Student debt to be slashed, less cash deducted from pay

Education Minister Jason Clare says three million Australians will benefit from HECS debt cuts. Video via AAP

Transcript

00:00Well this is one of the biggest promises we made in the election campaign, to cut everyone's student

00:04debt by 20%. It means we're cutting the debt of three million Australians right across the country

00:10and the average debt today is about 27 grand. So that'll cut the student debt on average of

00:17Australians by about five and a half thousand bucks. That's a lot of money. That'll make

00:21a real difference for a lot of Australians. In the average electorate across the country,

00:27we're talking about one in four people who are going to see their debt cut and a bit of weight

00:32off their back. These are Aussies who are often just out of uni, just out of home, just getting

00:39started and this will take a little bit of weight off their back. But the legislation is not just

00:43about cutting your debt by 20%. What we're also doing here is making a structural change to the

00:49way HECS or student debt works so that people on pretty modest incomes have to repay less every

00:57year. For example, if you're on 70 grand a year, it means you'll have to repay about 1,300 bucks

01:03less a year when this legislation passes than you do today. In other words, it means more money in

01:10your pocket, not the government's.