STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (13:53): If Labor are re-elected, we are cutting a further 20 per cent off student debt. In New South Wales—that includes, of course, the Blue Mountains, the Hawkesbury and the plains—university students and graduates will see an average of $5,703 wiped from their HECS debt. If you have a student debt of $50,000, that will mean a cut of $10,000.

Whether you are still at uni or in other tertiary studies or have long since finished, that 20 per cent will disappear from your debt, and we know that'll make a real difference. We're also providing cost-of-living relief by letting you wait until you're earning more before having to start paying your HECS debt off. The threshold for repayments will lift from about $54,000 to $67,000, and so, for someone on $70,000 a year, that means you'd pay around $1,300 less a year in repayments.

This is on top of our reforms that have fixed the indexation formula, cutting around $3 billion from student debt, with most people receiving their credit or their refund last December. All up, the Albanese Labor government will cut close to $20 billion in student loan debt for more than three million Australians. Let's compare that to the Liberals.

The opposition leader says he'll scrap our plan, and that means, if you've got a student debt or your kids or your grandkids have a student debt, you'll be worse off under the Liberals.