Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStudent Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16022. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3)In CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Student Loan Scheme Act 2011GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): In the first of what I suspect will be a number of contributions on Part 1 of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) I just want to sketch out where Part 1 takes this Committee. On the Labour Party’s side of the Chamber we would very much like to come to Parliament to support practical measures to ensure that student loans are paid off. On this side of the Chamber we believe that when people borrow from the student loan scheme they do have an obligation to repay those loans. It is within the original loan contracts that students sign that they will make those repayments. What I believe this Committee should then be doing is working out the best and most appropriate way to ensure that repayments come in and that we actually achieve the goal that the taxpayer who has been part of loaning this money to students will see that money returned. That should be the goal of this legislation—what is the best way of making sure that that money comes back into the system.Sadly the reality is that this bill falls well short of actually making meaningful progress on that matter. What this bill does is simply implement a slogan or a gimmicky policy and says that that is the answer to where we are going. Obviously in that regard Iam referring to the matters that are contained within clause 8 of the bill and that is around the question of creating a criminal offence around default of overseas-based repayment obligations and the process through which a person liable under that provision can be arrested. It is quite clear to us on this side of the Chamber that the time has come for a much more comprehensive review of how we ensure that we get timely repayments. This current Government has introduced a number of measures that are designed to try to increase the amount of repayments that are coming back yet the debt overseas has continued to rise during the term of this Government. So it is clear that although there will always be a measure of stick the carrot here is missing or the other kinds of ideas that might be put on the table are missing. I will certainly return to those as we work through the debate.Where I want to start is on the first part of clause 8 which contains the idea that there is now going to be an offence for borrowers who have not made repayments in the way that they are expected to. This is the new offence in new section 162A. I want to refer members to the submission of the Legislation Advisory Committee to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on this particular part of the bill. There is an offence that has been created in clause 8 and I will just read it out briefly. Clause 8 inserts into the bill a new offence for borrowers and it says: “Every person commits an offence who is in default of his or her overseas-based repayment obligation and who having been notified by the Commissioner that he or she is in default knowingly fails … to make reasonable efforts to pay the amount in default or to make arrangements with the Inland Revenue Department to pay the amount in default [by the due date specified in the notification].”We will work through those words but what the Legislation Advisory Committee essentially says is that moving from what is now a civil matter and making it a criminal matter is actually a very significant change. It is actually fundamentally changing the nature of the relationship that student loan borrowers have with the Crown. What the Legislation Advisory Committee said when it was commenting on this bill was: “The [Legislation Advisory Committee] considers that this”—inclusion of the offence—“is an unprincipled basis on which to create an offence.” It is extremely strong language from the Legislation Advisory Committee to say that this is an unprincipled basis on which to include a new offence because the offence is created simply so that the Inland Revenue Department can apply for an arrest warrant. So rather than making a case based around the severity of an offence or the damage incurred to the country or an individual or person—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Members the House in Committee on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) is resumed. Before the dinner break we were debating Part 1 and Grant Robertson had the call. He has half a minute remaining.GRANT ROBERTSON: Half a minute hardly seems enough to be able to go through this. As I was saying before the dinner break the Legislation Advisory Committee made a very direct reference to the change that is occurring in new section 162A which effectively takes what is currently a civil matter—the non-repayment of loans—and turns it into a criminal matter. The Legislation Advisory Committee said that it considers that “this is an unprincipled basis on which to create an offence.” That is a very serious thing for the Legislation Advisory Committee to say—that this is an unprincipled basis for creating an offence. What it is referring to is that the only reason the Government is introducing this provision on behalf of the Inland Revenue Department to create this new criminal offence of not repaying your loan is so that itcan do the arrest at the border provisions. It is not based as I said before the dinner break on any particular injury that is occurring to the public any particular set of circumstances that warrant a criminal offence; it is merely so the arrest at the border provision could come into play.I think that we should take the words of the Legislation Advisory Committee and its chair the Hon Justice