The Greens want the government to now turn to scraping the Morrison-era job-ready graduate program, which has been a spectacular failure, but also raised the cost of arts degrees to over $50,000.

Mehreen Faruqi:

Labor’s one-off 7.9% student debt cut won’t make a dent when students are graduating with $50,000 arts degrees and debts that grow every year and take a lifetime to pay off. 

The Greens want to deliver long-lasting student debt relief, so we invite the Albanese government to work with the Greens in the Senate rather than choose the lazy, uninspired path of tinkering around the edges with the help of the Coalition. 

The Greens are ready to work with Labor. The Albanese Government should show some ambition and work with us to wipe all student debt and make TAFE and uni free again, like it was for the Prime Minister.

At the bare minimum, Labor should work with us to undo Morrison’s disastrous fee hikes and end indexation, which keeps people on the hamster wheel of trying to keep up with ever swelling debts.

Labor should have dumped Morrison’s job-ready graduates fee hikes the second they came into power. The scheme is a cruel, punitive mess that does nothing except punish students with high fees.”