Cailey Thurlow nee. Sharp is back this week to delve into the HECS dilemma taking over Australia. In this episode, Cailey recaps the original HECS and how university degrees were free in Australia from 1974 to 1989. This issue affects anyone currently seeking or who has previously sought higher education, with many taking their HECS debts well into their forties-impacting their ability to buy a home on top of the impacts of the cost of living. Cailey later discusses the HECS indexation, summarising what this means for anyone with a HECS debt. E.g., If you are on a $60,000 salary and you have an average HECS debt of $24,771, you would have paid off about $1200 in HECS this year, but your debt would have increased by $1177. Since the first term of the labour government, student HECS debts have increased by 16 and a half per cent... under a Prime Minister who went to university for free. Why does the government collect more from HECS debt than it does from its major fossil fuel tax?
If you would like to petition against the annual increase in HECS debts for both past and present students and make HECS debts easier to pay off, then please sign the petition below:
https://www.change.org/p/make-our-hecs-debts-easier-to-pay-off
