Street Maryan: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 May 2010. Volume:663;Page:11122. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I wish to speak to Part 1 of the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill. There is only one part I wish to speak to which is the increase in GST. I would like to unpack that a little bit in so far as the way it will impact on students. It seems to me that in this Budget tertiary education is the big loser—tertiary education across the board is the big loser. 
It does not matter how the Government chooses to spin this. Let us have a look at some of the facts and the details. There will be a GST increase which all students will feel on their rent their food and their books. We have not heard anything about any compensation; we have not heard any specifics but let us assume that it is the same compensation that the Government says it intends for superannuitants and beneficiaries—for example a 2 percent increase on student allowances. First of all it will not compensate adequately for the GST increase and secondly the 4 percent annual maximum fee movement that the Budget provides for tertiary institutions is GST exclusive. So now students will have to pay not only the increase in GST in everything they purchase in order to live—so that will cut their spending power even further in the supermarket as they search for the cheapest items they can find and for things that are on special—but it will also mean that they will face a 4 percent increase in fees across their institutions and their courses. They will then have to pay GST on top of that. 
But let us look more closely because the 4 percent annual maximum fee movement is effectively a cut for most tertiary institutions. I do not know whether the members opposite grasp this point. Previously there was a spectrum up to 5 percent for institutions under the fee maxima policy—they could raise their fees on courses by up to 5 percent. Now Auckland University is probably the only institution that is sitting at its fee maxima on its courses. Other institutions—universities and polytechs—are sitting somewhat beneath their fee maxima. Auckland University may do quite well because it is allowed to increase things by 4 percent although it might have wished to be able to increase things by 5 percent. The 4 percent that it is getting now means that that was rather unexpected and will be useful given that it is sitting at its fee maxima. However other institutions whose courses are not sitting at their fee maxima may have wanted to go to their 5 percent in order to recover the costs that this Government is not putting into tertiary education. So they are getting a 1 percent cut. That is a cut to the institutions and I want to know how the members opposite justify that. 
It is clear that this Government is shifting the cost of tertiary education away from the Government and into the institutions on to the institutions themselves and further than that on to students. So not only do students have to wear the 2.5 percent increase—the 15 percent GST which is in Part 1—on everything they buy but also they have to wear that on top of a 4 percent course fee increase. 
I am not sure that members opposite have grasped this but further to that there are cuts in this Budget to adult and community education which indicate that this Government has learnt nothing from the intense protests last year about cuts to adult and community education. It has taken $3.4 million out of schools and community groups. I think that was about all that was left last year in the adult and community education budget which went to schools and the community groups that they fund. I need the Minister to clarify what is left for night classes. These are the night classes that Mr English so praised previously because he said his mother was able to take advantage of night classes in secondary schools.