Uni debts climb to $66.5b

TENS of thousands of Australians at retirement age have amassed more than $1.2 billion in university debts they are unlikely to repay.

Alarming statistics from the Australian Taxation Office found in the 2018-19 financial year, three million Aussies accrued Higher Education Loan Program debts totalling a record $66.5 billion.

ATO data also said that, as of the 2017-18 financial year, there were 97,400 Australians aged 60 and over who still owed on average $13,400 each. In total, they owed a massive $1.27 billion.

After the lodging of all final tax returns from a deceased person’s estate, any remaining HELP debts are wiped. To avoid these written-off debts, the Federal Government has been forced to take action to get people to pay back their debts sooner.

This year the Government lowered the threshold for people to start paying back debts once they earn $45,881 or above. The previous threshold was $51,957.

Despite the mass amount of debt owing, Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said the Government was working hard to get the debts repaid quicker.

He said the recent change meant an additional 136,000 debtors would be forced to start making compulsory repayments.

“We did this to help ensure the long-term sustainability of Australia’s generous HELP scheme and manage the escalating growth in outstanding student debt,” Mr Tehan said.

“Only the Morrison Government was prepared to tackle the record levels of student debt, which currently stands at a staggering $66.5 billion.”

He said if the debts were left unchecked they would “spiral out of control and mean a quarter may never be repaid”.

The ATO data also found the age group that owed the biggest amount of debt was those aged 20 to 29 — 1.38 million Australians who owed $33.6 billion.

Some of the biggest HELP debt balances racked up by Australians sit at $536,000, $459,000 and $445,000.