Tanczos Nandor: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tanczos Nandor: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 16 June 2004. Volume:618;Page:13643. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I would first like to acknowledge some of the good things in this Budget for in particular students. I want to draw attention to the moves by the Government to raise the parental income threshold which has not been adjusted since the student loan scheme was introduced in the early 1990s. I congratulate the Hon Steve Maharey on introducing that parental income threshold adjustment and on the fact that from now on it will be inflation-adjusted. 
But there are other changes in relation to students that we in the Green Party are not so happy about—in particular the removal of the provision that treats married people as having independent circumstances from their parents. We understand that this was an attempt by the Government to address the issue of discrimination on the basis of marital status but we believe that it was a roundabout back-to-front way of addressing the problem. In fact the real discrimination as we see when we look at the student allowances is actually the discrimination against people under the age of 25. There is an assumption that they are not independent of their parents. That age-limit is totally anomalous in terms of any legislation or regulation that I can think of. 
The other recent issue that has arisen has been in relation to the fees of international students. For example I understand that a Waikato University graduate student who enrolled in 2001 for 4 years is currently affected by an increase of more than 50 percent due to fee increases inflation and other factors according to Sandy Pushpangalam the President of the Waikato Student Union. The Greens have been warning the Government about an increasing reliance on international students since the passing of the Tertiary Education Reform Bill. We believe that it is a real problem because it is putting increasing pressure on institutions resources placements and things like that. Although some may say it is a good idea to raise the fees of international students the real problem is that it is simply unfair that international students who come to this country to study have absolutely no certainty about what the cost of their study will be over the course of their degree or whatever their qualification is. 
So the New Zealand University Students Association is running a campaign on grandparenting. This is something that we strongly support and we urge the Government to look seriously at this issue because it must be seen as fair that students who come to study in this country should have some certainty about the cost of their full term of study. We accept that fees can rise for new students but people who are here need to have some certainty and we hope the Government might listen to that concern. 
The Greens have been saying that we do need more investment generally in the tertiary education sector. We believe that staff salaries are not comparable with international levels and that will be an increasing problem for this country. There is increasing pressure on the resources as I have already mentioned. 
Also the issue that we like to highlight again and again is the issue of the student allowance because we know from going around the country and talking to people that the student loan scheme is impacting on this country significantly. Rural communities are telling us that it is becoming harder and harder to find professionals to practice in their areas because people cannot pay the high fees that those professionals need in order to pay off their student loans. We know about the brain drain. Young people have always left this country to get some overseas experience but it seems that more and more of them are going overseas and fewer and fewer of them are coming back. 
We know that it is becoming harder for young people to start up a business because of the impact of the student loan scheme on their getting credit. We know that young people are finding it hard to raise mortgages. The Real Estate Institute says that the number of New Zealanders owning a home has gone down from 73 percent to 65 percent in recent years. We suspect that the student loan scheme affects fertility; childless couples will become the most common family unit within the next 3 years according to Statistics New Zealand. Dr Ian Pool has described the punitive loans scheme as “probably the most anti-natalist measure ever put into legislation by a New Zealand Government”. 
That is something that we should be taking seriously. It is not just a problem for students; it is a problem for our whole country. When we consider that student debt is now reaching $7 billion—over half of that borrowed just to pay for living costs—we believe that the way to begin to address it is to introduce a universal student allowance scheme. The other thing about the student loan scheme is that students are paying 7 percent interest on their loans; this is far too high. We say that the Government must commit itself to a universal student allowance.