Yee-Haw: The Bill to Reduce Your HECS Has Been Introduced to Parliament

Gimme gimme gimme a 20% reduction ✅

They’ve been talking about it for a while and it was even an election promise but today the Labor government have introduced a HECS bill to parliament.

The bill proposes cutting 20 per cent of existing uni and TAFE debts and is the equivalent of about $16billion according to the government.

The bill also proposes raising the minimum repayment threshold from $54,000 to $67,000 which if it passes, means you won’t have to start paying your HECS debt back until you make $67,000 a year and should hopefully save you some money every financial year.

What’s next?

Now the bill has been introduced it will have to pass in the House of Representatives as Labor (aka the party introducing the bill) have the majority.

In the Senate it will require the Coalition or the Greens.

The Coalition (made up of the Liberal Party and the Nationals) had previously been against the bill before the election. But now it seems that they might support it.

Coalition Education Spokesperson Jonathon Duniam told Sky he expected it to pass Parliament.

“It was an issue, one of the centrepieces of the government’s agenda at the last election and obviously we had a view that was not supported by Australians, so we’ll work with them,” he said.

“We have our concerns, they remain. We’ll talk about those, but I expect them to pass Parliament.”

How will it be applied?

If it passes the reduction will be backdated to 1 June 2025 and the ATO applies this reduction automatically so you don’t have to do anything.

Indexation (which in 2025 is 3.2 per cent) will only be recalculated on the rest of your HECS debt after the 20 per cent has been taken off.