Sir Grant Hammond seriously here. There is nothing behind this provision that is in the way of principle. It is quite simply a gimmick. It is a gimmick designed to look like the issue of a repayment of student loans is being taken seriously by creating a criminal offence and then a set of arrangements for which people can be arrested at the border but in reality it will make very little difference to the repayment of loans. As I said at the start of my last call on this side of the Chamber we support initiatives that will provide for an increased rate of repayment of student loans. We want to see people pay their loans back both because that is what they signed up to do in the contracts that they signed and also because it is good for the New Zealand taxpayer. But this bill is not it and clause 8 does not provide for this.We know from what we heard in the Finance and Expenditure Committee that although there is a great deal of threat and a great deal of concern among people in terms of the actual number of arrests nobody knows what is going to happen. The police have quite clearly said they do not have the resources to involve themselves in arresting people at the border. We do not actually know other than that there is some indication that the Inland Revenue Department would like to make an example of some people. As I raised in my second reading speech a number of us on this side of the Chamber have been approached by people living overseas who have been perhaps in dispute with the Inland Revenue Department about their loan and who want to come back to New Zealand for a family event—for a wedding for a funeral—and are now in fear that they will not actually be able to do that. So this bill rather than acting as some kind of encouragement to young New Zealanders to come home and to contribute to New Zealand actually will act as a deterrent without achieving the goal that the Government has set itself of increasing the rate of repayment. It is the worst of all worlds to have a bill and in particular clause 8 that creates a criminal offence out of what is essentially a civil matter for no real purpose whatsoever.In the Finance and Expenditure Committee we were challenged by National Party members to say what we would do to help increase the rates of repayment. Well we could start by actually talking to the borrowers concerned and working out a repayment plan that works for them because another clause that I will come back to in this bill is around how it is that the repayment obligations of overseas-based borrowers are calculated. At the moment it is an extremely blunt instrument which simply says that it is a percentage of your loan and you have got to pay it back. It does not matter how much you are earning.If we really were serious as a Parliament about increasing the rate of repayment we would work on arrangements that were actually based on the earnings of people overseas and that gave them an incentive to pay back. It is so big it is so difficult it is so out of proportion to what people are earning overseas they give up and they say: “I can’t be bothered with it. I’m not going to deal with this.” Every year those people stay away from New Zealand every time the Government introduces a gimmicky provision like this means they will be less likely to return to New Zealand and less likely to pay back their loans. We on this side of the Chamber would love to support a bill that came before us that was full of new and good and interesting ideas about how to encourage overseas-based borrowers to repay their loans but this bill is not that.In clause 8—Dr David Clark: The research.GRANT ROBERTSON: We will come to that Dr Clark. In clause 8 the new sections 162A and 162B have been slightly altered by the select committee. I will credit the select committee with removing one of the most egregious elements of this which was in what was the new section 162B(2)(d) which actually allowed the court to apply any order it liked to somebody who was arrested under these provisions—anything at all. The court could have thrown them in jail it could have taken away their assets—it could have done anything. Thankfully that has now been removed but the extent—Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I look forward to making this contribution on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). I am pleased to have received the call so soon although I also look forward to hearing what my colleagues around the Chamber have to say and indeed the possibility of the Government defending this particularly indefensible piece of legislation. As Mr Robertson has alluded to this bill is a distasteful gimmick on behalf of the Government which has no real plan to effect any change other than one of perception and even then it is skating on thin ice.We did look at this issue in depth in the Finance and Expenditure Committee. We asked questions about whether overseas payments would increase would be likely to increase and what kinds of estimates the Inland Revenue Department might be able to make about the increase in payments as a result of putting in an arrest at the border clause. It was very very hard to get chunky useful information because of course the department has been put in a very difficult position by the Minister of Revenue with this political posturing. The department to its credit acknowledges that it is very difficult to try to draw any sensible conclusions from this piece of literature we have in front of us in the form of a bill where it talks about the nature of arrest at the border.Specifically we are talking about new sections 162A and 162B inserted by clause 8. The new sections describe how the arrest might happen and what kind of conviction might apply including fines and who might issue such arrest warrants—a District Court judge we read in section 