2025-11-25
Today in the Senate, Senator Mehreen Faruqi will introduce the Higher Education Support Amendment (Reverse Job-Ready Graduates Fee Hikes & End 50k Arts Degrees) Bill.
The Bill reverses the punitive fee hikes introduced by the Morrison government’s disastrous job-ready graduates (JRG) package. It undoes the fee hikes for units of study in law, accounting, administration, economics, commerce, society and culture, and communications, and reverts them to what those amounts would have been on 1 January 2026, taking into account indexation, if the job-ready graduates bill had not commenced.
The effect of this Bill would be to halve the cost of an arts degree, bringing the cost from $52,197 to $24,492 in 2026.
In opposition, Labor called job-ready graduates “inequitable, perverse, and punitive.” In government, they have now had over three years to remedy skyrocketing university fees that the entire sector knows is a disaster yet they have done nothing. The government’s own Universities Accord concluded that JRG required “urgent remediation” and even Labor backbenchers have been calling for action. Earlier this year, more than 100 well-known Australians — authors, academics, historians, and public figures — signed an open letter calling on Labor to abolish the JRG scheme.
Lines attributable to Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Deputy Leader of the Greens and spokesperson for Higher Education:
“Everyone knows JRG fee hikes need to go, and now Labor has an opportunity to support our bill and end the Morrison government’s policy disaster, which has punished students for too long.
“The reversal of the cruel, unfair, and downright absurd job-ready graduates fee hikes is long overdue.
“The quiet tragedy of Job-Ready Graduates is not just the people crushed by debt, but the people who never enrol at all.
“University staff, students and the wider community are unanimous in their calls to reverse the punitive JRG fee hikes, but Labor has continued to sit on their hands. Well, no more kicking the can down the road, Labor can support this bill and halve the cost of Arts degrees.
“It is getting harder and harder for young people to get an education, as they face the cascading impacts of the housing and cost of living crisis, on top of growing student debt. Students shouldn’t be buried under a mountain of debt and punished just to study what they love.
“At the end of the day, education is a public good that should be free, fully-funded, and accessible to all.”