As the Senate committee inquiry into reducing the HELP slug was hearing evidence in Sydney on Friday, Catriona Jackson was on ABC radio in Darwin, expressing sympathy, contextualising reality, seizing an opportunity and keeping her members out of it

Universities Australia’s chief executive explained that while indexing debt to the CPI and lowering repayment thresholds increases the HELP payback period it did not hit people with an immediate increase.

And she responded to the idea that education should be free, “free means paid for by the taxpayer. It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s got to get funded from somewhere. If you think about that really clearly, paid for by the taxpayer means that everyone in the community is subsidising a system.”

But she acknowledged, “we need to have a really good look at the system and how it’s been tweaked and fiddled with over time and just make sure we put it back into balance so that it’s not putting too much pressure on students too early.”

Before passing problems to Mary O’Kane and team, “ we want to address them through the University Accord – a big discussion that’s going on now and a review of all the policy settings.

It was a policy focused performance. The politics weren’t bad either. That the money the Commonwealth loans students’ for study payments goes straight to universities never came up.