Martin Tracey: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Martin Tracey: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8349. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch. Thank you very much. Firstly just to make a comment on some of the issues raised by other speakers it is always a joy to listen to David Cunliffe wax lyrical about hypothetical Young Peter. Although it is amusing on many levels the reality is that there is a lot of truth in what he said. I actually resent that member’s assertions that our older generation are mean-spirited and greedy that they seek to starve our young people of their future and that that is the reason why this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) is a bad thing even though the Labour Party is going to continue to support it. I would not like the country to forget—because most of us have not forgotten—that it was actually a Labour Government that set our feet upon this path that took away the free education that my generation and the generation before me had the opportunity to avail themselves of. I also do not want to forget that it was a National Government that then slipped its feet into those shoes and started to run down that pathway to bring us to the point where we are at today where it is now being suggested that Young Peter blames Old Peter for his circumstances instead of actually saying that these are the two parties in this House that brought Young Peter and Old Peter to this place. Let us not forget that. The divide and rule that goes on between our young and our old is not constructive for the country as we move forward. 
With regard to this bill though New Zealand First will support this bill as it supported it at the first reading. It is a technical little bill. It does two very sensible things in our opinion. It had an opportunity to do a couple of other sensible things and there are Supplementary Order Papers being prepared now. I mentioned in my first reading speech that we supported the Minister of Revenue when the repayment holiday for overseas-based borrowers was condensed from 3 years to 1 year. We did that because of what we believed was one of the intents of the bill which was actually fairness but that fairness is still not here in the legislation. New Zealand based borrowers receive no recognition for circumstance changes that mean there are times in their lives when they may need 1-year repayment holidays. I gave examples of young New Zealanders in situations where they may have such financial pressures. They may still be in employment and so still meet the criteria by which they should be making those repayments but their personal circumstances are such that as a State we should allow them to take a 12-month recess from their payments so they are able to reorganise their financial lives and then come back. This is about supporting our citizens. This is not supposed to be about punishing them; it is supposed to be about supporting them for the good of the country. 
The other small technical piece that could have been addressed—and another Supplementary Order Paper will come through for the Committee of the whole House to discuss—is actually about attaching any repayment holiday to the loan rather than to the person. It is an anomaly to me as a previous debt collector that when a person has shown that they are a responsible citizen that they take their debt seriously and that they have sought to repay it they are then penalised by never ever ever being able to access another loan with another repayment holiday. It does not make sense to me. They are the very people whom you want to encourage to participate in this sort of process as opposed to the constant conversation about people going overseas never coming back and buying Maseratis or whatever which we used to have around the student loan repayment scheme. So there will be some Supplementary Order Papers coming through. 
I did not sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It is not one that I was available for— 
John Hayes 
: That’s a pity. 
TRACEY MARTIN 
: I take on board your disappointment sir. When I can I will try to get on to that select committee. I note however that many submitters did actually take note of those exact points in my first reading speech and I thank those submitters for their obvious high standard of involvement in the submission process. I note however that most of the submissions on behalf of those who have loans were on behalf of those who have university loans. I do not want us to forget that actually every baker every tradesman and every young apprentice is in this scheme. This is the StudyLink scheme. This is all about those young people who most often do not have unionised representation and so we do not hear their voice in this process. Those are the workers of tomorrow—not those who can access high incomes because of a PhD but those on whom we rely on an everyday basis when we go to the bread shop or when we go to the car mechanic. They are also affected by this bill so let us not talk about this as if it is only the elite who can afford it. These are real people real young people on whom we rely on an everyday basis. 
I also want to pick up on the New Zealand Medical Students’ Association submission—an excellent submission. It addressed many of the points in the first student loan scheme amendment bill. There is nothing that New Zealand First can do on this bill in reality to support the concerns the association had but we do take on board its comment around the restricting of access to student allowances for those who study for over 7 years. Again it does not seem logical or sensible to New Zealand First to penalise those students particularly in the area of medicine to such a point where either they do not continue to study in that field of endeavour or they feel so disenfranchised by their own State that they take their skills somewhere else. New Zealand First does not buy into the argument that at the end of their study these students have greater access to income so therefore they should get more debt now. We do not argue that they probably do have greater access to creating income for themselves but the argument that one day a person might be rich so while that person is poor they should gain debt does not seem to make any sense to us. They are still New Zealand citizens and the purpose of the State the purpose of StudyLink was to support New Zealanders to study. Again New Zealand First could not do anything about that in this particular bill but I wanted to make sure that the New Zealand Medical Students’ Association and other students associations that presented to the select committee—and I have read all of their submissions—know that New Zealand First will continue to address this issue. 
We will continue to seek ways to bring us back to a point where there is recognition about the public good that supporting young people to study does for your country. We would advocate a stronger social contract between the young who are studying and the support that is given by the older generation. I am not sure the older generation is so terribly outraged by supporting its young people. Remember the young people we are supporting are their children and their grandchildren. Although I think there is often a whipping up of this division between the ages when I speak to older citizens in public meetings and when I go to the universities and talk to young people when they speak of their own families there is none of this aggression towards supporting each other. They just want their Government to make a system that is fair and that is reasonable. 
But as I say these are small little amendments in this bill. They are logical they are reasonable and at the moment there is nothing wrong with them so New Zealand First will be voting for this bill. Kia ora.