Federal election 2025: Greens push for $46.5b package for free higher education

The Australian Greens will on Monday pledge to push Labor to spend $46.5 billion to provide free higher education for all if they hold the balance of power in a minority government.

The election promise to woo younger voters builds on another pitch last week to reform negative gearing and end capital gains tax discounts on investment properties to help renters and first home buyers.

According to the party’s calculations based on Parliamentary Budget Office figures, the cost of the plan to make university and TAFE courses free would amount to $46.5 billion dollars over the forward estimates.

The PBO response, however, stresses that the financial implications of the proposal are “very uncertain” and sensitive to key assumptions including course enrolment and fees and behavioural responses by students and education providers.

The party says the extra cash needed for its plan would be funded by taxing big corporations, which it has previously claimed would raise $514 billion dollars over the next decade.

“Young people are being crushed by increasing student debt while they struggle with paying rent or affording the basics, in a housing and cost of living crisis,” said Greens leader Adam Bandt.

“In a wealthy country like ours, everyone should be able to have a good quality education. One in three big corporations pay zero tax. We should tax big corporations and billionaires to fund what we all need, like free tertiary education.”

Mr Bandt and Senator Mehreen Faruqi, spokesperson on Higher Education, will announce the blueprint in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s electorate of Grayndler to underscore that he benefited from a free degree no longer available to students.

The Greens’ proposal points out that when Mr Albanese studied a Bachelor of Economics at the University of Sydney, he paid no fees for a course that now would leave a student nearly $51,000 in debt.

It points to independent polling that shows a clear majority of people support free university and TAFE (58 per cent), with 68 per cent of Australians agreeing that student debt levels are too high.

“Prime Minister Albanese, who went to uni for free, is now watching from the sidelines as young people’s dreams of going to university turn into nightmares,” said Senator Faruqi.

“Young people are rethinking going to university because of skyrocketing fees or they are drowning in decades of debt, while Labor tinkers around the edges at best.”

The minority party’s other key pledges include adding dental treatment to Medicare, ending native forest logging and providing free, universal, high quality childcare.