Mackey Moana: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13251] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I want to talk about the Tertiary Education Commission and I want to congratulate my colleague the Hon Steve Maharey on the good work he has been doing in this area over the last 5 years. The member opposite Bill English asked what Mr Maharey had been doing for the last 5 years. I will tell him what Mr Maharey has been doing for 5 years. He has been reducing the cost of tertiary education for students. He has been making it easier to pay loans back and to reduce loan burdens. He has been reintroducing a Modern Apprenticeships scheme which the National Government scrapped. 
I cannot understand how one could find fault with an apprenticeship scheme that puts young people into work in industries where we absolutely need their skills because otherwise we choke economic growth. The National Government just got rid of that. It did not see the point of it. Well the Minister has been reintroducing it. We now have over 6500 people on these schemes and we are going to increase it to 8000. We now have Modern Apprenticeships available in 28 sectors. We have nearly 1500 Gateway placements from 126 schools. We are targeting 4000 Gateway placements. We now have 126000 people in industry training in this country and that is what the Hon Steve Maharey has been doing for 5 years. I congratulate him. 
 I started university in 1993 which was one year after Lockwood Smith introduced the student loan scheme. 
Government Member 
: The bad old days. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: In the bad old days. I remember in 1990 when I was at high school—we were going through the election and discussing it at school—that the National Party said it would abolish the $1300 tertiary tuition fee that the Labour Government had forced students to pay. Well National did abolish it but replaced it with a $3000 tertiary tuition fee. Perhaps it could be said that that party was being honest I do not know but I think it was being a bit slippery. The fact is that my fees went up 14 percent per year under a National Government— 
Steve Chadwick 
: How much? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: On average it was 14 percent per year. I did not know what I would be paying from year to year in my tertiary fees. When students are trying to get jobs over summer and pay fees for the next year because they do not want to take out loans it certainly helps if they have some vague idea of what their fees will be from year to year. Well students have that now. The fee maxima system means students know that their fees will not increase by any more than 5 percent each year. That might not seem a big deal to people who did not pay for their education in the same way we did but it certainly would have helped when I was a student. It certainly would have helped to know that the difference might be about $200 and not $1500. 
Another thing we have done in tertiary education is to remove the interest on student loans while students are studying. When I went to varsity I took out a student loan but I did not take out the maximum I could have. I tried not to because I knew I would have to pay it back. When I took that loan out I just was not aware of the huge amount of interest that was compiling while I was a student. When I finished my degree and received my final loan statement I was shocked to find out that I was in fact thousands of dollars further in debt than I thought I actually was just because of the interest I had accumulated while studying. That is hard. When people are young they are just trying to get through varsity—because their parents cannot afford to put them through—and they are having to work so it comes as a bit of a shock when they suddenly realise they are many many more thousands of dollars in debt. 
Simon Power 
: Your parents were on $80000 a year. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: My mother was on the domestic purposes benefit when I started university. Mr Power might not have realised that. She supported me as much as she could and I appreciated that help. When I finished varsity and started paying the loan off I had gone to work as a laboratory analyst. Laboratory analysts earn a good wage. I was earning about $35000. I was happy with that but there was no way my student loan repayments were keeping pace with the interest. My loan was getting bigger and bigger I was trying to pay it off but I just could not keep up. That is fairly dispiriting. I started to think: “Well what’s the point?”. 
I remember reading the article by Lockwood Smith in which he gave out the fine words: “Just don’t bother trying to pay it back.” He asked why students were moaning and whingeing about the loans and said they should just forget about them. That is easy to say for someone who does not have a student loan and who does not know that when students try to get a mortgage for a house the loan counts against them that they are paying 10 percent more off their salaries and that they are faced with doing that for the rest of their lives. Well in 1999 changes were made and interest was taken off loans while students were studying. In addition in my case on my salary no more than 50 percent of my loan repayments went to paying the interest.