Greens Deputy Leader and Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi will today give notice of a private senator\u2019s bill that abolishes indexation on all education and training loans \u2013 effectively freezing existing student debt \u2013 and raises and ties the minimum repayment income to the median wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Student debt has grown rapidly over the last decade, from $25.5 billion in 2012 to more than $68.7 billion in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Education and Other Legislation Amendment (Abolishing Indexation and Raising the Minimum Repayment Income for Education and Training Loans) Bill 2022<\/em>, which Senator Faruqi will introduce during the November sittings, halts indexation on student debt from 1 July 2022 and ties the minimum repayment income to the median wage from 1 July 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Student debt is currently indexed by CPI annually on 1 June. This year, with inflation so high, debts were indexed by 3.9% \u2013 the highest rate in a decade. The average student debt was estimated to have risen by $923.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inflation has since risen to 7.3%, meaning an even higher indexation rate is expected in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Greens spokesperson for Education said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStudent debt is no small problem. About three million people in Australia have the burden of student debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt a time when the cost of living is biting hard, governments can no longer ignore the student debt crisis and its impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStudy debts are impacting people\u2019s ability to obtain loans, their mental health, their ability to save up to buy a home or simply afford to live a good life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cScrapping indexation on HELP debts and raising the minimum repayment threshold will provide much needed money in people\u2019s pockets to make ends meet or pay rent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo one should be shackled with a debt sentence just in order to study. Higher education should be free. This bill is one of the first pieces of the puzzle in making that vision a reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFixing the repayment thresholds means that no one with a study debt will repay a cent of that debt until they\u2019re earning above the median wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLabor has an opportunity to work with the Greens and wind back Liberal-era policies which have saddled people with more debt which takes longer and longer to pay off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greens Deputy Leader and Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi will today give notice of a private senator\u2019s bill that abolishes indexation on all education and training loans \u2013 effectively freezing existing student debt \u2013 and raises and ties the minimum repayment income to the median wage. Student debt has grown rapidly over the last decade, … Continue reading “Greens flag student debt bill as inflation soars”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18901,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18900\/revisions\/18901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}