Help for Students
The Australian Government’s Universities Accord Bill 2025 has been passed in Parliament. This legislation reduces HELP or student loan debts by 20% and make HELP and Student loan repayments fairer.
This will be a one-off 20% reduction that will benefit over 3 million Australians with student loans and remove over $16 million in HELP and other student loans.
The government have recognised that many Australians are doing it tough and they hope this will take the pressure off the costs that Australians have to budget for. This measure will mostly help out younger Australian’s as 70% of the total HELP debt is owned by Australian’s 35 year or younger.
Who will benefit?
Anyone with one of the following student loans will benefit from this measure:
- any HELP loans, including HECS-HELP, FEE-HELP, STARTUP-HELP, OS-HELP
- VET student Loans
- Australian Apprenticeship Support Loans
- Student Start-up Loans
- Student Financial Supplement Scheme
You can use the below estimator located on Australian government website to estimate your 20% reduction on your outstanding HELP debt.
https://www.education.gov.au/help-debt-reduction-and-repayment-estimators
What you need to do?
Now that legislation has passed and received royal assent, the ATO will apply the one-off 20% reduction automatically. The calculation of the reduction will be based on individuals HELP debt amount as of 1 June 2025, before indexation had been applied. This means indexation will be applied to the reduced loan balance after the 20% reduction.
Author
Natasa Briffa