Hughes Gareth: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hughes Gareth: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:1332] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call and oppose this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill. I would like to thank the submitters the Finance and Expenditure Committee staff and the officials who worked on it.  
The Green Party is the only party—I am not sure about New Zealand First—that is opposing this bill and we have been clear throughout the whole process of this bill from first to second reading that we are opposed to this bill because of the repayment holiday first and foremost. We are opposed because it has not been analysed we are opposed because it has not been recommended by officials and we are opposed because what we are going to see is more Kiwis moving overseas. That is going to be the outcome. It is not an outcome that we want to see on this side of the House and that is why we will be voting against it.  
The bill does three key things. The first is closing the loophole around the pay-period changes for repayment. The Green Party supports that. We think that is common sense; it is about time we did it. Secondly the bill introduces the requirement to have a New Zealand contact for a person going overseas. Again it is common sense and the Greens support it. We do not know why we did not do it more than 10 years ago because I think it is uncontroversial and everyone in the House could support it. However the third key part of the bill the repayment holiday is the reason we will be voting against this bill.  
It is coupled with the other changes made on the Government benches to tertiary education which have seen it become less accessible less affordable and in some cases downright impossible. The Government for the first time in our history is slamming the door on prospective students with its capped enrolment and is not even giving students a heads-up that they cannot enter university and that it has slammed the door on our open egalitarian system. At a time of huge economic questions and huge social questions when we are struggling for a big-picture economic strategy that is actually going to deliver prosperity and will be able to lift our kids out of poverty the Government has dropped the education ball. It has made it less affordable less accessible and in some cases impossible to be a student in New Zealand to get upskilled and to contribute to our economy.  
Instead it has gone down the path—and Minister Heatley knows all too well about this—of the “drill it mine it” approach. Coupled with the “cut it sell it” approach these are the only ideas the Government has: to sell off our assets to cut our essential services and to dig up the ground.  
In a sector where we already spend $3000 less per student than the OECD average when we are dropping down all the international tertiary education rankings this Government coupled with that ideological solution in search of a problem the voluntary student membership legislation is all about trying to harm the sector and that is our big fear in terms of the Student Loan Amendment Bill we have in front of us now.  
What we have heard from the Greens spokesperson on education Holly Walker is that there has been no empirical research and no analysis of the impact of the repayment holiday changing from 3 years to 1 year. We know that the officials advised against it and we know we are actually going to see Kiwis going overseas. National was elected and ran on a platform of seeing fewer Kiwis going across the Ditch of closing that gap with Australia yet what it is doing is legislating bills that are going to see more Kiwis move overseas. It is self-evident common sense that if people go overseas for an OE—and we know the average from the New Zealand Kea survey is actually between 3 and 5 years not 1 year—we are going to see Kiwis stay overseas. We are not going to see Kiwis diligently run home to start their repayments because the Government has changed the rules from 3 years to 1 year. What we are going to see is Kiwis move overseas and that is the advice from officials. A key question I would like to see resolved in the Committee stage is what happens to those students who apply right now or tomorrow or who applied a month ago for a 3-year exemption holiday. What happens? Do they automatically go down to 1 year? Do they exist on the 3-year current regime?  
In a nutshell what we are seeing is bad law with no empirical analysis ignoring the advice from officials and actively seeing more Kiwis move overseas. We will be having none of this and this is why we are the only party opposing this bill.