Donnelly Brian: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Donnelly Brian: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14360] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 The point that Bill English made about the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission total vote was interesting. One would have thought that with the charters and profiles having got through there would be a reduction in the vote requirement for the commission. In fact it is to be increased from $25 million to $45.617 million. One has to ask some very serious questions as to why there was almost a doubling of the requirement for the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission. 
However I want to refer to a contribution made a little earlier today by Paul Adams of United Future. He gave quite a powerful contribution with regard to GST on rates. What came through was that GST on rates is an evil thing. By the time he had finished I believed that if this House continued to have GST on rates hellfire and brimstone would be borne down upon us. However I point out to Mr Adams and to United Future that this is an appropriations bill. In those appropriations which only this Parliament can make there is GST on rates. When United Future votes for this particular Budget it will be voting for GST on rates as it did last year with last year’s appropriations bill so I really would like some explanation. Could United Future please ensure that hellfire and brimstone will not rain down upon this House as a result of its vote. 
I come back to Vote Education. There are just a couple of things that I would like to focus on one of which is tertiary student allowances. Everybody knows that members on both sides of the House are concerned about student debt. However people do not seem to realise that the majority of student debt is not made up of loans for fees but loans for living allowances. Loans for living allowances are not universal as New Zealand First would like and that we negotiated with National in 1996 to have. It did not come to fruition because the coalition broke down. 
Darren Hughes 
: Never trust any of them again! 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: That was Jenny Shipley and she was the great betrayer. Nevertheless there is a problem and to an extent this Budget recognises it because it shifts up slightly—only very slightly—the actual thresholds at which the rebate first comes in from $28000 to $33700 and it shifts up the threshold where it completely goes away from $50752 to $62000. So the Government and this Budget recognise there is a problem but it has made only a very very minor change. We believe that the Government needs to go a whole lot further if it is to overcome some of the inherent injustices that exist within the system as it stands when the student allowance is assessed on parental income. That is what it is based upon—parental income. 
I know of a student who told me her father had left when she was 3 years of age and had never contributed a cent to her upbringing. Yet when it came to assessment for a student allowance he was living overseas his income was assessed there and she did not get any student allowance. There is the rub! It is unfair. 
However this Government has also made three other changes to student allowances. The first one is that people who were married and under the age of 25 were not assessed on their parents’ incomes but were assessed on their own and their spouse’s incomes. The Government has changed that. So to any parent who has marched his or her daughter up the aisle and thought that now his or her daughter is financially independent of himself or herself at the age of 19 or 20 I say sorry but this Government believes that those parents should be financially liable until their daughter turns 25. This is the same Government that believes that 12 and 13-year-olds can be given the morning-after pill without their parents having any knowledge of it or being provided with help through State-funded agencies yet at the same time it is saying that even if the person is married the parents are financially liable. 
The other issue is about people who have gone to work. They could have left school taken a low-paid job reached the age of 23 or 24 and then decided it was time to get an education so they could get a better job. In the past they were not considered to be financially dependent upon their parents. Under this Budget they will now become classed in that way. We believe this is totally unfair. The Government says that the reason it has had to do this is very simple. The current policies are in breach of the Human Rights Act.