Fringe contestants in this week¡¯s Australian election are trumpeting new policies to ease the cost of university education, as analysts tout student debt reduction as a pathway to ballot box success.

Trumpet of Patriots, a party chaired by mining magnate and former member of parliament Clive Palmer, has proposed doubling the fees of international students to bankroll free higher education for Australians.

Meanwhile One Nation, led by anti-immigration firebrand Pauline Hanson, proposes rolling student debt ¨C commonly referred to as ¡°Hecs¡± ¨C into home loans to ¡°stop indexation from punishing graduates¡±.

Under the plan, graduates would transfer their student debts to their mortgages, to be ¡°paid off over time with simple interest¡±. One Nation candidate Tony Nikolic the ¡°smart move¡± would benefit graduates, who would avoid ¡°compounding indexation¡±, while the government would be able to ¡°reduce national debt¡± because it ¡°gets its money back faster¡±.

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The idea appears unlikely to appeal to graduates who do their sums. Student debt indexation has averaged about 2.7 per cent over the 36-year history of Australia¡¯s higher education loans scheme, and has been set at 3.2 per cent this year. 51³Ô¹Ï loan rates for owner-occupiers rarely fall below 5 per cent, and currently sit at about 6.2 per cent.

One Nation¡¯s policies also include reducing immigration by around 80 per cent, limiting it to ¡°countries that are compatible with our culture and our way of life¡±, immediately deporting 75,000 visa overstayers, banning foreign students from bringing their spouses to Australia, and ending student visa loopholes that ¡°turn study into a backdoor to permanent residency or low-wage labour¡±.

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Trumpet of Patriots, like the Australian Greens, has to abolish Hecs and forgive Australian graduates¡¯ accrued debt. Unlike the Greens, it plans to bankroll these changes by?leaning on international students rather than increasing corporate tax.

¡°If we double university fees for foreign students, we can have free university for Australians,¡± said Trumpet of Patriots¡¯ lower house leader Suellen Wrightson. ¡°Let¡¯s get our universities working for us.¡±

International students already pay significantly higher fees than their domestic peers. According to the latest available data, from 2023, they spent over A$10.7 billion (?5.1 billion) on tuition ¨C 84 per cent of all the fees and charges raised by publicly funded Australian universities ¨C despite comprising about 31 per cent of students. Their fees provided 26 per cent of universities¡¯ revenue, almost double the contribution from Hecs.

Commentators?have questioned whether this level of cross-subsidisation from foreign students is sustainable, with student visa applications plunging after the federal government introduced a raft of policies to discourage international enrolments.

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Meanwhile, the has credited the governing Labor Party¡¯s 20 per cent student debt forgiveness policy for helping to put it in a winning position in the 3 May election, as the shows Labor clinging to a slender majority on a two-party preferred basis.

The?3 million Australians with Hecs debts include some 426,000 young voters who live in critical marginal electorates in the three biggest cities, the newspaper reported. It said Labor was using debt forgiveness as a weapon to wrest key seats from the Liberal Party, Greens and independent MPs and as ¡°a defensive strategy¡± to keep some of its Melbourne and Sydney seats out of opposition hands.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com