Coalition waves through Labor HECS discount as Henderson vows to put an amendment

Senator Sarah Henderson said she would cross the floor to put forward her HELP loan inflation guarantee amendment, but indicated she would still vote for the broader legislation.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and Victorian Liberal senator Sarah Henderson. Picture: Facebook

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Sussan Ley has helped wave Labor’s $16bn student debt cut through the lower house, ignoring rebel backbencher Sarah Henderson’s proposal to cap indexation.

The former Coalition education spokeswoman – who was dumped from the frontbench after Ms Ley won the partyroom leadership contest – earlier this week took the unusual and provocative step of canvassing support publicly for an indexation amendment to Labor’s student debt bill.

She said she would nonetheless propose her amendment when the bill went to the Senate.

On Tuesday, the Opposition Leader said the Coalition would “not oppose the government’s proposal”, declaring “we do care about students who are struggling with the cost of living” and vowing to hold government to account.

“It’s been really tough,” she said. “I want to highlight that underpinning this student debt relief has been a massive cost-of-­living crisis for Australia’s students.”

Senator Henderson said she would cross the floor – for the first time in her parliamentary career – to put forward her HELP loan inflation guarantee amendment, but indicated she would still vote for the broader legislation. “Australians expect the Coalition to fight every single day for better policies in the national interest,” she said. “That is why I will move an amendment in the Senate to provide greater certainty and fairness to every young Australian with a student debt.

“So many young people have been hit extremely hard by Labor’s cost-of-living crisis.

“My amendment means HELP indexation would be calculated as the lower of the consumer price index and 3 per cent. By capping indexation at 3 per cent, tertiary students would no longer be forced to pay the price of Labor’s failure to control inflation.”

Labor spent some of question time on Tuesday spruiking this legislation, which it had promised during the campaign would be the first new law it would introduce in the new parliament.

“We are very pleased that the first piece of legislation to pass this house was, as we said we would do when I launched the policy in Adelaide, in the electorate of Sturt, last November, to cut student debt by 20 per cent,” Anthony Albanese said.

“This will cut the debt of three million Australians by an average of $5500 each. And it will reform the system to make repayments fairer as well.”

After The Australian revealed Senator Henderson’s move earlier in the week, Ms Ley sought to downplay it as “one of” the suggestions from the partyroom.