applied. Your debt keeps growing, even while you're pay it off. It means the system is rigged against people doing the right thing. A graduate on an average income is paying around $2,000 more than they should be—$2,000 more than if the interest was calculated after their repayments were taken off. This is money that could be in their pocket; instead, it's in the government's back pocket.

More and more young people are delaying going to university or putting it off entirely because of HELP debts. That was me when I was 18: a kid on the north-west coast thinking about going to uni and studying nursing. I didn't go. I never even applied, because I knew my family would never be able to afford it. Dreams and ambitions shouldn't be put on a shelf and left to collect dust. I don't want kids in regional Tassie to give up on their dreams because they're scared of debt. There's a way the government can fix this right now. Just count people's payments before charging interest. It's that easy. It doesn't matter what changes Labor or the Liberals make if the system is set up to fail students. It's your money. Your payments should count.