Martin Tracey: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16028. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chairperson. That last speech was fascinating. I think the people of New Zealand have just seen slogan No. 1 for the 2014 election campaign—well at least the one in Hamilton where Mr Bennett will be campaigning. I find it fascinating that Mr Bennett has actually read some of the figures to do with the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). I think that is great. Thank you very much Mr Bennett; that is an improvement on past performances. Losing the light show that we just had let us go back to the real world and the practicalities of how this bill will affect New Zealanders as opposed to the little bit of electioneering we just saw. I am really pleased that there is a Minister in the chair—the Minister for Primary Industries. I hope the Minister may be able to answer these questions although I am not sure that it is the right Minister who is in the chair.Let us get real. We are talking about new sections 162A and 162B in clause 8. This is the clause in Part 1 that we are going to focus on to start with and it is about arresting citizens at the border. Let us talk practicalities shall we? Let us talk about the fact that as a New Zealand citizen who has an overseas debt comes into the country they swipe their passport. That is no different from when a New Zealand citizen leaves the country and they swipe their passport. I am going to make a huge leap here. I am going to make an assumption here that the passport you swipe coming into the country is exactly the same passport you swipe as you go out of the country. That means that if an alarm can go off on your way out an alarm can go off on your way in.I would ask the Minister to address the question that New Zealand First has. As a previous debt collector I am looking for practical ways for us to actually collect debt from the people whom we are trying to collect it from. If a New Zealand citizen swipes their passport on the way into the country and they have an outstanding debt an alarm will go off—not a physical alarm but a bleep in a computer system somewhere that says to the Customs Service “Uh-oh. We need to actually hold this person for a moment because there is something that the Government wants to talk to them about.” If you do that on the way into the country the person can now possibly provide you with details of bank accounts can now provide you with a third-party contact list and can now actually sit down before they go off to their wedding or their tangi or whatever it is and come to an arrangement.If there is a mistake in the record-keeping of the Inland Revenue Department—and I know that many people think that might be far-fetched but believe me it is true. The Inland Revenue Department does make mistakes. If there is an error in the data from the Inland Revenue Department that says this person owes a debt and yet they do not we have avoided a situation in which that person would then be pulled from a line if they are leaving the country and lose their flight and their family—I am not sure I would leave without my husband and my children if I was leaving the country and he was hauled off by the police because of some debt that apparently he owed the New Zealand Government. If we do that on the way into the country there is no loss of airfares there is the time that there is to actually sort out the problem if there is an error by the Inland Revenue Department and there is time to complete paperwork—all in a practical and very supportive way for a win-win situation.I would like the Minister to answer why the point of exit was chosen as opposed to the point of entry. I would love for the Minister or anybody who was actually on the Finance and Expenditure Committee to tell me whether that was discussed. Was it ever discussed?John Hayes: Why don’t you ask Winston?TRACEY MARTIN: Because I am asking you Mr Hayes. You are the people putting up the bill. If you do not know it then who does? It is the National Government that is putting forward this bill and it is for the National Government to explain to the people of New Zealand why it will arrest them as they leave their country. It is not for me to explain your policies. It is for you to understand why your Government has decided to arrest New Zealanders as they leave as opposed to creating exactly the same system exactly the same amount of cost exactly the same amount of paperwork and yet the possibility of a truly win-win outcome. So I ask the Minister whether he will stand and answer why the concept of actually identifying these people on entry as opposed to exit is not inside this bill. If you can justify it that is brilliant but I am picking from Mr Hayes’ contribution that you cannot actually justify it.Let us go to point No. 2; perhaps the Minister can explain this. What is the rush? What is this rush to force this through the Committee stage and the third reading—to push it through?Joanne Hayes: $2 billion of debt.TRACEY MARTIN: I will tell you what. I know the answer to that same question Mr Hayes but I am quite sure you do not. It is because on the StudyLink website it is already advertised. It is already advertised as being in law that this Government will arrest New Zealanders. So we now have to rush in this House and go into extended hours and so on and so forth to put into place legislation so that what has already been placed on the StudyLink website what is already concerning New Zealand citizens overseas can actually be a law. Right now this is fraudulent. This is fraudulent because it is not law. There is no guarantee it will pass except that this Government is arrogant enough to believe that not one of its minor parties will have the audacity to actually change its view.Let us talk about Mr Bennett talking about hard-working people etc. etc. It is actually not young people whom most of this debt belongs to. Fourteen percent of this particular debt that we are talking about is from borrowers from 1992 so let us not place this on young people again shall we? These are the figures inside the Government’s own report that unfortunately it would appear that the Government has not read. Fourteen percent of the outstanding amount is from borrowers from 1992. What this tells you is that it is unlikely you are going to get that amount of money—and that is 14 percent of the number of borrowers not 14 percent of the amount overdue outstanding.Let us go to the outstanding. Let us go to the fact that—and perhaps the Minister would like to answer this—the Inland Revenue Department recognises debt as overdue debt only when it is 5 years overdue or more. Just recently we changed the repayment holiday for overseas-based borrowers to a 1-year repayment holiday but prior to that it was a 3-year repayment holiday. Why on earth would you not recognise at the end of that 3-year period that this is now an overdue debt? For a debt collector the reality is that the longer you do not make contact with that person the less likelihood there is that they will pay it. So where inside this bill or any legislation or in any discussion is it stated that the Inland Revenue Department has been told to recognise overdue debt in the future as that that is perhaps 14 months old so that it starts making contact in a time frame in which it is possible to collect?The next point is how has the passing of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 affected the ability of borrowers to repay? Has anybody asked? The banks are currently looking at that. The banks are currently looking at the four groups of our citizens that have been disadvantaged by that particular Act—the money-laundering Act. It is an unintended consequence of that Act that if you are overseas and trying to send money back to New Zealand there is now a great deal more paperwork and a great deal more cost to you to do so. So has the Inland Revenue Department or the advisers to the Minister looked at how that 2009 Act has affected the ability of these people to pay? Is it about assisting our citizens to pay or is it as the Labour Party says merely a political ploy for this election?Is it the fact that there is actually nothing else the Government can get tough on with regard to crime—because it does not want to fund police and so on and so forth—so now we are going to just start putting forward sound bites like arresting our citizens at the border for debt? You get situations like with Mr Bennett who stands and rants and raves generally having never read the bill and generally having no concern at all for the New Zealand public or any student anywhere whom I have ever seen. But he stands there and starts to use clichés to try to spin what this bill is so that the New Zealand public thinks the Government is doing something. I can guarantee the New Zealand public—particularly if the Minister does not get up and answer these questions—that this Government is not doing something apart from putting in place another nuance to being able to actually arrest its citizens at the border when it sees fit.That is where we start to tend towards more of a police State. There is more and more and more of this insidious creep I think it is called where this Government starts to chip away and chip away and chip away at things that New Zealanders can do. New Zealand I implore you to listen to people like Mr Bennett listen to him very very carefully and see that there is no content whatsoever to what Mr Bennett said and have a look at what they are chipping away because this will be your son this will be your daughter and this will be your grandchild before you know it.