Boomers should pay

Its been a while but I had a letter published in Melbourne's The Age today.

Boomers should pay

BRUCE Chapman wants to make Australians holidaying or working overseas pay HECS (The Age, 12/12). That's fine, but he ignores the bigger problem with HECS. HECS is a tax on education imposed by the baby boomer generation on those born from the 1970s onward. There is no intergenerational equity in HECS.

A doctor, lawyer, public servant, or accountant who went through university before HECS has by default a higher earning capacity than a professional who went through university in the 1990s, or even worse, after 1996. A real reform to HECS would not be to abolish it, or cut its rates, but to introduce intergenerational equity.

Make everyone who has benefited from public funding of a university course, ever, and who is still in the workforce, pay a contribution back to the government. That way doctors, lawyers, public servants and accountants and even Bruce Chapman would have to pay — just like a 23-year-old graduate of nursing or teaching. It's time for some real intergenerational equity, not more penny pinching from the baby boomers.

Christopher Anderson, Brunswick West