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Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire, Albury (2025)

23/07/2025

Leadership test for Ley as she faces uprising against net zero

Nationals MPs are putting pressure on the fragile Coalition over a proposed commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

What we know:

Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack has backed Barnaby Joyce’s plan to move a private member’s bill to immediately abandon net zero commitments (AFR).

A working group of Liberals and Nationals established by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley to develop a new climate policy remains in the review process.

Future leadership contender and opposition home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie’s Canning division has moved a motion for the Coalition to ditch net zero (The Australian).

Nationals leader David Littleproud told Sky News that a net zero policy means “trying to achieve the impossible rather than actually doing what’s sensible” (SMH).

McCormack says his decision is not about weakening Littleproud, despite hinting at potential future leadership ambitions (The Guardian).

The stance from some Nationals looks set to collide with moderate Liberals who believe that Joyce is already damaging their electoral prospects.

PM lifts beef import ban

The Albanese government has lifted biosecurity restrictions on US beef, paving the way for a breakthrough in tariff negotiations.

What we know:

The government reportedly insists scientific advice is behind the decision to lift biosecurity restrictions on US beef, allowing full resumption of exports after restrictions were initiated more than 18 months ago (AFR).

The decision is expected to be used as leverage in Trump administration negotiations to wind back the 50% tariff on steel and aluminium, its threats to impose them on pharmaceuticals, and the 10% general tariff on other exports.

The move came as US President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with Japan, which he says will result in Japan investing $US550 billion "at my direction" into the United States and paying a 15% reciprocal tariff (ABC).

Global stock markets rallied on news of the deal, with investors hoping other major economies will reach deals ahead of next week’s tariffs deadline (NY Times).

The Japan deal serves as a warning to Australia that loyalty to Washington is no guarantee of reward (AFR).

Labor rank and file demand action on Israel

Nearly 80 ALP branches have passed resolutions on Gaza, as aid groups highlight the enclave’s worsening starvation crisis.

Seventy-eight Labor Party branches have recently passed motions calling for Australia to impose sanctions on the Netanyahu government and impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel (The Age).

Over 100 aid groups have warned of a rising death toll due to starvation, malnutrition and lack of medicine in Gaza (ABC).

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called the humanitarian crisis “mass starvation, and it's man-made, and that's very clear” (Reuters).

Israeli strikes killed another 21 people overnight, according to local health officials, while the Trump administration prepared for further ceasefire talks (AP).

Top UN court says countries can sue over climate change

Nations failing to tackle climate change could be sued under international law, the world’s highest court has declared.

A landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) says that not acting to prevent climate change is a "wrongful act" that could see other countries entitled to reparations (ABC).

In a case brought by law students from Vanuatu, the non-binding opinion from the world's highest court says a “clean, healthy and stable environment" is a human right.

The over-500 page ruling is considered authoritative as a summary of existing law, and is expected to be used in future litigation and political negotiations (The Guardian).

Climate campaigners hope the decision will require countries that have historically burned the most fossil fuels to compensate countries suffering from the impacts of climate change (BBC).

However, the ICJ judge has warned that determining which countries cause which part of climate change could be difficult.

Questions over Keating tax decision

The Australian Taxation Office waives almost $1 million tax bill racked up by one of Paul Keating's companies.

Following negotiations with the former prime minister and his financial advisers, the ATO wrote off almost $1 million in interest and penalties owed by Brenlex Pty Ltd from a share sale in 2015, ABC Four Corners reveals (ABC).

The decision was unusual, as the process of formally challenging a decision by the tax office requires the matter to be contested in the Federal Court.

As part of a separate settlement with the ATO on another of his companies, Keating’s advisers told the ATO that his other companies, including Brenlex, were up to date with tax liabilities (AFR).

The gloves are off.

The Late Show host Stephen Colbert, who was axed last week reportedly to appease the Trump administration, vows to continue to speak out against the US president (ABC).

