Imagine, for a moment, that you have bought a house (most students don’t even dare imagine such a thing anymore). Naturally you have taken out a loan in order to afford this, but you and your mortgage broker have put together a plan and repayment rate. You are happy in your new home.
Then, as time goes by it becomes harder to get a job, wages don’t increase, and the cost of living goes up. Things are getting hard but you are confident in your mortgage repayments because your lender has promised you these repayment rates that you can manage.
Next minute your lender decides to change the rules of the game. No loan scheme you have ever heard of is able to change the rules of a loan like that but here it is.
The proposed changes to the HECS/HELP is exactly this scenario with the circumstances of loan repayments changed for students both current and past. The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) condemns these changes especially their relation to past and current students.
“This move is particularly unjust and it should not matter who the loan is with retrospectively changing a loan is plain wrong,” says CAPA National President Peter Derbyshire.
“If we can retrospectively change the HECS/HELP scheme why not just retrospectively charge former students of the free education era in the name of budget repair?” Asks Mr Derbyshire.
CAPA is asking all Ministers and Senators to reject this underhanded move as well as many if the unjust aspects of this higher educatikn reform package.
