Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily ohs oh now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the seventh of May.
I'm zara, I'm Billy.
The federal government has announced it will wipe three billion dollars in student debt and offer payments for some students undergoing mandatory placements.
These announcements come.
A week before the federal budget and in the wake of recommendations made to the government about how to form the sector. So Billy on today's podcast, we're going to explain what the changes to HEX could mean for you and how the placement payments will work.
Before we get there, though, what's making headlines.
The families of two missing Australian brothers have formally identified their bodies in Mexico. Concerns for Jake and Callum Robinson, along with their America friend Jack Carter Road, were raised last week after the three men failed to arrive at an Airbnb in the Baja California region of Mexico. Authorities believe the brothers and Road were all killed by single gunshot to the head following a confrontation with thieves. Three
people have been arrested. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Trade, along with the Australian Embassy in Mexico and Australian Federal Police are assisting local authorities with the investigation.
Telstra has announced it will delay closing its three G networks until the end of August. The telco previously said it would shut down its three G networks in June, but set its delayed plans to ensure the closure won't stop customers calling triple zero. Telstra is urging customers to check their devices and upgrade to four G before the shutdown. Vodafone and TPG have already shut down their three G networks, while Optus has plans to end three D services in September.
Median national rents have reached a new record high of six hundred and twenty seven dollars a week, according to the latest figures from property data firm core Logic. Rentals were most expensive in Sydney and Canberra, where median weekly rents reached seven hundred and seventy dollars and six hundred and seventy four dollars respectively. Per saw the biggest increase in prices over the last twelve months. With a fourteen
percent rise. Rents across Australia increased by eight point five percent in the twelve months to April.
And today's good news, the Australian women's three x three basketball team has qualified for the Paris Olympics. The game, which made its Olympic debut at Tokyo twenty twenty, is a condensed version of basketball. Three players aside compete on a half court with a single hoop. The Australian women's team qualified for Paris after the Gangaroos beat Canada nineteen sixteen in Japan. And if you want more sport news, you can sign up to tda's sport newsletter. We will throw the link to that in.
Today's show notes.
So Billy, A couple of weeks ago, we did a podcast episode. It was about the Australian University's Accord final report that is a mouthful, which made nearly fifty recommendations to the government about how to create change in Australia's.
Higher education sector.
Now a bit over a month later, we are circling back to this story because the government has made two major announcements off the back of these recommendations. One of them is about HEX, so about student debt, and the other is about placements that university students have to do for their degrees.
So let's take them one by one. The HEX story, this was absolutely massive. It broke at midnight on Saturday night.
We enjoyed a one am text from one of our journalists.
Yes, who had written a great piece on it. So what was in that announcement.
Well, I'll get to explaining the announcement in just a second. I do want to just set this scene a bit, so for anyone that might be a bit out of university or didn't go to university. I just want to explain what we're talking about when we talk about HEX. So the Higher Education Contribution Scheme HEX, which is under the Higher Education Loan Program HELP, but we're just going to call it HEX. That makes sure that students can
go to university without having to pay for their course upfront. Now, students pay off their HEX debt to the government after they begin earning above a certain threshold, and those payments are what's called indexed over time. I'll explain what that means in just a second. The report I referred to earlier looked into how HEX was functioning here in Australia, and it found that the system needed to be modernized.
It recommended overhauling the indexation of student debts. So indexation is basically when the amount that a student owes increases to reflect inflation, so rising prices on the first of June each year. So if we're to use an example of what happened last year, on the first of June last year, anyone with HEX that went up seven point one percent. Now that was a record that was huge, but it was in line with what we had seen
the rise of inflation. Now, the review suggested that a cap on indexation might avoid significant increases like we saw last year from happening again. And it also suggested that instead of always being pegged to the rate of inflation, that indexation should be pegged to either the rate of wage growth or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.
