Greens $46.5bn plan to make university or TAFE free for every Australian

Adam Bandt wants every Aussie to be able to go to university or TAFE for free – just like a young Anthony Albanese. The plan will cost the country $46.5bn. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Every Australian would be able to go to university or TAFE for free – just like a young Anthony Albanese – under a new Greens policy that would deliver a $46.5 billion hit to the federal budget over the next four years.

Greens leader Adam Bandt will on Monday announce his party’s plan to waive all higher education costs for domestic students, taking aim at the Prime Minister for refusing to give Australians the “same opportunity” to benefit from free university as he had.

“In a wealthy country like ours, everyone should be able to have a good quality education,” he said.

The Greens have claimed the $46.5bn price tag, which was costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, and the party’s suite of other big-spending policies totalling more than $137bn over four years, would all be paid for by hiking up taxes on big corporations to raise about $514bn over the next decade.

Greens leader Adam Bandt wants to make university or TAFE free for every Australian. Picture: Martin Ollman

Mr Bandt said free university and TAFE would be added to the Greens’ priority list for minority government talks with Labor.

“This election, the Greens will keep Dutton out and get Labor to act on cost of living relief for young people,” he said.

To cost the policy, the PBO assumed making studies free would result in about a one per cent uptick in university students on top of normal growth, and about a five per cent increase in Australians going to TAFE.

About three million Australians have a HELP student debt totalling more than $81bn, with an average amount per person of $27,641.

Student debt for Australians in their twenties doubling in less than two decades, with the Greens criticising for Labor’s failure to scrap fee hikes for certain degrees introduced under the Morrison government.

Under those 2021 changes Arts degrees jumped to $50,000 and in the years since the number of student debts exceeding $100,000 has doubled.

Under the Greens’ plan, all fees for undergraduate and postgraduate students at public universities would be covered by the taxpayer, as would the total cost for Australians studying TAFE qualifications.

When Mr Albanese studied a Bachelor of Economics at the University of Sydney, he paid $0 in fees.

A student in the same degree today would rack up about $50,992 in student debt by the end of three years of study, which increase with indexation.

Meanwhile Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus also completed a law and arts degree at Melbourne University for free, a qualification that would cost about $89,000 today.

Labor has previously announced it will wipe 20 per cent off all student debt if re-elected on May 3, which would cost the underlying budget bottom line about $16bn.

Mr Albanese has also committed to making fee-free TAFE in critical skill areas permanent, at a cost of $1.5bn over the next four years.

Originally published as Greens $46.5bn plan to make university or TAFE free for every Australian