It’s axiomatic that a better educated community makes for a fairer, more productive, more prosperous nation.

But Australia has a cost-of-learning crisis, just as much as we have a cost-of-living crisis. And it’s all our governments’ work.

Millions of Australians have done the right thing – studying hard at school and university, getting a degree, working and paying taxes.

But they have HECS debts they cannot pay off, so they’re struggling to fulfil their dreams to have a family of their own, buy a home and live in reasonable comfort.

HECS debts and other student loans are indexed on June 1 every year. If your salary was more than $67,000 in the past 12 months, your employer has withheld money from your salary to repay your HECS debts and student loans.

However, those repayments were not deducted from your HECS balance before indexation was calculated and added by the Australian Tax Office last month.

In other words, graduates’ debts are calculated on HECS liabilities they have already paid. They’re being charged interest on a debt they have already paid down.

That anomaly was recently costed for me by the Parliamentary Budget Office as costing graduates $3.2 billion over the next 10 years – $3.2 billion that could be put........

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