Okay, So just to recap, we have HEX, which is thousands of dollars in debt that pretty much every person who goes to UNI has, and then every year how much students owe increases and that's to do with rising inflation. Yeah, as we know, we've been in a cost of living crisis and the rate of inflation has been extremely high and that was reflected in the indexation that happened last year.
And then we have this report that does a big review into what is going on with HEX and if anything can be improved, and they say that lots of things can be improved and what.
They call for an overhaul. They basically say it's not working as intended. People are unable to pay back this debt and it's just becoming a huge issue. So they make these really big recommendations. That's a month ago, and then over the weekend the government finally announced what they were going to do about it.
And so what is that announced?
It the big building, but finally there.
So just in time for budget which is hands down a week today, the federal government announced that they are planning to wipe three billion dollars in student debts. I think we often hear these headlines about wiping debt. We certainly hear it a lot in the US.
Yeah. I was going to say, we don't hear a lot in debt.
We don't remember overhearing it.
But Joe Biden has been doing that in the US.
Yeah, So I just want to explain exactly what that means. In an Australian context. So basically, this concept of wiping debt is the government announcing that they're going to change the way that hex is indexed. So the announcement was that they will base student debt indexation on whatever is
lower out of wages or inflation. So remember I said it was always pegged on inflation, but now they've gone with that recommendation and they're now going to have the option if wages are lower, they will do it to that lower rate.
And that also goes to the conversation that we've been having in recent years that wages have not been increasing at the same race as inflation.
And I think the really important part of this announcement is that the government have said that they will backdate it to June of last year, So that means that anyone that had that seven point one percent indexation applied to their debt that will be wiped.
Under the government's announcement and or to go down.
To the lower rate of three point two percent, which is what wage growth was at.
Just to be clear, though, the seven point one percent isn't entirely going, it's just being replaced by the three reduced it's been reduced to the three point two percent increase, which is in line with how much wages increased at that point last year exactly.
So his Education Minister Jason Clair explaining what that means.
This will wipeout what happened last year and make sure it never happens again. It means for someone with the average help debt of twenty six thousand, five hundred bucks, up to two hundred dollars will be wiped from their outstanding help loans.
And just to give you a sense of what this actually means in real number terms, So if you were to look at your HEX debt and it says that you owe thirty five thousand dollars, you're looking at just over one thousand, five hundred dollars in credit under the government's new scheme. If you're someone that's looking at sixty thousand dollars of debt, for example, you're looking at around
two thousand, six hundred dollars in credit. Obviously this will change depending on how much your HEX is, but this is just a rough indicator that the government's given us.
So that's a massive change. What happens now doesn't need the support of the opposition.
Yeah, so I feel like there should always be a bit of an asterix when we make these big announcements. So government is doing big thing asterix, it still needs to pass parliament, So the Government still needs to introduce
and pass legislation in parliament. So it's going to be included in the budget, but it needs to pass through parliament to become law, and the Government doesn't have enough seats in the Senate to pass legislation by itself, so it's going to need to rely on either the opposition or some of the crossbench to support it.
And so have we heard from the opposition who do be clear when we say opposition but about the coalition which is the Liberal Party and the National Party.
Yeah, we have so.
Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson said that the government's announcement is quote all trickery and deceit and doesn't fix Labour's student debt trap. It's pretty strong words there. If I'm to summarize the opposition's main criticism of the government's announcement, they kind of see it as a band aid solution.
So in their eyes they're saying the government has mismanaged the economy, that inflation has been rising, really really rapidly and that that's the actual problem, and that the government isn't fixing that problem, they're just fixing the kind of flow on effects of that, and so that is what the coalition is criticizing the government about. Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said, and I quote the best way to address growing hextet is to fight Labour's homegrown inflation at its
source by reigning and spending and strong budget management. Just to be clear, the coalition there are criticizing the government's announcement, but they haven't said whether or not they will support it in parliament, so we'll have to wait and see when it's introduced. The other group that the government would be looking to for support our members of the cross Bench. So we heard from Independent Senator David Pocock who said that the announcement was a good first step, but that
without proper reform, student debt will continue to skyrocket. So it'll be really interesting to see how this goes in Parliament once the Government does actually introduce the piece of legislation.
