I love going out to O-Week events at the University of Newcastle, and last week I did just that. There was real excitement and energy amongst the students on campus. One thing kept coming up again and again, and that was student debt relief. It's good to have that word 'relief' at the end of that sentence. Returning students told me just what it meant to have their student debts cut last year. Labor cut 20 per cent off all student debt, and let's not forget that this is not just for university students. Every TAFE student that accumulated one of these debts, every apprentice and everyone under the VET schemes all stood to benefit from this scheme, delivering real relief for people in my electorate. More than 25,000 Novocastrians had 20 per cent cut off their student debt, and what relief that brought!

Let's not forget those students now studying teaching, nursing, midwifery or social work. They were telling me how thrilled they were about now being able to be paid while undertaking those mandatory placements as part of their degree program. These students do essential, demanding and often full-time work for their placements in order to qualify for professions that our communities desperately need, and so paying these students during placement is about fairness. It's about dignity. It's about making sure that cost isn't a barrier to becoming a teacher, a nurse, a midwife or a social worker. And I can tell you that those social workers, who we desperately need many more of in our communities, especially now, were doing 1,000 hours of unpaid work in order to get their degree. Think about that. They were giving up paid work in order to become a great social worker in our community. So this paid Commonwealth prac payment system is a real game changer for those students, mostly women, doing these professions. It was really energising to hear their stories and their optimism. And that's exactly why Labor is committed to backing students and investing in our future workforce.