162B. New section 162B(1) states: “A District Court Judge or if a District Court Judge is not available and the case appears to be urgent a Registrar may on an application in writing by the Commissioner issue a warrant for the arrest of a person (the liable person) if the Judge or Registrar (as the case may be) is satisfied that the person has committed the offence in section 162A and is about to leave or attempt to leave New Zealand.”That is where this is activated and we debated vigorously in the select committee whether this was a useful addition to the legislation. I think that the argument was strongly in favour of it not being useful. It really makes no describable change other than giving the commissioner discretion to act presumably at the Minister’s behest for political posturing. That seems unprincipled and without real merit.On this side of the Chamber we are keen to support the notion that people be encouraged in practical ways to repay their debts. We very much support the collection of what is owed in terms of the borrowed money because we believe in paying forward. We understand that those who have benefited from the scheme and have themselves bettered their own lot the lives of their families and communities should be paying back what they owe so that other families and communities can benefit likewise. Unfortunately this Government does not particularly like this scheme and it struggles to come to grips with it and is constantly putting forward such things as this distasteful gimmick.We know that a National Government put in place the loan scheme in the first place. Labour made it interest-free which has benefited a generation of students. Then National sought to introduce punitive fees on top of the interest-free segment calling it an administration fee. You can see which direction the National Government wants totake this. It wants to make it a more punitive scheme and make it less available to people of certain age groups. Here we have punishments designed to create headlines so that people will realise that National is being as stingy as it possibly can be about sharing the love when it comes to the future education of our people.Labour members think that this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) with its punitive measures should be opposed and so we are opposing it. We are very much distressed that the police also have indicated that they do not think they have the resources necessary to even implement the changes as proposed. This bill is a distasteful gimmick and therefore wasteful because we are using parliamentary time to pass something that is merely posturing and can never be implemented we were told or if it is implemented will be implemented on a purely discretionary basis with few principles outlined or able to be outlined in the select committee process. We got told that it would probably be for more significant cases or cases where the commissioner felt there were other factors involved and so on. It was very difficult to hear through the noise any real principle that lay behind it. It is certainly not going to be effective. It just is political posturing.Meaningful change from improved student loan repayments from overseas borrowers in our view requires looking at options such as repayments based on earnings and negotiated payment agreements including with third-party involvement—parents in particular—but unfortunately the Government is not considering these as part of the legislation. What we have is a situation where some young New Zealanders are effectively exiled as enemies of the State because often they have got themselves into a position where they cannot pay back their loan.If they have been overseas in order to better themselves or to get a view of the world that is broader and they find instead that they have spent some time working in a pub and have not earned the kind of money that might be owed they are stuck overseas. They are stuck overseas; they cannot return. If there is a family funeral or tragic personal circumstances they are now living in fear that they will be that one person who is picked off at the discretion of the commissioner at the beckoning of the Minister in order to make a distasteful example of their situation. It is a kind of draconian measure—an impractical one and an unprincipled one.It is also worth noting that we do not have any real idea—as a select committee we were left none the wiser—as to how much money was likely to be retrieved. There is a lot of information we do not know about overseas borrowers. That is part of the real issue. There are information-sharing provisions that are being looked at. I understand the Privacy Commissioner has had some issues with the sharing of data on compliant borrowers. It seems to be where the focus has gone. The Big Brother approach to things has predominated under this Government and in fact those who are not compliant about whom we know very little are not being captured with this information. We know only that they are going to be more wary about returning to New Zealand to share their skills and to meet with their loved ones.We also know obviously that there are 200000 of them in Australia—over that number since this Government came to office. They are not all students admittedly but they have left this country because this Government has not given them hope. How this bill will give them more hope is very difficult to see. This is a Government that is intent on clamping down politically on anything it sees as an easy target. It is not interested in constructive ways of supporting the betterment of New Zealanders. New Zealanders are recognising more and more that this is a Government that is out of touch and has really not understood the benefits of an interest-free student loan scheme that will accrue to a generation pay forward