Calls grow to hike taxes on fossil fuels to pay down debt

When these eleven students finally donned their graduation gowns, they’ll owe more than 3/4 of $1,000,000 in tertiary loans. Will I pay it off in the end? Like will? I have just had this debt for the rest of my life. I think students are getting very tired of being advised to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They’ll join 3,000,000 graduates who will see their loans hiked by 4.7% indexation on June 1. That’s gonna be hanging over my head for. For decades, yeah. I think the word to sum it up, is despair. So how to ease the burden? Is raising taxes on the fossil fuel industry an answer? Last year they collected twice as much revenue from kids repaying their hex debt as they got from the special petroleum resource rent tax. 10% of those exports a year could pay off the total national hex debt. Economist Professor Andreas Chai says it’s a quick fix in a cost of living crisis. It’s absolutely urgent. He also claims the way indexation is applied to students is unjust as CPI is based on a basket of goods which includes rising house prices, something they have no control over or can afford. It’s almost like a tax that of, you know, house prices on Gen. Z. That just doesn’t make any sense at all. Ahead of the May budget, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made it clear that Labour could do a lot more to make life easier for young people. Kidding. An announcement will be made pretty soon on making student loans fairer and simpler. Mate, give us a break. Give us a break. Maybe he will in the May budget.