Dear supporters,
Today is a great day in our campaign to have HECS/HELP indexation frozen. Even though indexation has not been frozen as such, the changes proposed will have the net effect of freezing indexation this year for most people. If you have not yet heard the news, the federal government plans to roll out some changes that will bring real relief to those burdened by HECS/HELP debts.
Planned changes include:
- Indexation will be based on inflation OR wage growth- whichever is lower.
- This reform will be backdated for the last 2 years- resulting in a refund, which will lower the total debt.
- Indexation will only be applied AFTER the annual payments have been taken off the debt.
This is a momentous day. I want to thank every person who wrote to decision makers to agitate for this change. I want to thank the many people who shared their stories on the petition- stories of how the ever increasing debt has impacted their lives and created a cycle of debt that they wondered if they could ever escape from. I want to thank the politicians and staffers who have worked on making the system fairer- today is a good start. And thank you to change.org for providing a platform to bring this issue to light.
Let’s be clear though- these reforms are proposals and they need to be adopted in the budget. We need to make sure that every decision maker votes YES for these proposals. If you haven’t already, make sure you let your federal MPs know that you support these reforms and call them to vote them in. Ideally, indexation could be frozen for 2024 in addition to these changes, but we need to make sure that each one of these proposed reforms are adopted in the budget.
I look forward to closing this petition and declaring victory as soon as this budget is adopted and we can be sure that these reforms are legislated.
Thanking you all,
Gemma