A headline in The Australian this morning reads “Student loan: Poll backs current repayment threshold”.

In a American-style voting system where the largest single minority wins, I guess that’s right. The current threshold is $54,126, and 27% of respondents chose the nearest $10,000 increment of $50,000 (slide below).

But another way of looking at it is that half of all the sample, and about two-thirds of those who offered a view, came up with a number below the current $54,126. The 2014 Budget proposed reducing the threshold to $50,638. Nearly a quarter of respondents offered a number below the $42,000 we recommended in our report last week.

According to The Australian‘s article respondents were not told the current threshold. If they had been, I expect that there would have been stronger status quo bias. Still, for an issue that has not been prominent until recently I think these poll results are reasonably good, from a reformist perspective.

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The poll was conducted by MetaPoll. No precise details on the methodology were published, although younger people were less in favour of a lower threshold than older people.