to a future generation and mean that we have a better tomorrow.I hope that the Minister in the chair the Minister for Primary Industries does take a call to try to explain this populist policy and the benefits that might accrue from it but I fear that instead we will have David Bennett on a rant about how the Labour Party is soft on borrowers and is not constructive and so on and so forth. Look I would hate to steal his thunder but we do support constructive measures to get those loans back and we support the scheme unlike the National members who do it through gritted teeth. We support it wholeheartedly because we see the benefit in education as an investment for future generations for the betterment of this country.So I do look forward to Mr Bennett’s contribution. I hope it is more constructive than what occasionally he is tempted to deliver and more than just a closure motion because these are important issues that New Zealanders need to discuss and need to understand. We want to have a student loan system that works we want people to pay forward we want better education for our children for the next generation and we want a better society and we are saddened to see that this Government is intent on creating a few tragic examples in order to make a political gimmick stick.DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It is very disappointing to see that the Labour Party will not support the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) tonight. This is not a gimmick or anything like that but this really shows the true nature of the Labour Party. It is a party of socialist elite that believes that those who get a tertiary education should be treated differently from anybody else in this country. It is a party of socialist elite that believes that people who go overseas should get a free ride. It is a party of socialist elite that thinks it has the opportunity to tell people what they can do.This bill sets some stringent requirements on those who get a benefit from this country and this Government. Why should they not pay their loan back? What is the difference between a New Zealand borrower who stays in New Zealand and one who leaves New Zealand? If the Labour Party was not just looking after the socialist elite it would be offering those incentives to those who stay not those who leave. The Labour Party talks about negotiation with the parties. The Labour Party talks about having requirements of repayment based on earnings—things it is giving to people who leave this country who take their skills overseas and who build other countries stronger. They are going to get a free ride from the socialist elite that is the Labour Party rather than giving it to the people who stay here work here and make this country strong.What about those young men and women who work in the farms and the factories and who pay for people to go through that education? They do not get that benefit do they? But the socialist elite wants its own people to have the ability to take that money take that benefit not contribute to New Zealand and not even pay it back. That is what the Labour Party stands for. It does not care about the people who really do the hard work. It does not care about the people who want to build New Zealand. It cares only about the people whom it thinks it represents—those people who can afford to have an education and think the way it does rather than the people who understand what this country is built on. The people who want to get an education then stay here and build this country stronger are the people we should be rewarding not the people who take advantage of our system and then leave. Shame on the Labour Party!Look at some of the numbers here. New Zealand - based borrowers make up 84 percent of borrowers; overseas-based borrowers make up 16 percent. If you look at those in default New Zealand - based borrowers are 13 percent; overseas-based borrowers are 71 percent. New Zealand - based borrowers owe $78 million in default; overseas-based borrowers owe $543 million in default. Why do we give those people who owe $543 million a better ride than we give those people who stay here and who go work in our schools go work in our hospitals go work in our industry and go aboutbeing part of building a stronger productive economy for New Zealand? What gives the Labour Party the right to say that those people who stay here and make this country stronger should be worse off than those people who go overseas and work in a pub for 2 years? What gives the socialist elite of the Labour Party the right to say that? Nothing gives it that right. That is why it is out of touch.This is not a gimmick. This is about sending a signal to those young people who go overseas that we expect them to repay their debt to this country. We would love it if they stayed here and paid their debt by working in New Zealand for New Zealand and to the benefit of New Zealand but if they do go overseas they should not forget the debt that they owe the people who are here who have paid for that debt and who are working for that debt—day by day paying the interest on that debt.But that is not the case for Labour Party members. They believe that their sons and daughters—that sort of socialist elite that was born to rule—will be people who can go overseas and not have to do anything about it. It is sickening to see the Labour Party do that—a Labour Party that should stand for fairness for those people who are working in the base industries of New Zealand and that should be looking after those lower-income earners. But in fact it wants to give more to those who can earn more. It wants to give to the rich and take from the poor. That is the Labour Party of old. That is the Labour Party that is coming back. It is great to see the Labour Party show its true colours when it comes to a