Labor conference acknowledges rising cost of university and skyrocketing HECS-HELP debt

If the country can afford contentious stage three tax cuts, young people should not have to bear the brunt of skyrocketing HECS-HELP indexation, Labor has recognised.

The Labor Party is now bound to a recognition that the HECS-HELP system “should be fair and sustainable”, acknowledging the rising cost of studying and skyrocketing indexation.

At the party’s national conference session titled “opening the doors of opportunity”, Australian Maritime Workers Union executive Tony Piccolo moved an amendment stating that Labor would “work to ensure that studying at university does not shackle young workers with a lifetime of debt”.

The amendment also binds the party to a focus on making university “more accessible and affordable for people from disadvantaged backgrounds”.

After thousands of students were this year hit with an indexation of 7.1 per cent on top of existing debts – up from 3.9 per cent in 2022 and 0.6 per cent in 2021 – Mr Piccolo told Labor delegates that Education Minister Jason Clare’s office had told him that abolishing indexation would cost $4-$9bn.

Labor agreed to work to ensure university would not ‘shackle young people with a lifetime of debt’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

He said if the country could afford contentious stage 3 tax cuts – which will cost $20.4bn in 2024-25 before rising to $42.9bn a decade later; and had not yet imposed a super profits tax on high-earning companies – the country could afford to give young people a break.

“(HECS debt) affects their credit or their ability to borrow (and) their ability to save for a deposit,” he said.

“Until we start making corporations pay their fair way, I don’t think we should be asking the youth of today to be paying it for them.

“We’ve got to do something about it.”

Chisholm MP Carina Gardland, who seconded the amendment, spoke about how concerned she was by the fact university degrees cost 140 per cent more than when she was studying.

“That is an enormous increase … I don’t want to see the aspiration of a higher education out of reach for so many in our community,” she said.

Every amendment agreed to at the Labor Party’s national conference is binding on the federal government. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Earlier in the session, the party agreed to pass an amendment calling on a payrise for early childcare workers

Delegates agreed to recognise that “addressing this workforce shortage will require paying educators what they are worth so they can afford to stay and return to the sector they are passionate about”.

Also during the session, Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor flagged 300,000 extra free TAFE places across the country next year.

AMWU national president Andrew Dettmer had called on Labor to “rebuild” the TAFE system to modernise trade offerings.

“Apprenticeships and traineeships are the way that working class kids get a start in life,” he said.

Labor also committed to expanding apprenticeship and higher education opportunities for Australians with disabilities.

Ali France, from Labor Enabled, told the conference that the party must first and foremost recognise Australia was “woefully behind the rest of the world” in ensuring that disabled people had economic agency, and the opportunity for full and prosperous lives.

“Labor will expand the higher education opportunities for Australians with disability and ensure that Commonwealth-funded support programs, including those from the Department of Education, provide accessible, inclusive, and equitable support for students and staff with disability,” the amendment reads.