Smith Lockwood: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Smith Lockwood: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8224] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 I have not yet spoken in this debate on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) during either its first or its second reading. But I suppose I have more than a passing interest in it because I was the original architect of the student loan scheme. We have seen that scheme screwed up and manipulated by politicians over the years since it was first established. 
It makes me think back to the days when I was Minister of Education. Serious international educationalists used to say to me that one of the great tragedies for education was that preschool children do not vote. A very very well known educationalist said that is the great tragedy of education. If we wanted to direct resources to improving New Zealand’s education system directing resources to small children is how we would have by far the most profound impact. The human being among all mammalian species is kind of fascinating in that among all vertebrates it is the only one born with an immature brain. We might have all of the brain cells we will ever have but the connections between them do not exist at that stage. Other vertebrates are born with mature brains. So it is in the early years of a human being’s life that education can have the most profound impact but small children do not vote. Children of the age of 3 do not vote and they do not get the resources. 
Parliament keeps delivering more and more resources to the people on whom education has the least impact—the oldest ones whose brains have been predetermined long before the resources are delivered to them. But these older people vote. So at the last election we saw this massive bribe from Labour; it offered $1.5 billion to buy the student vote. 
Today we work on this legislation to try to make sure that it does not have too many anomalies in it. National supports this bill because we believe that it is important to try to make sure there are no barriers preventing educated New Zealanders from coming back to our country. 
I want to ask the Minister of Revenue a couple of serious things about Part 1 and particularly about new sections 89 through to 91 in Part 8—the “fresh start for certain borrowers”. Why was it decided to treat those who are honest about the fact they were overseas in exactly the same way as those who are dishonest about that fact? As I look at the examples given following new section 91 of Lenore and Keith it seems that one of those people was honest about being off overseas and the other one was not. Yet with this legislation we are treating them in exactly the same way. I am interested in why we would choose to treat those who are honest about being overseas in the same way as those who are dishonest. 
More important perhaps is the latest information I have on the borrowers who registered under the amnesty to take advantage of some of these provisions. As of 27 November last year of the 40000 New Zealand graduates believed to be offshore 765 had taken advantage of the amnesty. Presumably there is an update on that figure. Each year we are losing to Australia over 22000 New Zealand residents many of whom are graduates. That massive exodus of New Zealanders to Australia is something that should be troubling us as well. Although we hope this legislation will have significant impact as of the end of last year it appeared that only a few hundred New Zealand graduates offshore were registering to take advantage of that amnesty. 
National members are supporting the legislation but it would be interesting for the Committee to know from the Minister in the chair the answers to those questions. Why was it decided to treat the honest and the dishonest in the same way? Even more important than that what is the latest update on the 40000 graduates believed to be offshore at the moment? We were advised that 765 people had taken advantage of the amnesty as at 27 November last year. Now about 4 months later presumably there is an updated figure on that. It would help us to know how effective this legislation will be. I understand that the legislation now extends the amnesty for a further 12 months to try to give the chance for it to be more effective. It would be worthwhile hearing from the Minister just how effective it is proving to be because 765 is less than 1 percent of the total opportunity out there.