The student loan scheme labelled a ‘debt trap’
ABCDEE MARSHMAN: To know that I've worked consistently the entire time and haven’t made much headway at all, just really bewilders me. I didn’t really understand what this loan was about, and that I was going to have to be pay back double and that I'd only have to pay back half that, not what I actually traded, not my welfare entitlement JASON OM: Earlier this month the federal government promised to cut HECS debts by 20 per cent by June next year. DEE MARSHMAN: We’re in a cost-of-living crisis and I think it is the ethical thing to do is to wipe the Student Financial Supplement Scheme. JASON OM: Higher education expert Andrew Norton says any successful legal action against the scheme could set a bad precedent for Australia’s broader student loan system. JASON OM: The Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth declined to be interviewed but told us the, "…loans are repayable once an individual’s income reaches the student loan threshold."
History of this topic
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised to ease HECS-HELP debt but what about this other $2.1 billion 'debt trap' from the 1990s?
ABC
Retailers, beware: Resumption of student loan payments could lead some buyers to pull back
Associated Press
Student loan repayment freeze is a ‘tax rise by stealth’ for middle earners
The Independent
Spending Review 2015: Government ‘betrays a generation of students’ by ‘secretly’ backtracking on a 2012 loan promise
The IndependentDiscover Related