23/07/2025

Golding:

“Frustrating to hear Sussan Ley trotting out the old ″⁣no-new-taxes″⁣ line. As a nation we need to consider all ways of maintaining and improving our schools and hospitals.
Michael Brinkman, Ventnor
letters”

23/07/2025

Macrons sue right-wing podcaster for defamation (TND)

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, are suing a right-wing American podcaster over a “relentless campaign” claiming the first lady was born a man.

The Macrons filed a 218-page defamation complaint on Wednesday (local time) in the Delaware Superior Court, seeking a jury trial and punitive damages.

The couple accuse popular podcaster Candace Owens, who has millions of followers, of false and defamatory statements in her eight-part series called ‘Becoming Brigitte’.

The Macrons’ complaint states that Owens revived the conspiracy theory in March with a YouTube video titled ‘Is France’s First Lady a Man?‘

Owens promoted the conspiracy as “likely the biggest scandal in political history”.

She followed that up with numerous videos about Brigitte in the Becoming Brigitte series, as well as selling merchandise, according to the claim.

The Macrons’ complaint alleges Owens was the first person to bring these baseless claims to the US media and an international audience, reports CNN.

“Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” said the Macrons’ lawyer, Tom Clare, in a statement.

“We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused.

“It is our earnest hope that this lawsuit will set the record straight and end this campaign of defamation once and for all.”

The Macrons said Owens had been spreading “verifiably false and devastating lies” about them.

These included that Brigitte Macron was born a man, that Macron and his wife were blood relatives and that Macron was chosen to be France’s president as part of a CIA-operated mind control program.

“If ever there was a clear-cut case of defamation, this is it,” said their statement.

“Owens both promoted and expanded on those falsehoods and invented new ones, all designed to cause maximum harm to the Macrons and maximise attention and financial gain for herself.”

On Instagram, Owens posted a screenshot picture of the couple with the caption: “I will be coming for this wig today. Stay tuned.”

23/07/2025

White House says reports Donald Trump was told his name is in the Epstein files is 'fake news'

Donald Trump was allegedly told his name was in the Epstein files multiple times, according to senior administration officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal.

In response to the report, the White House said this was a continuation of "fake news stories" against the US president and rejected the claim he had been told he was in the report.

"This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media," White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in an emailed statement.

US Attorney-General Pam Bondi and her deputy told the president during a meeting in May that his name was in the files, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Justice Department concluded in early July that there was not a basis to continue the Epstein probe, triggering a backlash among Trump's political base, who demanded more information about wealthy and powerful people who had interacted with Epstein.

"Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution, and we have filed a motion in court to unseal the underlying grand jury transcripts," Ms Bondi and Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche said in a statement on Wednesday, local time.

"As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings."

Mr Trump is not facing any allegations of wrongdoing related to Epstein.

The newspaper noted that Mr Trump was also told that many other high-profile figures were named, and that the department did not plan to release any more documents related to the investigation.

Reportedly, Mr Trump said at the meeting in May that he would defer to the Justice Department's decision to not release any further files, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Florida judge will not release jury transcripts

A US judge has denied a Trump administration bid to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the late financier and s*x offender Jeffrey Epstein in South Florida — the first ruling in a series of attempts to reveal more information about the case.

The request stemmed from federal investigations into Epstein in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents.

The Justice Department has pending requests to unseal transcripts in Manhattan federal court related to a later indictment brought against Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

On Wednesday, US District Judge Robin Rosenberg found that the Justice Department's request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.

The grand jury transcripts in Florida related to the first federal s*x trafficking probe of Epstein, which was run by the US attorney's office in Miami.

In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution.

The wealthy financier was later arrested in 2019 on federal s*x trafficking charges. His former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls.

Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York City about a month after he was arrested. Investigators concluded he killed himself.

Maxwell was later convicted at trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Subpoenas issued to Maxwell, Justice Department

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer on Wednesday issued a subpoena to Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition to occur at Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on August 11.

"The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr Epstein's cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny," Mr Comer wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, House Democrats launched a bid on Wednesday, local time, to subpoena the Justice Department for files in the s*x trafficking investigation into Epstein.