So just to be clear that basically it needs the support of either the opposition or the crossbench, both slightly critical of it, but I think at the end of the day, it's probably safe to presume they will get the support of one of those, maybe with some amendments. So okay, So that is a huge story. On Sunday when we posted it, the audience reacted in quite.
A large way, strong manner.
There was a lot of interest in it.
Yeah.
But at the start of this you said that there were two announcements, and I understand the other one is about placements, which we have also done an episode on and we will put it in the show notes. What did they say about that?
Yeah, So just before I go to the announcement, just to clarify, when we're talking about placements in this context, we're talking about when students have to complete practical placements and professional training in order to get their degrees. So many people listening to this have had to either do it themselves or watch someone they know undergo these placements.
They're typically unpaid and they can last several weeks. When we did You're Right, Billy this pod episode last month, we heard from a couple of students about what the conditions were like on their placements. As a reminder, here's some of what we heard.
Studying to zootherapy and as a requirement to graduate, we must attend placements from eight to four and sometimes five pm, depending on your placement, and during that time we do not get paid a single cent of money. We do not get any accommodation allowances, any travel fees, any food expenses, nothing like that. So a lot of us would have to seize our job, our casual our part time jobs
to accommodate our time for this. And a lot of my friends had been saving up just so that they have enough money to attend placements, and when they graduate, they will be ending up with no money because they have been using their savings throughout their time on placements, which is one big concern that we are having at the moment.
I think many people listening can relate to that. I know that when I was at university, I needed to do an unpaid internship and it was absolutely mandatory that it be unpaid.
I think I was one of the few degrees that wasn't required to do one. Everyone else I know, yes, had to do one or many.
Yeah, it's a huge issue for a lot of university degrees, and so that is why this big review recommended that the government changed that. Yeah, what did they announce yesterday.
Yeah, so the government announced financial support for students who are completing these mandatory practical placements. Now I'll go into the specifics I do just want to flag again this also has to pass through Parliament. So what we're saying now is what the government is proposing, but it's not law yet.
It still needs to pass through parliament.
But let's run through what we do know based on what the government has announced. So from the first of July twenty twenty five, nursing, teaching, midwifery and social work students will be eligible for three hundred and nineteen dollars and fifty cents a week during placements. By the government's estimates, the initiative will be available to seventy three thousand university and tafe students, and not everyone will be.
Able to access this support.
So even if you are doing these placements, you're not necessarily going to be able to get it. It's going to be means tested, which means that some students will be excluded depending on their personal financial and living situation. And it's also important to note I think that other payments like O study or Commonwealth rent assistance won't be impacted. By this new placement support, so they won't interact in any way or it won't negate you from being able to access that.
And what has the response been to that announcement?
So the National Union of Students welcome the payments but said they don't go far enough. And I think that it was interesting reading through our comment section when we posted this, because there were a lot of people asking about how the courses that the government chose were chosen. There are a lot of you know, psych students or physio students in our comments section saying I have to do hundreds of hours of unpaid placement.
Why are other students getting this and not me? And I think.
That that goes to this idea of clearly everyone recognizes something needs to be done, but how you go about it and how far it can go seems to be contested. And then from the opposition we had an our quote from Sarah Henderson. While the Coalition will consider this proposal once the detail is announced, we are concerned about a range of issues, including who will bear the ultimate cost and eligibility requirements.
These are two big announcements that are super relevant to young audiences. Thank you so much for listening. To today's episode of The Daily oz and if you're listening on Spotify, you'll see that there's a little Q and a section on the episode page where you can tell us what you thought of today's episode. We would absolutely love it to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening, and we will be back tomorrow.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Adunda Bungelung Kalgotin woman from Gadahn. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all.
Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations.
We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.