Clendon David: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16448. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): This has been sort of quite a big week for tertiary education. There have been a number of key announcements and here at the end of the sitting week at least we are debating this dreadful bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) which is being foisted on our young people and indeed on anyone who participates in tertiary education. We have seen this week of course the launch of a very deeply flawed tertiary education strategy which seems to have emerged from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment rather than the Ministry of Education focused as it is on economic outcomes. The references to education are almost incidental which is a very sad reflection on the priorities and the sheer lack of understanding of the value of education that we have seen emanating from this Government over the past several years.We have seen the changes to the Performance-based Research Fund. There are again one or two good shifts but primarily they are a great big leap backwards to the extent that the objective that sought to ensure a fair distribution of the funding across institutions and across disciplines has been removed. In future that funding will advantage those who already have ready access to external forms of funding which is perverse when you think it through. Research that is readily commercialised for example and that therefore has ready access to external funding sources will be privileged over social research and other forms of research where there is no obvious external donor or beneficiary. It is a very backwards-looking change that has emerged.Now of course we come to this bill which is probably at least as backwards as any of the other events of this week. This legislation undoubtedly does provide yet another layer of disincentives to people participating in tertiary education in New Zealand. We have heard the phrase “dampen down demand”. Clearly this Government is very interested in rationing. The Greens and I believe our Labour colleagues believe that tertiary education based on merit is a right embedded in international and national covenants. Those who are able and who aspire to such things should have the opportunity to achieve at tertiary-level education. This Government would see it as aprivilege something that is limited and rationed to the lucky few who have the wherewithal to pay their way as they go.The disincentives are clear. We will criminalise people who for whatever reason are unable to keep up with their student loans. Our colleague from New Zealand First Tracey Martin made the very good point that we can confidently expect that there will be people whose travel plans are seriously compromised in error. I will not bore you again with the stories but I am sure others have similar ones. I have mentioned them in previous speeches on this topic like my own experience of getting two different statements two different letters on the same day about the state of my student loan with entirely different numbers on them. Those mistakes will continue. Nothing is surer. Although I do not know where my colleague from New Zealand First got the statistic of one in five it sounds about right intuitively. We will penalise people who have maintained their payments simply through errors in the bureaucracy of what is a very complex system.We are criminalising people. Absolutely if people borrow money they ought to pay it back. That is a given. We probably are too thoughtless in terms of allowing young people to get themselves heavily indebted but again for many of them there is no other option. The fact that the repayment model will not be income related is blindingly stupid. Assuming that all of our young graduates who go overseas immediately walk into highly paid jobs is a nonsense. That is not the reality for most of them.As Holly Walker said before the Greens see the public good element as well as the private benefit. We heard bellowing from the National benches earlier asking who pays. Well yes tertiary education has to be paid for. For a long time we had a very robust system where we paid for it primarily through the taxation system rather than through loading debt on young people at the point in their lives when they have got the least capacity to generate income. Let us do this through our progressive taxation system where we claw it back once people get into well-paid positions. Yes I am perfectly happy then for people through their taxes to be paying for the education system—primary tertiary secondary across the board. It is immoral almost to load debt on to young people at the point in their lives when they are least likely to be able to pay it back and then criminalise them for that failure. Thank you.