Clark David: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16040. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): That vote of confidence from my colleagues is welcome. Of course everybody wanted the opportunity to speak after that purler from Mr Goldsmith. There was quite a lot of competition on this side of the Chamber to draw attention—further attention—to the speech that Mr Goldsmith has just made. Mr Goldsmith just told New Zealand students that they need to wean themselves off their entitlement culture. If people at home heard that Mr Goldsmith said that it would take a lot longer than 5 years for them to wean themselves off their entitlement culture. That is Mr Goldsmith’s O-week message to the students of New Zealand. Students need to wean themselves off entitlement culture. [Interruption] What was that?Grant Robertson: It’s an entitlement they have to pay back.Dr DAVID CLARK: It is an entitlement they have to pay back Mr Robertson points out. This of course is a boon to members on this side of the Chamber because it points towards the very difference that we are debating here. We have in this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) encapsulated National’s punitive approach towards students. Those members do not like the interest-free student loan scheme. They never have. They introduced the scheme with interest and then Labour introduced the interest-free scheme and of course subsequently National introduced some administrative fees as a substitute for an interest charge because it could not get away with putting an interest charge back on.It is O-week so I am hoping that those students at home are not out doing other things like toga parties and the other culturally enriching things that students do during orientation week but are at home reminding themselves of the stance of Mr Goldsmith and that message that students need to wean themselves off entitlement culture.Mr Goldsmith lives in a world where this is in his view free money—this is free money. It is wrong that students are given loans—loans—to better themselves to better their lot and to better the lot for their family and the communities around them. I think we just need to watch Mr Goldsmith’s speech again. I am sure that other colleagues will comment on it as well but I will come back to some material that is actually in the bill. I can see colleagues are wanting to share Mr Goldsmith’s messages on Facebook and I urge students to watch his speech.In a previous life I ran a university college down in Otago. I am very very aware of how much some students struggled to meet the payments that were required of them not just in the college that I was running but in other similar colleges across Otago and that is in a place where the cost of living is somewhat lower than in other areas in the country. The reason they struggled is that the fees that are charged just to live reflect the real cost. Obviously a college can buy in bulk and get some discounts and can do things cheaper perhaps than an ordinary citizen could do them but they still cannot be low enough and affordable enough to meet the kinds of demands that students have placed on them financially. A student who works 40 hours a week for example in a minimum wage job throughout the whole summer holiday is going to really struggle to pay the deposit at the beginning of the year for a hall of residence in New Zealand. That is the way our country is structured. The wages are kept low by this Government. It has had only tiny incremental advances in the minimum wage. It has also got to do with the costs of tertiary education and the lack of generosity in the student loan scheme. This is what Mr Goldsmith calls an entitlement culture: the ability to eke through. The ability to eke through on borrowed money is what Mr Goldsmith is calling an entitlement culture.We on this side of the Chamber view education as an investment in our young people and we note that the changes proposed in Part 2 of the bill really look at the minutiae of how the formula will apply to those who are shareholders in close companies those who use motor vehicles and those who have voting interests. These details are important and they are important to get right to make sure that the system itself is fair but they do not get to the heart of the issue which is about generosity and we do not see that so much covered in Part 2 of the bill. The formula of course is laid out there. Mr Goldsmith seemed to be occupied with Part 1 of the bill and we noticed that he talked about the repayment amounts for those arrested at the border but coming back we see that Part 2 actually has a formula that adjusts for net income in the income year and it is calculated using a formula that looks like a mathematical formula—“a x (b - c)”. That formula is applied in different ways according to the voting interest the nature of the company that is held the dividends paid and so on.These are important details in respect of fairness in the system but I will come back to the point that Mr Goldsmith raised about an entitlement culture. I simply cannot take that comment seriously and I think that few New Zealanders will. Any New Zealanders who have studied will struggle to take that seriously. It might come from someone who ran and lost in Epsom with a particular world view that they were promoting that thought that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were good but did not go far enough. It might come from that particular world view that this is an entitlement culture but we on this side of the Chamber view those who borrow to better themselves and who want to repay that loan as doing a good thing for themselves and for society and we believe that this loan scheme is a good thing. That is why Labour introduced the student loan scheme in an interest-free format in the first place—so that we could have this paying forward to each generation this money that would better our society over time.I want to take a minute just as I reach the end of my time speaking to give a special welcome—a shout out—to the students arriving in Dunedin North the finest electorate in the country at the oldest and finest university in the country. Those students are very welcome in Dunedin. It is great to see their energy returning to the city. We are proud on this side of the House to support students to support the interest-free student loan scheme that we introduced and to support more generous allowances over time working towards making education more and more accessible not like the changes that this Government has brought in restricting the number of years that students can study. We see students coming in to my electorate office who are studying medicine but have now had their funding discontinued. They cannot complete their medical degrees for goodness’ sake! We have students who have undertaken a Master’s degree put off drawing down their payments because they have children and were relying on the payment in their last year to get them through who now find that they have used up their allowance availability and who are now stranded unable to complete degrees.We see a Government here that is restricting access to education in every way that it can. It is making sure that its own people are looked after but it does not care about most of New Zealand—the greater part of New Zealand society that is struggling to get ahead under a Government that really does not seem to have a plan to share the benefits of any recovery we are seeing a Government that is out of touch with New Zealand and a Government that does not seem to care about our students. On this side of the House we say: “Welcome students. Welcome to Dunedin. Have a great time. Make the most of your educational opportunities. We support you. We support you with interest-free student loans and student allowances. We on this side of the House support you. Don’t elect those guys again. They are looking for opportunities to take opportunity away from you.” On the other side of the House those members are interested inpreserving the capital the people who have the wealth. They are not interested in seeing people progress up the ladder to make themselves better and to make their families better and to increase their opportunities. Those members are against progress. They are for only entrenched interests. We support ordinary New Zealanders who want to get ahead. That is why we support the student loan scheme in its interest-free form and that is why we support student allowances that are generous. We in the Labour Party say: “Welcome students. Great to have you in town.”