Cunliffe David: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8958. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Fortuitous—a spontaneous eruption in support of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). The title and commencement debate is an opportunity for us to summarise the key themes of the bill— 
David Bennett 
: Don’t rate yourself too much mate. You only had eight vote for you. Even Kevin Rudd had more vote for him. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: It is not a dairy farming bill Mr Bennett. You can go back to sleep thank you very much. 
This is a bill that the Labour Opposition supports for two reasons. Firstly it does take some small steps—some would say baby steps—towards ironing out some creases on the equity side of the student loan scheme. Predominantly it broadens the definition of income to include income from trusts companies superannuation schemes and other forms of income so that net income rather than gross narrow income is the basis for calculating entitlements and that is the discussion that we have had in the previous part—Part 3. 
Secondly what it does as we have discussed earlier is allow information sharing between the Customs Service and the Inland Revenue Department so that the Inland Revenue Department can access the contact details of overseas-based borrowers who are in serious default. And that brings us to a very sobering truth. National campaigned on a brighter future. Remember those big posters—“Kiss goodbye to higher taxes not your loved ones.”? That was probably before the car-park tax and the iPad tax and a few other barking mad taxes. What have we seen? We have seen a gross— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —narrowing of the scope of the debate to the commencement date and title of the bill which of course is the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) in fact. 
We are in the Committee stage summing up the debate on that point by reminding listeners that this bill could be said to be the “Fiddling While Rome Burns Student Loan Amendment Bill”. We have over $2.5 billion in accumulated student loan debt and this bill over a period of—wait for it—4 or 5 years changes the balance by $7 million. How typical of the National Government—that relaxed Key “do nothing” Government. We have got a $2.5 billion problem and the Government can muster the courage signalling to address $7 million over 5 years. That is $1 million a year in the face of a $2500 million problem. Whoopee whoopee! But at least it is sensible. That is why we are supporting it—at least it is sensible. 
The fact is that the people who receive income from a trust or a company should count that as income for the purposes of their student loan repayments—that is the only fair thing. Although Labour has supported many efforts to improve the repayment of debt from overseas-based borrowers we do not support the Government’s last major change which was to cut the repayment holiday for overseas borrowers from 3 years to 1 year. We do support on the other hand the removal of the 10 percent bonus for quick repayments because of course that was— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! That is not in the bill. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Yes it is in Part 3 which is covered by the— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No. Just concentrate on what is in the bill. That is not part of the bill. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Part 3 is not part of the bill? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No we have done Part 3. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: We have done Part 3 exactly. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: We are on the peroration clauses 1 and 2. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: So taking the time on the title and commencement clauses as an opportunity to sum those themes up we could call this bill the “Student Loan Scheme Amendment (Removal of Silver Spoon Bonus Repayments) Bill”. That would of course satisfy that rule that we are able to sum up the key themes of the bill in the title. In so doing we are recognising that the 10 percent fast repayment bonus really was unnecessary and it really benefited only those who did not need to be benefited because they were already able to repay more quickly and thus have an outstanding balance for less time. 
There are all sorts of other problems with the bill. If we look at this bill perhaps we might call it the “Student Loan Amendment (Unfinished Business) Bill” because we have these weird paradoxes that the Government has not touched—in fact that it is responsible for—like you cannot have a student loan for postgraduate study. What do they think? How are people going to do postgraduate study? Or are the only people worthy of getting PhDs the trust-fund babies? Where does that come from? I mean what is the rationale for that? 
Hon Maryan Street 
: What happens to the health system? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: What happens to the health system as the Hon Maryan Street has just asked. How are people supposed to get postgraduate tertiary medical qualifications? [ 
Bell rung 
] Mr Chair. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The Hon David Cunliffe. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: Thank you Mr Chairman for the very generous and not altogether foreseen opportunity to extend the debate on the title and commencement clauses but a very welcome one. I shall probably take only another two or three calls on this matter. 
Over-55-year-olds were stopped from accessing student loans in Budget 2011. That was disgraceful. Part-time students can no longer borrow from the student loan scheme for course-related costs as of Budget 2010. This is kind of a litany of penny-pinching is it not? Budget 2010— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! Those things are not in the bill. I just ask the member to focus on what is in the bill. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The bill of course is contextualised by the changes that came before but I do take your point. Thus I suggested that the title of the bill be the “Student Loan Amendment (Unfinished Business) Bill” and that is some of the business that is unfinished. Budget 2012 froze the student loan parental income threshold and that is part of the reason we are back again in this bill to broaden the definition of income as we are here today. 
In the previous part we looked at a number of technical amendments. We could also call this bill the “Student Loan (Technical Amendment Hard to Understand) Bill”. It is very important that members of Parliament do cast their eyes over so-called technical amendments because it has been known in the “Sir Humphrey rule book” that some of the most intriguing and long-lasting changes are smuggled through as a mere change of a comma the addition of a plus or minus sign or the word “not” before a sentence. Those technical amendments can often make quite a big difference—changing the decimal place on a tax rate for example might make quite a big difference depending on one’s income stratum. So it is important that we bear in mind the technical detail in a bill like this 
Summing up in terms of the title and commencement clause the title “Student Loan Scheme (Missed Opportunity) Amendment Bill” touches on two small changes: the broadening of the definition of income and the allowing of information sharing. They are good as far as they go but the bottom line is we have got a $2.5 billion debt problem. At the same time we have got a whole bunch of people who cannot access student loans. The rigidity of the scheme is creaking under its own weight and in the face of such significant problems the Government has seen fit to tweak only two definitional aspects. 
One would have thought that a title for this bill might be the “Student Loan Scheme (Everything in the Garden is Bloody Near Rosy) Bill” but it is not. Everything in the country is not nearly rosy because we have got 270000 children growing up in poverty hundreds of thousands of people unemployed a sluggish recovery— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: —the worst economic record in 51 years and it is time I sat down. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I think so.