Delahunty Catherine: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Delahunty Catherine: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9379] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. I was on the Education and Science Committee that examined the Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill and I found it a positive experience. Green members have a positive view of the bill even though we are opposing it. We are not carping and whining as much as asserting the value of a student loan scheme that does not punish people who are already in trouble. That is why we are voting against the bill. 
There were only five submitters to the committee and only two of them made oral presentations. They all made valid points. Everyone was supportive of the extension of interest-free loans to borrowers from the Pacific and the Ross Dependency etc. In relation to those students undertaking full-time overseas study under a New Zealand Government - approved formal exchange programme there was some debate over the detail of that second proposal. 
The New Zealand University Students Association made some really important points when it appeared before us. As the body representing a large number of students its voice is regarded by us as being particularly pertinent to any bill that amends the student loan scheme. Many of us have theoretical or parental interest in how the scheme works but the New Zealand University Students Association is working on the front line of the effects on students of this credit and debt system. The association supported much of the bill including the technical amendment allowing borrowers returning to Aotearoa New Zealand who wished to repay their loans before meeting the 183-day requirement for an interest-free student loan to be able to do so. It strongly supported that amendment. However it strongly opposed the Commissioner of Inland Revenue being able to raise the compulsory repayment deduction from the salary and wages of borrowers to 15c in the dollar when payments were overdue. 
Green members were at least part of stopping the Inland Revenue Department from putting penalties on students whom the department itself had failed to notify of overdue debt. As the association pointed out this is the worse possible time with unemployment and especially youth unemployment increasing and the increasing cost of living to add extra penalties to people who are indebted. I know that some members of the select committee will never agree with me but some very poor people are not lazy and unmotivated. They just do not have enough money to cover all their costs. We have encouraged poorer people to see education as the solution to poverty and to go and get that education. We have made them pay for that education and now we are punishing those who are not able to keep up repayments. At the end of their studies there is absolutely no guarantee for many people including women migrants and refugees and tangata whenua and Pasifika people—let alone students with disabilities who are the most discriminated against group of people in this entire country in terms of employment opportunity—to get a well-paying job that will help them keep up with the level of debt and to have a consistent earning record that will allow them to keep up with their payments and not get overdue. 
Some of the discussion in the select committee expressed a highly punitive approach to the problem of unpaid student debt which is similar to comments I hear in this Chamber and elsewhere about beneficiaries. There are the good and the motivated but then there are the bad and the disorganised and the latter must be made to pay. This kind of thinking is a result of the scheme itself. It has not only created inequity but it has exposed inequity. Some of us were able to contribute to some part of our children’s educational costs and some of us were not but a loan is a loan and it must be repaid. All of this is inevitably unfair when the core of universality is abandoned in favour of market forces and the bloodless coup of the 1980s is still framing our education system and its debates our accident compensation our health debates and our economy as a whole. 
There is always one question to be asked of each bill before the House: who really benefits? In terms of this bill the Inland Revenue Department will benefit. But who really cares about the social chaos that ripples outwards for every increase in student debt repayment rates? On that basis we oppose this bill.