Indexation changes to wipe $3 billion from student loans

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australians with student loans will have hundreds of dollars wiped from their HECS debts by indexation changes in the upcoming federal budget. President of the national union of students, Ngaire Bogemann says while the changes are welcome, the fine print needs to be examined.

Transcript

00:00 This is welcomed evidence from the federal government that they are willing and able

00:06 to act on the reforms in the Accord final report.

00:10 But when we actually look at the fine print of this change, when we look at the fact that

00:16 in the past 25 years, the wage price index has actually only been lower than the consumer

00:21 price index approximately four times, it begs the question, is this really a positive change

00:27 for students or is it just a flashy headline for the government?

00:30 We know that last year's 7.1% indexation increase was a massive, massive burden to students.

00:37 It just absolutely ballooned so many people's debts.

00:40 This is a welcome change, but we do have to consider the fact that if we're now going

00:45 to spend every year waiting to see whether we continue with large CPI, whether WPI is

00:52 lower, we're going to continue to play these guessing games.

00:55 We're going to continue to sit here every year and wonder what number is going to be

00:59 higher, what number is going to be lower.

01:01 We also have to consider the fact that is this really going to make a lasting change

01:05 for students or is it just a band-aid measure to compensate for last year's large increase?

01:13 What we're calling for as the NUS is for an immediate freezing of HEX indexation for

01:18 at least the next few years while inflation is this high, just so the government can put

01:24 a pause on this system, put a pause on these large increases while we wait and see what

01:30 else we can do to the HEX system to make it better and fairer in the long term for students,

01:34 not just for students now.

01:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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