Emma Gillespie

So

What that means in real terms is that over the course of a year, your employer will take HEX repayments out of your salary.

So you're getting paid maybe fortnightly, monthly, and you're seeing on your payment slips that there's money that's being deducted to go towards your HEX.

that money doesn't actually bring your HECS debt down until after the 30th of June.

So the problem here that Monique Ryan is talking about is that you are working down your debt, but you are paying indexation on money that should be bringing your debt down.

What that means is when indexation is applied,

It's added to a balance that still includes repayments you've already made during the year.

They just haven't been formally processed yet.

So you're paying indexation on debt that you've technically already started paying off.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, you're being indexed on money that should have come off your debt.

The case here is that, you know,

hex debts aren't going down in real time, but we are repaying them every single month or payslip or whenever it is.

So I think that, you know, moving that from the 1st of June to the 1st of November would mean that most people's repayments from the previous financial year would already be off their balance before the annual increase is applied.

I'll use a round number here because I'm not good at maths, but let's say you have a hex debt of $50,000 and

between the 30th of June, 2025 to the 1st of June, 2026, you've paid off $10,000 of that.

Instead of being indexed on the 1st of June on a $40,000 hex debt, you're still being indexed on a $50,000 hex debt.

And independent Monique Ryan is arguing that that is unfair and

is a flawed system that's not setting up young people for a financially secure future.

Yeah, they haven't implemented it.