Democrats on a subcommittee of the powerful House Committee on Oversight made a motion for the subpoena just hours before the House was scheduled to end its July work session and depart Washington for a month-long break.

The subcommittee's Republican chair, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, postponed a vote on the matter until the end of the meeting.

During a brief break in the meeting, Mr Higgins told reporters he expected the motion for the subpoena to pass with some changes.

"If the Republican Party, if our colleagues on this committee don't join us in this vote, then what they're essentially doing is joining President Donald Trump in complicity," Summer Lee, the Pennsylvania Democrat who made the motion for the subpoena, said.

Democratic leaders are hoping to make the issue about much more than just Epstein.

"Why haven't Republicans released the Epstein files to the American people?" asked House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

"It's reasonable to conclude that Republicans are continuing to protect the lifestyles of the rich and the shameless, even if that includes paedophiles."

Reuters/AP

23/07/2025

Haaretz Editorial | Israel's Minister of Starvation Is Strangling the Only Viable Aid Agency for Gaza

Jonathan Whittall, head of the local branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is a key figure in the effort to provide humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

He coordinates most of the operations by aid organizations there, including food convoys, the entry of medical personnel, transfers of fuel to hospitals and desalination plants and truckloads of medical equipment. It's hard to exaggerate the importance of OCHA's assistance in preventing death in Gaza.

The office also collects information from various UN agencies – UNICEF, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization and others – as well as from other humanitarian organizations. It then publishes updates almost every day on the humanitarian situation in Gaza – the deaths, the hunger, the displacement, the destruction and the incidence of disease.

OCHA's reports are considered conservative, credible and authoritative. Most of the international media, as well as governments and international organizations, rely on them.

That is exactly what bothers Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar. In a childish, thuggish, and disingenuous Hebrew-language tweet, he wrote on Monday, "There's a limit to every mischief." He noted that he ordered that Whittall's visa not be extended "due to his biased, hostile behavior toward Israel that has distorted reality, presented deceptive reports, libeled Israel and even violated the UN's own rules about neutrality."

This decision is a continuation of the government's unbridled attack on international law and international institutions. The Israeli military has blatantly ignored the restrictions of international law during the fighting in Gaza. And earlier this year, Israel barred UNRWA from operating in the country due to unproven claims that the UN agency had cooperated with Hamas in Gaza.

Sa'ar's decision came at a particularly wretched time. Over the last few days, it has become definitively clear that the Israeli proxy organization GHF has failed horrifically at distributing aid to Gazans, just as Whittall and other experts had warned. On Tuesday, Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry reported that another 14 people had died of hunger. More than 1,000 people have been killed while trying to obtain food from GHF distribution centers.

Yet instead of allowing the United Nations, which has proven that it's the only agency capable of preventing starvation in Gaza, to continue operating, Israel is putting spokes in the wheel of aid. Sa'ar's decision is a severe blow to the humanitarian efforts, and he will henceforth bear direct responsibility for the starvation of Gaza's residents.

Whittall and OCHA are telling the world the truth, even if the government denies it and lies about it.

More than 59,000 people have so far been killed in Gaza, while 70 percent of the buildings have been destroyed and 90 percent of the residents have been displaced.

Sa'ar must immediately retract his decision to revoke Whittall's visa. Meanwhile, the government and the IDF must open the border crossings to food and other aid and allow the UN and other humanitarian organizations to work without interference.

The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

23/07/2025

Trump Declares War On The Past
Reason without evidence. Documents without proof.

As Trump accuses Obama and rewrites history from the Oval Office, America stares down the barrel of authoritarian retribution.
(Article by MeidasTouch Network and Michael Cohen)

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

— Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

That quote isn’t just a clever turn of phrase; it’s a lifeline in a country drowning in delusion. And right now, at this moment, we need to hold onto it for dear life. Because the President of the United States is standing behind the Resolute Desk, draped in ego and gold filigree, and accusing former President Barack Obama of treason. Not political malpractice. Not poor judgment. Treason—a crime punishable by death under U.S. law.

