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Speech on Labor's failure to address the student debt crisis

On Monday Thursday 22 August 2024, I made a speech in Federal Parliament about the need for the Labor government to urgently address the student debt crisis. You can watch the full speech here or read the transcript below.

 

Transcript:

There are deep systemic problems that are crippling our Australian tertiary education system and thereby the students within it. This is a huge issue in my electorate of Ryan, which is proudly the home of the University of Queensland. The government pats itself on the back. There's been a fair bit of i self-congratulation from the government benches today for wiping $3 billion in HECS debt. But let's be crystal clear: this debt wouldn't even have existed if they had scrapped indexation last year. Instead they let indexation continue, leading to debts skyrocketing by 7.1 per cent last year and over four per cent this year. This isn't generosity. This is gaslighting again. Three billion dollars of debt relief is a tiny drop in the vast ocean of a $78 billion debt. To put this into perspective, if you have an average student debt of $26½ thousand it will reduce by only $1,200, once only.

Imagine this—and I'm going to paint a rather sad picture here. You go to uni, you work hard and you try to get a good job. As punishment, your HECS debt grows faster than you can pay it off, because of indexation. It's a trap that's locking people out of the housing market, delaying families and crushing dreams of higher education. We all agree that higher education is absolutely critical to the health of our community.

What about Labor's so-called fix? They want to set indexation to the lower of CPI or WPI, but here's the catch: WPI is usually higher than CPI, so this change will make little difference. In fact, in the last 25 years, WPI has been lower than CPI only four times. Labor's tweaks will not provide an ounce of relief to those struggling under ballooning debts in this cost-of-living crisis.

The root of the student debt crisis remains untouched. People are graduating with bigger and bigger debts that grow every year and take longer to pay off, thanks to the LNP's disgraceful punitive fee hikes—hikes that Labor is backing against the advice of their own uni accords panel. Next year, for the first time ever, arts degrees will cost more than $50,000. We have Labor to thank for that. Let's be real here. The student debt system cannot be fixed, because student debt shouldn't exist in the first place. Higher education, like all education, is an essential public good that should be free, universal and provided by the government.

If you're one of the thousands of students who are required to attend a placement for your degree, you can expect an even greater financial burden. Tens of thousands of students across the country are working for free in unpaid placements, leaving them unable to work to support themselves. This is nonsensical; it's cruel. You shouldn't have to choose between study and paying the rent, and that's the case for so many millions of students right now. You certainly shouldn't have to choose between studying in an absolutely essential field, like nursing, midwifery or social work, or fields with drastic workforce shortages, like medicine or veterinary science, and putting food on the table. That's the situation for way too many students at the moment.

The effect of all this is that only those with more privileged backgrounds, or those who have substantial savings, can actually put themselves through these degrees. It's disgraceful, and it's not the way to invest in the future of this country. Labor once again claims to be doing something about this, but it's barely touching the sides of this crisis. Students in the fields of nursing, teaching and social work will be lucky enough to benefit from a below-minimum-wage, means-tested placement payment of about $8 an hour, and they'll have to wait until July 2025 to get this payment. It was announced in this year's budget—the one with a surplus—and could already have been introduced, but Labor has chosen to extend the suffering of these students, forcing them to keep making these impossible choices for another 12 months. Which degrees don't get this payment at all? It's a really long list but it includes medical students, who have to do 2,000 hours of placement; vet students, who have to do 52 weeks of placement; and people studying radiography, psychology, physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

At $8 an hour for a 40-hour week, it comes to $320, which is, put simply, not enough to live on. I can guarantee you that none of the MPs in this place would be able to live on that, yet they're happy to condemn others to do it. Three hundred and twenty dollars a week is well below the poverty line, as we know. It's certainly not enough to live on when students are staring down the barrel of yearly, unlimited rent increases in most of the country. 

To add insult to injury, Labor and the LNP have refused to rein in corporate price gouging, sending the cost of groceries through the roof. It's just cruel. 

The government is currently trumpeting its Future Made in Australia Bill. For a truly thriving and viable future for everyone made in Australia, we need to properly invest in the education of Australians. I urge Labor to make that good investment, which should not be regarded as a cost. That good investment would see huge returns for Australia and Australians for generations to come.

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