Shearer David: Student Loan Scheme Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Shearer David: Student Loan Scheme Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:675;Page:20737] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I will follow on from Grant Robertson and suggest why this extra money is being levied on students. As I was reading through the Student Loan Scheme Bill I realised that the implementation obviously depends on a very effective computer system—a computer system that is able to do all the things that we have been mentioning in the Chamber up until now. Well there have been some problems with the computer system and I would like the Minister in the chair the Minister of Revenue to comment on this. 
From my understanding $35 million was allocated by Cabinet to upgrade the computer system. We have spent as I understand it $21 million out of that $35 million on an Oracle-based system and that system now seems to not be working or not be adequate. I quote from an industry magazine  
Computerworld 
: the “deputy commissioner of business transformation says it became apparent during the design phase that extracting the loan history and migrating data from the old system to the new system was more complex and time-consuming than expected. … we have spent $21 million out of $35 million allocated by Cabinet”. 
Basically we have gone to the “Rolls-Royce” gold-plated computer system and it simply has not worked. I put a written question to Peter Dunne asking whether that was in fact the case. Mr Dunne replied that the department has gone back to the future inland revenue systems and technology (FIRST computer system) which is the old system of computing. He said: “Inland Revenue is delivering changes to Student Loans through FIRST rather than an Oracle-based system.” We spent $21 million on the Oracle system. That now seems not to have been money well spent; it has not delivered the outcomes that we wanted. We have gone back to the old FIRST computer system. I quote again from the  
Computerworld  
magazine: “Although this approach”—the Oracle-based system—“has been abandoned ‘the long-term plan is still to move eventually away from FIRST which is now more than 20 years old … Work done on FIRST in recent years along with planned modifications means we are confident it will perform …’ ” but will be eventually replaced. 
We have now spent on Oracle $21 million out of $35 million that has been allocated by Cabinet to upgrade the computer system so it can do all the things we have been talking about in this bill. We have spent that $21 million. We have now found that the Oracle system will not work so we have gone back to an older system the FIRST computer system. But we know that the FIRST computer system will be inadequate into the future and we will have to upgrade it. My question really is about what is going on here. It seems to me that $21 million of taxpayers’ money has been squandered on a new computer system yet again. We have had all sorts of problems with computer systems and $21 million—as I think you will appreciate Mr Chair—is a lot of money to waste or certainly to have not fulfilled the computing needs of the student loan system in relation to moving it into the 21st century. 
I would like the Minister to take a call on this and explain what exactly has happened to the $21 million what has happened to the Oracle system why we are back again on the FIRST computer system which we consider an old system and what the plan is for the future so that we can have some confidence that all the changes that we are supporting in this bill might in fact be allowed to go ahead.