<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>326683</docID> <postdate>2024-08-15 09:28:33</postdate> <headline>Students one step closer to seeing debt slashed</headline> <body><p><img class="wp-image-201289 " src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/UC-campus-e1723677994330.png" alt="" width="796" height="531" /></p> <caption>If the legislation passes about $3 billion worth of student debt would be eliminated with recipients enjoying an average deduction to their outstanding loans of $1200.</caption> <p><span class="kicker-line">By <strong>Jacob Shteyman</strong> in Canberra</span></p> <p><strong>More than three million Australians are a step closer to having thousands of dollars wiped off their HECS debt, with the government set to bring the legislation to parliament.</strong></p> <p>Education Minister Jason Clare will on Thursday introduce the bill capping the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) indexation rate to the House of Representatives.</p> <p>If passed, about $3 billion worth of student debt would be eliminated with recipients enjoying an average deduction to their outstanding loans of $1200.</p> <p>The capped rate would ensure indexation matched either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Wage Price Index (WPI) - whichever was lower - after Australians were slugged with a student debt increase of 7.1 per cent in 2023 due to runaway inflation.</p> <p>"That hit a lot of Australian students and a lot of Australians with student debt really hard," Mr Clare told reporters.</p> <p>"They felt it, they thought it was unfair, and so did we. But we've responded."</p> <p>The bill will also implement a number of other recommendations of the Universities Accord review, including funding for fee-free university courses and paid placements for students in areas such as teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work.</p> <p>"It's been made clear to me by a lot of students that when you do your prac it can often be very, very hard to pay the bills, to do your part-time job," Mr Clare said.</p> <p>"Sometimes it means that you have to move out of home to another place to do that prac. It means that a number of students either have to delay their degree or never finish it at all."</p> <p>Labor needs the support of the opposition or the crossbench to secure the bill's passage through the upper house, but Mr Clare is optimistic it will get through.</p> <p>"There have been a number of members of the crossbench that have campaigned for this reform, amongst them Monique Ryan, and I'm confident that we'll have their support for this legislation," he said.</p> </body>