CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
In a major policy announcement that is struggling to get any airtime in an Australian news cycle focused on treating minor indiscretions like career-ruining political scandals, millions of Aussie students will have their university and TAFE debts slashed.
The Albanese government will reduce HECS and TAFE debts by 20 per cent, should it win the looming federal election in 2025.
Under the plan, a graduate with an average HECS debt of $27,600 will see around $5520 wiped from their outstanding loan.
However, even if the Australian media had any interest in covering this announcement, it still probably wouldn’t reach the people that are expected to benefit from such changes. Because the Government is trying way too hard to sound like American TikTokers, and are using weird words like ‘Student Debt’ to describe the universally recognised Australian payment plans for HECS and TAFE Fees.
This has given license to the Opposition and their friends in the media to describe this announcement as a ‘free lunch for inner-city elites’ despite the fact this plan very much includes the Vet Student Loan, Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan and other income-contingent student loans.
But the fact that these massive changes in the financial emancipation of young people have been poorly communicated, and will now be poorly debated in Parliament, is irrelevant – because nobody is really going to know about them anyway.
It’s the same reason why nobody knows that the government is banning the banks from applying debit card surcharges.
It’s because Prime Minister Albanese and his fiance have sold their investment properties and bought a nice house near her parents. On top of that, he has been accused of being upgraded on commercial flights.
This has caused extreme outrage in the Australian media, as journalists and editors see red over the fact that some nobody who grew up in public housing may have flown at the front of a QANTAS flight before they have.
While the rest of Australia just shrugs at the news that a world leader is no longer enduring the safety risk of sitting in economy with the general public, the media has attempted to turn this new story into a scandal as big as the Parliamentary Citizenship Crisis or the Hawaii holiday.
It is not yet known when the Australian media will move on from this hysteria, but it’ll likely wind down when we get a good look at how many Liberal MPs have also done the same as the PM.
