Woods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16444. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is a pleasure to take a call after that sanctimonious lecture from someone about student loan schemes—someone who would not have paid for his own tertiary education. As someone who did pay and borrow for her tertiary education it is something that I find quite offensive. What we have had is the ongoing dribble from the opposite benches about how this is about personal responsibility and if you borrow money of course you have to pay it back—no argument over here. We have said: “Yes if people borrow money they should pay it back.” Our objection to the piece of legislation that we have in front of us the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) is not only grounded in terms of equity and fairness but about the fact that it is not going to work. I will come back to that a little bit later.We have been told that this is legislation that is going to send a message and then we get some kind of character from some kind of pantomime sitting in the corner of the Government benches who just yells out “Communists!” from time to time whenever an Opposition member is speaking. Well we do not think it is communist to expect that we have some kind of equality of access to tertiary education in this country. We think there is a public good in that. We would not think it was too radical. But really what that comedy character sitting in the corner over there is demonstrating is this Government’s antipathy to people getting an education and to the fact that there should be tertiary education that is accessible to a wide variety of New Zealanders regardless of their parents’ income.This is entirely fitting with moves that the National Government has made right throughout the time this bill has been before the House to restrict the number of New Zealanders who can receive access to enter tertiary education. If you are aged over 40 this Government has told you that you are too old and not worth investing in. It has no idea of any kind of belief in lifelong learning or the fact that people can retrain and they will have some kind of value to New Zealand. No this Government has deemed thatyou are no longer worth investing in. That is it. If you have had your 3 years of student allowance you are over and out; you are not going to receive any more support from the Government.Over here on the Opposition benches we think this bill is short-sighted and again points to this Government’s rhetoric about its belief in transforming New Zealand. It shows how arrogant and out of touch the Government is that it thinks that New Zealand can get ahead by restricting education and training for New Zealanders. Over here on the Labour benches we know that New Zealand will be a better place if more people can get into education and training. Our desire is not to dampen the demand for tertiary education as is the self-declared aim of the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment—to keep people out of tertiary education. This is the same Minister who talks a big game about science and innovation leading our economy. Well he has also cut postgraduates from having a student allowance. Way to go for an innovation-led economy to stop people doing wasteful things like postgraduate research! Who knows we may turn into an economy like one of those Scandinavian nations that values things like research and that understands what that is worth to them as a country.What I would like to see through the course of this debate is one—just one—speaker from the Government benches get up. We are now at the third reading of this piece of legislation. I have sat in this House and listened to tired old drivel from the Government benches about how this is about personal responsibility about how this is sending a message. Well I would like to know how this piece of legislation is going to work. When we believe they will work Labour has supported the Government on measures to make the repayment of student loans easier and to collect more of the student loan debt. We have supported the Government on measures around making changes to the Inland Revenue Department website—the fact that it would not be so difficult that essentially international bank transfers would have to occur in order for those living overseas to meet their student loan obligations. We have supported them because we think they are positive moves and they actually will make it easier for New Zealanders living overseas to repay their student loans. But we will not support a gimmick that is not going to work that is unfair and that criminalises what is a civil matter.My colleague Grant Robertson read some bits from the regulatory impact statement—the regulatory impact statement that comes before this House—that have not been redacted because the Government does not actually want us to know what the options were. When it comes to options—other things that we consider—there is a blank page. This is how much consideration this Government has given to what the real options that might work are and perhaps why we can only hear the speech notes being regurgitated time and time again from the members opposite because they have nothing of substance to say. This is just more arrogant out-of-touch legislation that is about trying to look tough when it is not going to achieve anything.I would like to do a little bit of a reading—David Bennett: Oh don’t bother. Just don’t bother.Dr MEGAN WOODS:—from the regulatory impact statement from where it comes to how this is actually going to work in practice. Actually the comedy character in the corner is yelling out something other than “Communist!”. I wonder what it was.This is how the legislation is going to work: “…Inland Revenue would request information from airlines under section 17 of the Tax Administration Act to determine which flight a borrower is booked on. This information would be provided to Police stationed at the airport who would have to locate the defaulter before they boarded their flight.”—a good use of police resource—“Police have advised that as this would have to be achieved without photos often in large crowded areas this could be difficult and time consuming.” This is from the very organisation that is supposed to be the body thatimplements these crazy lunatic gimmicks that the Government is proposing. The police are telling them it is not going to work. But yet again Government members will stand up and they will dutifully read from their arrogant and out-of-touch speech notes that this is about sending a message and about us getting tough on defaulters when all the time they are narrowing the number of New Zealanders who will receive the benefit of a tertiary education in this country.This is a Government that will consider it a success if it can deny more and more New Zealanders access to a university a polytech or any form of training. This is not something that we think is in any way beneficial to New Zealand. We think that regardless of your ability to pay to go and learn a trade or go to university or your family’s ability to pay for you if you have the talent you should be able to do that. I have not heard one piece of evidence from the members opposite. I challenge the next Government speaker to depart from their speech notes with the tired old lines and to actually tell us how it is going to work because the police have told us that it is not. I would like to know how it is that this legislation is going to work.The original intent of the student loan scheme was to make access to education available to more New Zealanders. That is what we in Labour will cling dearly to. We will not in any way support the Government’s move to narrow access to education. If it really did want to get real about reducing the debt that defaulting student loan borrowers owe to New Zealand and to the New Zealand taxpayer then it would have looked at some things that could have worked. It would have looked at measures about entering into repayment arrangements with people. When Labour was in Government and we put in place such a scheme there was a huge surge in the number of people who went on repayment plans started paying their loans and were no longer defaulters on their loans. The Government has the evidence—a good field trial—of what actually did work but instead it is resorting to fanciful gimmicks that sounded good on Budget day to try to appeal to its base rather than something that will actually tackle this problem.This is not the way that we are going to build a better New Zealand. This is not the way that we are going to have an economy that is fit for the 21st century and based on us having a highly skilled highly educated workforce and not excluding large numbers of New Zealanders from that. Not only do the individuals suffer but we as a country will suffer from this Government’s close-minded views on tertiary education.