Tell Your Mates: The Bill to Reduce Your HECS Has Passed Parliament

Subtract 20% from your HECS debt

The first piece of legislation from Anthony Albanese’s re-elected government has passed…and it’s a cut to student loans.

That’s right, your HECS and student/apprentice loans have decreased by 20 per cent.

Here’s everything you need to know.

What passed in parliament?

The bill means there is a one-off 20 per cent reduction to Australians with a student loan debt.

You’ll benefit if you have one of the following loans:

• Any of the HELP loans, including HECS-HELP, FEE-HELP, STARTUP-HELP, SA-HELP, OS-HELP

• VET Student Loans
• Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans
• Student Start-up Loans
• Student Financial Supplement Scheme

And you can use this estimator to see how much you’ll see reduced on your debt.

Where will you see this change?

The government has confirmed you won’t have to do anything, and the reduction will be applied by the Australian Tax Office (ATO).

The 20 per cent reduction will be calculated based on how much you owed to the government as of 1 June 2025 before indexation was applied.

And that’s what you missed in HECS news 👋