And the so-called evidence? A pile of regurgitated documents and mischaracterized intelligence assessments, handpicked and handed off by none other than Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s latest sycophant-turned-Director of National Intelligence. She calls it a bombshell. I call it what it is: recycled propaganda, wrapped in the American flag and weaponized as a tool of retribution.

Let me be very clear: I was affected by what Trump calls the “Russia Hoax.” I know it intimately. I lived it. I wrote about it in my second New York Times bestseller, Revenge. Eleven false claims from the discredited Steele Dossier were attributed to me; absurd, career-destroying fabrications, including that I secretly traveled to Prague to pay off Russian operatives with ten million dollars in a Samsonite. Lies. All of it. Lies that devastated my life—lies I’m still seeking accountability for through the courts, including a multi-year FOIA battle with the federal government to force the release of documents they continue to bury. If we want to talk about truth, let’s start there.

But treason? Let’s get serious.

Trump now accuses Obama and Biden—along with Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan, Susan Rice, and just about every other public servant who ever held him accountable—of committing treason during the 2016 election. He makes this declaration in the Oval Office, surrounded by velvet ropes, oil portraits, and a dusty copy of the Declaration of Independence he pretends to revere. He spits these accusations into the cameras with the casual cruelty of a man who’s never once paid the price for a single lie he’s told.

He’s not seeking justice. He’s seeking vengeance. And if you don’t see that, you’re not paying attention.

Let’s talk facts—remember those? The U.S. intelligence community did conclude that Russia ran a coordinated influence operation in 2016 to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. This was confirmed by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation led by—wait for it… wait for it—Republican Marco Rubio. Our current Secretary of State. And no, they didn’t find evidence that votes were changed or voting systems hacked. That’s never been the point. The point was that a hostile foreign power meddled in our democracy, and Trump passively welcomed it. He even asked for it publicly.

But now, in a stunning act of projection, Trump is using that same interference narrative as a cudgel to bludgeon his enemies and settle scores. Tulsi’s documents don’t prove treason. These documents don’t even prove misconduct. They do what Trump always does: blur fact and fiction until the lies ring louder than the truth.

And I’ll say this as someone who has stood inside that same building, next to that same man: Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about rewriting the narrative. It’s about laying the groundwork for political prosecutions. It’s about keeping the MAGA base angry, paranoid, and loyal. It’s about putting his enemies on trial in the court of public opinion before the facts ever catch up.

So before we start calling for stoning, nooses, or the electric chair, how about we release the 486,000-plus FOIA documents I’ve been fighting to uncover for more than five years—documents that will show you who lied, who fabricated, and who actually weaponized our government for personal gain. Let’s look at the real paper trail. Let’s look at the real abuse of power.

Then, and only then, can we have an honest conversation about accountability, about consequences, about who deserves punishment—and how.

But that’s not what Trump wants. He doesn’t want truth. He wants spectacle. He wants to resurrect every conspiracy theory, every piece of MAGA mythology, every enemy he can point to and say, “See? It was them all along.”

Let’s take a step back and look at the broader picture. This is the same individual who challenged the results of the 2020 election and continues to raise questions about its legitimacy. The same leader who faced impeachment over his conduct with a foreign government is now turning scrutiny toward former President Obama and others for their roles in 2016. This is the same individual who continues to question the motives of those who investigated Russian interference—an effort widely supported by bipartisan findings—and is now using extraordinarily charged language to frame his political rivals. These aren’t just political statements; they carry real consequences in a country already strained by division.

This is not normal. This is not politics. This is autocracy in action.

And if we let this administration continue to weaponize fantasy, to criminalize dissent, and to call it patriotism, we are not just sliding toward authoritarianism—we are already there.

The warning signs aren’t subtle anymore. They’re being shouted from the Oval Office.

So ask yourself: Are we still a nation of laws? Or are we now a nation of loyalty tests, where the truth is determined not by evidence, but by allegiance to the king?

Because once the facts are gone, all that’s left is fear.

