Prime Minister Anthony Albanese campaigned on the promise to forgive $16 billion in student debt.
Now Labor has won the 2025 federal election and Australians want to know when those student debt cuts are going to come into effect.
From July 1, the newly re-elected Albanese Labor government will slash a further 20 per cent off all student loan debts.
It has also vowed to lift the minimum threshold for repayments by more than $10,000 a year, from about $54,000 to $67,000.
Approximately $16 billion in debt will be eliminated across HELP, VET Student Loan, Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan, and other income-contingent student support loan programs through these reductions.
University students and graduates will see an average of $5,520 wiped from their HECS debt in 2025, based on the average HELP debt of $27,600.
According to data released in February, each state and territory will benefit from the reductions, with Victoria and New South Wales anticipated to receive the highest average cuts per individual.
Australians who fully repaid their student loans after the indexation for 2023 or 2024 was applied will be issued a refund into their bank account, provided there are no outstanding government debts.
All of this is on top of significant student debt cuts that started being rolled out in December 2024, to the tune of about $3 billion.
It began rolling out reductions the following month, slashing the student debts of around three million Australians.
These reductions were achieved by adjusting the way indexation is calculated on student debt, capping the HELP indexation rate to the lower of either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the Wage Price Index (WPI).
The change was designed to prevent indexation from outpacing wages in the future, and was backdated to June 1, 2023.
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“Last year we wiped $3 billion in student debt and this is the next step,” Minister for Education, Jason Clare said in February this year.
“All up, it means we are wiping close to $20 billion in student debt.”
He called the reductions “a game-changer for the more than three million Australians”.
“We said we’d create a better and fairer education system, our HECS debt relief and changes to how indexation is calculated are a major part of this plan,” Assistant Minister for Education, Anthony Chisholm added.
