Goldsmith Paul: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16039. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to follow the previous speaker Grant Robertson. I am intrigued because I hear all the Opposition spokesmen saying that the Opposition is not opposed to the idea of people paying back their loans and being obliged to pay back their loans but it just seems that those members never happen to agree with any of the ideas put forward. The approach of the Labour Party seems to be that if we talk to people and we ask really really nicely then perhaps they might pay back their loans. Well it does not work that way and it has not been working that way and that is why this legislation has been brought in as a very last-ditch measure. If you have one of the 61000 New Zealanders overseas who have got student loans who have left the country and who are not paying back their loans and if you have exhausted all other opportunities to get them to start paying back their loans then this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) gives us the tools that we need.Do we really think that the hard-working factory workers on modest wages should be paying taxes to pay for highly trained overseas people who have bunked with the cash and are not paying back their loans? Well then I think that is why the Labour Party is a bit out of touch. It was interesting to see also the previous speaker Mr Robertson suggesting that we do something about people hiding their money in trusts so that they could get student allowances. Well you know we actually passed legislation that broadened the definition of income of parents for student allowances and for student loans. We have been doing that and we will continue to work in that area.It is a long slow process because it does take and it will take decades for New Zealanders to wean themselves off this entitlement culture that has developed: the idea that somehow every solution to every problem we have got in this country is that we just need more money. Mr Robertson was a perfect example of that in the previous speech. The solution to the problem is just more money. That is what we need to do: have more money to spend on student allowances and student loans. Well there are not necessarily endless supplies of more money. New Zealand has to fight its way and be competitive in a global world that is competitive. We get to spend resources on education and on tertiary education and on supporting students only if we have a strong economy and we have a strong economy only if we are disciplined about the way that we spend our money. That is why this Government has been successful by having a disciplined approach to spending getting back to surplus and doing a good job and it is why we continue to have the same levels of support that continue. It is why Labour is I think struggling to get attention and traction because it is all about spending more.Just dealing with some aspects of Part 2 that I wanted to draw the attention of the Committee to in terms of the new arrangements in terms of paying back loans previously yes we do have overseas-based borrowers’ repayment obligations—Kris Faafoi: Bring out the formula!PAUL GOLDSMITH: —being based on their loan balance while New Zealand - based borrowers’ obligations are based on income. I do not want to confuse the Opposition by dealing with the mathematics because I am sure that not all of them are so good at mathematics but what I would say is that if there was a perfect way of figuring out what the income of overseas people was then that would be a sensible way of doing it but there is no practical way of doing that so the loan balance is what we are using here. This bill extends that. At the moment a balance of over $30000 has the obligation to pay $3000 a year. Now that obligation for loans of between $45000 and $60000 will be to pay $4000 a year or $5000 a year respectively. If people on the other side think that it is unreasonable to ask New Zealanders who have a loan of morethan $60000 that they have not paid back to their fellow New Zealanders that they start paying back that money then I think they have got a serious problem. Thank you.