Australia's Gaza ceasefire call slammed as ‘performative politics'
'This situation in Gaza is a terrible tragedy; the overwhelming moral responsibility for it lies with Hamas, and Hamas could end it all tomorrow by releasing the hostages,' Mr Sheridan said.
'I don't think the statement is of any use at all, however. I think the Albanese government responds to this situation entirely in terms of domestic politics.
'I think this is just performative politics by these Western governments.'
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The Advertiser
an hour ago
- The Advertiser
Student debt to be slashed, less cash deducted from pay
Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body. Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body. Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body. Students and graduates will soon see a reduction in their HECS debts and save hundreds of dollars a year. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will introduce legislation to slash student debt by 20 per cent and increase the income that graduates need to earn before minimum repayments kick in. It's the first bill that the Albanese government will put before parliament at the start of its second term. People earning between $60,000 and $180,000 will save hundreds of dollars each year under the changes. Someone on $70,000 will save the most, $1300 a year, on minimum repayments due to an increase to the thresholds at which the debts must be paid back. Savings vary between incomes in the bracket, with people pocketing anywhere from $200 to $850. Bruce Chapman said it would make it fairer by giving those on lower salaries more money in their pockets, while their debts remain the same in nominal terms. "It looks bigger, in real terms it's not bigger," the architect of the HECS scheme told AAP. But the top priority should be reviewing the price of each degree because humanities students finish with the highest level of debt and end up being the lowest-paid graduates. "All the prices are wrong," Professor Chapman said. Mr Clare said reforms were being looked at, after the failure of the former Liberal government's job ready program. The program aimed to fill skills shortages by making it cheaper to study courses like teaching, nursing and psychology while doubling the cost of popular degrees including law, communications, business, humanities and the arts. "If the intention there was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees, it hasn't worked," Mr Clare said. "People study the courses they're interested in, that they want to do, that they love." The universities accord final report branded the program "deeply unfair" because it punished students following their interest, and called for it to be scrapped. It recommended that fees reflect future earning potential, as part of 47 recommendations to reform the sector. Other aspects about how HECS is paid off also needed to be addressed, Prof Chapman said. HECS repayments are taken from a person's pay slip if they're earning above an income threshold. But the money isn't immediately taken off the HECS debt and is instead deducted as a lump sum at the end of the financial year after indexation has been applied on June 1. This means a higher debt is indexed as the repayments haven't been deducted and the university accord recommended it be reformed to make the system fairer. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission has been established in an interim capacity to implement long-term university reform and will review the HECS system over the next 12 months. Mr Clare will introduce further legislation in the coming months to set the commission up as a permanent body.
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Cutting HECS debt is the least Albanese could do for young Australians. He should do more
You don't pay the tuition fee upfront – the government pays the university on your behalf, and you repay the government. But, unlike any commercial loan you'll ever get, when you to have start repaying, and the size of your repayment, depend on how much you're earning. So, in principle, you should never be paying more than you can afford. Loading You don't pay interest on the loan, but the outstanding balance is indexed to the rate of inflation – which, to an economist's way of thinking, means you're paying a 'real' interest rate of zero. If you never earn enough to be able to repay the loan – say because you become a monk – you never have to pay the loan back. That's by design, not accident. Trouble is, successive governments have not only made the scheme less generous, the post-COVID inflation surge has added greatly to people's HECS debts. Debts have become so big they reduce the size of the home loans banks are willing to give graduates. Worse, in the name of encouraging young people to take supposedly 'job-ready' courses such as teaching, nursing and STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), in 2021 the Morrison government reduced their annual tuition fees, whereas fees for courses such as business, law and the humanities were greatly increased. Fortunately, this half-brained scheme did little to change students' choices, but did mean abandoning the previous arrangement in which the fees for various courses were geared roughly to the size of the salaries those graduates were likely to earn. The cost of an arts degree is now about $17,000 a year, or a massive $50,000 for the full three years. So it's people who have studied the humanities who now have debts quite out of whack with their earning ability. Smart move, Scomo! Albanese's 20 per cent cut in debt levels will do little to fix this crazy misalignment of fees with future earning potential. The cut will have a cost to the budget of about a huge $16 billion in theory, but more like $11 billion when you allow for all the debts that were never going to be repaid anyway. By making it a percentage cut rather than a flat dollar amount, too much of the benefit will go to highly paid doctors and lawyers. And, in any case, of all the young adults having trouble with the cost of living in recent years, those on graduate salaries are hardly the most deserving. On the other hand, at a time when, justifiably, the young feel the system has been stacked against them, I can't be too disapproving of Albo's flashy measure to help keep the younger generation's faith that, in the end, the democratic process will ensure most age groups get a reasonable shake. Loading The young are right to feel bitter about the way earlier generations have enjoyed the ever-rising value of their homes while allowing the cost of home ownership to become unreachable for an ever-growing proportion of our young. And that's before you get to other features of our tax and benefits system that favour the old. Thankfully, the government is making the rules for HECS repayments much less onerous, making them work the same way as the income tax scale. The minimum threshold for repayments will be raised from income of $56,000 a year to $67,000. Your income between $67,000 and $125,000 will require a repayment of 15 per cent, and 17 per cent on income above that. This will yield significant savings to those with debts. But, of course, the lower your repayments, the longer it will take to clear your debt and the more your outstanding balance will be indexed for inflation.
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Defining antisemitism is no threat to free speech. Without a definition, we are adrift
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism was adopted in 2016 as an educational and data-collection tool. It is deliberately non-legally binding and begins with a clear, universal sentence: 'Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.' Thirty-plus democratic governments, the European Parliament, the UN secretary-general, and tech giants such as Meta, have endorsed or incorporated the definition. Australia's special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, grounded her national plan released this month in the same wording, citing a 316 per cent surge in antisemitic incidents. All 39 Australian universities have endorsed or adopted a similar version to the IHRA definition. The universities do not include some of the IHRA's specific examples of antisemitism but do refer directly to criticism of Zionism as potentially being antisemitic, unlike the IHRA definition, which does not mention Zionism. The definition has become the world standard because it provides 11 practical illustrations that police, teachers and human rights watchdogs can map onto real-world cases – swastikas on playgrounds, synagogue bomb threats, or, yes, demonisation of Israel when it slips into Nazi analogies. Since Segal released her plan, there have been several recurring objections: 'It chills free speech.' Amnesty International warns the plan 'threatens people's rights to freedom of expression and assembly'. 'It stifles criticism of the Israeli government.' Labor MP Ed Husic has said the 'definition instantly brings into question whether or not people will be able to raise their concerns of the actions, for example, of what the Netanyahu government is doing in Gaza.' 'It will be weaponised to defund universities and media.' Headlines warn of an 'inappropriate definition' used to strip funding from institutions. 'Weaponising antisemitism insists on the exceptionalism of the Jewish community'. Some argue that the 'Jewish establishment' is insidious in using antisemitism for nefarious ends. At first blush, these arguments sound like principled liberal concerns. Probe a little and they dissolve into a curious double standard that leaves every minority except Jews entitled to define the hatred they face. Why the 'free speech' objection misfires is because the IHRA definition is diagnostic, not punitive. The document itself states it is 'non-legally binding.' No one is jailed for foot-faulting it. While the special envoy has called for punitive action if patterned institutional antisemitism is not dealt with, the IHRA definition itself does not demand sanction. It is a working guide to what anti-Jewish racism looks like.