23/07/2025

View from The Hill: Nationals’ mavericks ensure the Coalition is the issue in parliament’s first week ( Michelle Grattan. Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra and The Conversation)

For almost as long as anyone can remember, the Nationals have caused the Coalition grief on climate and energy policy. Still, for Barnaby Joyce to bring on a fresh load of trouble - with a private member’s bill to scrap Australia’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 – in Sussan Ley’s first parliamentary week as opposition leader was beyond provocative.

And for Michael McCormack to support him reinforced the impression the Nationals don’t give a fig about the wider interests of a Coalition confronting very dark days.

The bill will go nowhere but the issue will tear at the opposition.

Both Joyce and McCormack are former leaders, and they are former rivals. In 2021 Joyce overthrew McCormack as leader. McCormack used to be a supporter of net zero. Joyce, as deputy prime minister, did a deal with then prime minister Scott Morrison for the Nationals to back net zero before Morrison went to the Glasgow COP conference in 2021. The Nationals are their own game of snakes and ladders.

Now Joyce says he never supported the net zero target – which is sort of correct, because his own position during that deal (involving the trade off of promised huge infrastructure spending) was near impossible to fathom.

On why stir the issue in the first parliamentary week, Joyce says, “Now is the time, when the agenda has not been set”.

McCormack says he supported net zero in 2021 because Australia was suffering the trade restrictions imposed by China and needed to expand its exports to Europe, where many countries required the commitment. The farmers in his Riverina electorate wanted him to support it, he says.

Despite disclaimers, this undermines the authority of Nationals leader David Littleproud, already weakened by the events around the temporary split in the Coalition after the election. The Nationals obtained their several policy demands (that didn’t relate to net zero) but Littleproud came in for a good deal of criticism.

The Nationals are split over net zero, but it is looking increasingly difficult for those who want to preserve the commitment to hold the line. Joyce says he hopes the numbers are there in the party room to ditch it, and he suspects they are but “I don’t know”. McCormack believes the numbers are there.

While Littleproud says he is waiting for the party’s own review, under net zero opponent senator Matt Canavan, he suggested the net zero commitment was “trying to achieve the impossible rather than doing what’s sensible”.

The Liberals are divided too, but those wanting to end the commitment are in a minority. Former frontbencher Jane Hume spoke out on Wednesday, stressing how important the commitment was. “Over and over, the electorate has told us that they want to see a net zero energy future,” she told Sky. “My personal opinion is that this is profoundly important for not just the electorate, but also for our country.”

But if the Nationals repudiated the net zero target, that would embolden the Liberal critics and probably add to their number. It would drive a wedge into the Coalition, and might be serious enough to split it.

The Ley critics within the Liberals won’t be shedding any tears over the damage, now and later, that this issue will do her. Neither will Littleproud – it’s well known the two are not close.

Ley herself can only say the opposition has a working group looking at energy and emissions reduction policy. But she knows this is simply a holding position. It’s impossible to think that the working group, headed by energy spokesman Dan Tehan, can come up with any policy position that unites two diametrically opposed positions.

Tehan said of Joyce and McCormack, “They’re two steers fighting in the neighbour’s paddock”. The flaw with this dismissal is that the steers are actually part of the broad Coalition herd.

In the first question time of the new parliament, the opposition wasn’t able to score any hits on the government. The prime minister and other ministers were able to shrug off questions about Labor’s proposed tax on unrealised capital gains on big superannuation balances, and other issues. Energy Minister Chris Bowen had been handed ammunition to deploy against the opposition.

The overwhelming message of the day was that the opposition had made itself the issue. From the Coalition’s point of view, the problem is this damaging conversation will go on a long time.

23/07/2025

So does this mean the Opposite

Barnaby Joyce says he has no intention of challenging David Littleproud’s leadership of the Nationals, despite taking the spotlight vowing to introduce a private member’s bill to ditch net zero. Speaking to ABC’s 7.30, he denied his political career has evolved into his “being an agent of chaos”. More to follow .

