Belich CamillaCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. Appreciate the opportunity to take my first call in relation to this part of this important bill.I am interested in the Minister's last response to that question about the five-year period. I know that some colleagues will have some further questions on that because I can't for myself see how replacing the exact same section with two different things works and I don't see in the changes that the Minister is implementing the five-year change. I appreciate that the Income Tax Act is a complex Act and no doubt we'll have some more questions on that but I think it is really important that we figure out how that works.I do want to speak about student loan interest and I do have an amendment on the Table in respect to the clauses that we were just discussing clause 44(2) but perhaps—I don't know—depending on whether there is in fact some issue with that section maybe I may need to amend my amendment. But essentially the questions I had for the Minister around the policy decision to decide to charge New Zealanders overseas with student loans additional interest I know that having interest-free student loans in New Zealand is not a cost-neutral thing; it does cost the Government money. It's about the choices that the Government chooses to invest in.So I was just wondering why the Government decided that this particular group of borrowers who are already paying a much higher rate of interest on their student loan should in fact have a higher interest rate. So my amendment in clause 44(2) is really to try and keep a change in scope. I could have said I don't think we should charge interest at all for overseas borrowers." which is a policy decision. I understand why there's a distinction: because obviously we want to provide an incentive for people to come back to New Zealand. But the amendment that I've put forward is really to try and keep it in scope but to remove the Government's proposed policy intent to add that additional 1 percent of interest.The other issue that I wanted to cover which isn't 100 percent clear from the documentation surrounding this is this: in fact the increase in interest actually applies to New Zealand - based borrowers too when they are late with their payments. This is a bit concerning I think—in a way possibly more concerning than the increase in interest rate compared with the overseas borrowers. That's because people who are late on their student loan payments the reason that they would be late I can imagine would be due to financial hardship; due to being in a difficult financial position; due to the payments that they are required to make on their student loan once they earn above the threshold being too onerous.It's already as I was able to research quickly quite a high interest rate: I think for 2024/25 it was 7.3 percent—quite a high interest rate in these terms. If you were to get that type of interest rate I think you'd be quite happy with that return but I'm just wondering why the Government and why the Minister would decide to do that for people who are obviously in a struggling financial position. They've taken the decision to get a student loan; they've done what the Government says—and we've heard from this Government that education is the great equaliser—they've participated in education; they've got a loan. Presumably that education is benefiting both them their family and their community. Unable to make their student loan repayments for whatever reason. Maybe they're self-employed—often people who are in employment have regular deductions made by their employer; more unlikely to be in a position of not having to make those student loan repayments.So maybe for whatever reason they're in financial difficulty. Why are we adding to their burden by increasing their interest rate on their student loan when really they've done exactly what both this Government and previous Governments have wanted them to do? They've better themselves through education.There's a cost of living situation that's very tough for people at the moment and it seems to me with this change we're making matters worse. So I wondered about the advice the Minister took on that. I wondered if he could outline the policy intent for that. We know that there's tough financial considerations but for this particular group of people they've bettered themselves they've taken on education they're obviously in a tough time and we're making things harder for them.So if the Minister could explain to me the rationale for that that would be good. Also if he could let me know having considered those points that I raised whether he would consider supporting my amendment to clause 44(2)."