23/07/2025

Just who in the hell does Scott Morrison think he is - do the Yanks know Morrison was the most Incompetent Prime Minister ever in the History of our Commonwealth
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Morrison says Australia becoming less willing to resist Chinese pressure ( Guardian Live )

Scott Morrison has warned that the ability of the Australian political system to resist pressure from China is “somewhat in jeopardy”. Giving evidence at a hearing of the US House of Representatives committee on China in Washington overnight, the former prime minister said the objective of the Chinese state was to undermine democracies and that the west had to be “clear-eyed” about the threat.

Scott Morrison said the ability of the Australian political system to resist pressure from China was “somewhat in jeopardy” when he appeared at a hearing of the US House of Representatives committee on China in Washington overnight.

The former prime minister warned US lawmakers that it was vital for western nations to “build internal resilience” and resist what he said were attempts to interfere in politics and curb free speech.

Citing polling by the Lowy Institute, the former prime minister told US lawmakers that “for the first time in quite a number of years there is a greater value on the economic partnership with China than concerns about the security threat”.

“That is an objective of the CCP [Chinese communist party],” Morrison told the committee. “That western democracies go to sleep on the threat.”

Morrison warned US lawmakers that western countries were “kidding” themselves if they thought that discussion and engagement with Beijing would change the regime’s “mindset”.

Responding to an invitation by the committee’s chairman, Republican John Moolenaar, to comment on Beijing’s infamous list of 14 complaints about Australia issued to his government, Morrison said the Communist party “fundamentally has a problem with representative democracies”.

“There are some irreconciliable differences between an authoritarian regime in China … and the activities of free and open states.

A free and open Indo-Pacific – that is a threat and a challenge to regime security in China.

And I think we have to be clear eyed about this and not pretend that somehow it will be resolved through discussion.

Discussion is fine, engagement is good – it’s better than the alternative.

But if we think it that is going to produce change in the mindeset of Beijing then we’re frankly kidding ourselves.

He said that the west had to work to avoid conflict and that “that requires deterrence and a wide-eyed appreciation of what the Chinese state is all about”.

He went on:

Even most moderate leaders like Jiang Zemin … still said that the US was looking to destroy their socialist system. They won’t change so we have to deal with that reality.

23/07/2025

Cutting HECS debt is the least Albanese could do for young Australians. He should do more

It may seem an age since the federal election, but the new parliament has just convened for the first time. Anthony Albanese will be giving top priority to enacting his election commitments – “an honest politician? Really?” – and starting with his promise to cut uni graduates’ HECS debt by 20 per cent.

Unsurprisingly, the promise was popular, meaning the Coalition and the Greens won’t want to make themselves unpopular by blocking the cut in the Senate. In any case, the Greens’ policy is to abolish uni fees – a fairyland promise that’s easy to make when you know you’ll never have the numbers to keep it.

But just because a cut in graduates’ debt is popular doesn’t necessarily make it good policy. Is it? No and yes.

HECS – the higher education contribution scheme – now called HECS HELP because some imaginative smarty thought of adding the moniker “higher education loan program,” began life 36 years ago as an eminently fair and sensible way of helping the government afford to provide university education to a much higher proportion of our youth.

Over the years, however, successive governments have stuffed around with it, making it less generous and less sensible. So something needed to be done, but simply cutting the size of graduates’ debts doesn’t really fix the problem.

It’s clear that being provided with a uni education gives a young person a great private benefit: a lifetime of earning a wage usually much higher than most non-graduates earn. So it’s fairer to non-graduates to ask graduates to contribute towards the cost of their education.

It’s also true, however, that those taxpayers who don’t benefit from higher education still benefit from being able to work in an economy alongside more highly skilled workers. This “public benefit” justifies not requiring graduates to pay anything like the full cost of their education.

But the trouble with bringing back uni fees was the risk that it could deter bright kids from poor families from seeking to better themselves. This is where the designer of HECS, Bruce Chapman, an economics professor, came up with a brilliant Australian invention, the “income-contingent loan,” which should be up there with the Hills Hoist and the stump-jump plough.

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.

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 where 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’ve 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.

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.

The government’s changes offer justice of a kind, but the rough and ready kind.

Ross Gittins is the Economics Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

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