bill like this.TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chairperson. That last speech was fascinating. I think the people of New Zealand have just seen slogan No. 1 for the 2014 election campaign—well at least the one in Hamilton where Mr Bennett will be campaigning. I find it fascinating that Mr Bennett has actually read some of the figures to do with the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). I think that is great. Thank you very much Mr Bennett; that is an improvement on past performances. Losing the light show that we just had let us go back to the real world and the practicalities of how this bill will affect New Zealanders as opposed to the little bit of electioneering we just saw. I am really pleased that there is a Minister in the chair—the Minister for Primary Industries. I hope the Minister may be able to answer these questions although I am not sure that it is the right Minister who is in the chair.Let us get real. We are talking about new sections 162A and 162B in clause 8. This is the clause in Part 1 that we are going to focus on to start with and it is about arresting citizens at the border. Let us talk practicalities shall we? Let us talk about the fact that as a New Zealand citizen who has an overseas debt comes into the country they swipe their passport. That is no different from when a New Zealand citizen leaves the country and they swipe their passport. I am going to make a huge leap here. I am going to make an assumption here that the passport you swipe coming into the country is exactly the same passport you swipe as you go out of the country. That means that if an alarm can go off on your way out an alarm can go off on your way in.I would ask the Minister to address the question that New Zealand First has. As a previous debt collector I am looking for practical ways for us to actually collect debt from the people whom we are trying to collect it from. If a New Zealand citizen swipes their passport on the way into the country and they have an outstanding debt an alarm will go off—not a physical alarm but a bleep in a computer system somewhere that says to the Customs Service “Uh-oh. We need to actually hold this person for a moment because there is something that the Government wants to talk to them about.” If you do that on the way into the country the person can now possibly provide you with details of bank accounts can now provide you with a third-party contact list and can now actually sit down before they go off to their wedding or their tangi or whatever it is and come to an arrangement.If there is a mistake in the record-keeping of the Inland Revenue Department—and I know that many people think that might be far-fetched but believe me it is true. The Inland Revenue Department does make mistakes. If there is an error in the data from the Inland Revenue Department that says this person owes a debt and yet they do not we have avoided a situation in which that person would then be pulled from a line if they are leaving the country and lose their flight and their family—I am not sure I would leave without my husband and my children if I was leaving the country and he was hauled off by the police because of some debt that apparently he owed the New Zealand Government. If we do that on the way into the country there is no loss of airfares there is the time that there is to actually sort out the problem if there is an error by the Inland Revenue Department and there is time to complete paperwork—all in a practical and very supportive way for a win-win situation.I would like the Minister to answer why the point of exit was chosen as opposed to the point of entry. I would love for the Minister or anybody who was actually on the Finance and Expenditure Committee to tell me whether that was discussed. Was it ever discussed?John Hayes: Why don’t you ask Winston?TRACEY MARTIN: Because I am asking you Mr Hayes. You are the people putting up the bill. If you do not know it then who does? It is the National Government that is putting forward this bill and it is for the National Government to explain to the people of New Zealand why it will arrest them as they leave their country. It is not for me to explain your policies. It is for you to understand why your Government has decided to arrest New Zealanders as they leave as opposed to creating exactly the same system exactly the same amount of cost exactly the same amount of paperwork and yet the possibility of a truly win-win outcome. So I ask the Minister whether he will stand and answer why the concept of actually identifying these people on entry as opposed to exit is not inside this bill. If you can justify it that is brilliant but I am picking from Mr Hayes’ contribution that you cannot actually justify it.Let us go to point No. 2; perhaps the Minister can explain this. What is the rush? What is this rush to force this through the Committee stage and the third reading—to push it through?Joanne Hayes: $2 billion of debt.TRACEY MARTIN: I will tell you what. I know the answer to that same question Mr Hayes but I am quite sure you do not. It is because on the StudyLink website it is already advertised. It is already advertised as being in law that this Government will arrest New Zealanders. So we now have to rush in this House and go into extended hours and so on and so forth to put into place legislation so that what has already been placed on the StudyLink website what is already concerning New Zealand citizens overseas can actually be a law. Right now this is fraudulent. This is fraudulent because it is not law. There is no guarantee it will pass except that this Government is arrogant enough to believe that not one of its minor parties will have the audacity to actually change its view.Let us talk about Mr Bennett talking about hard-working people etc. etc. It is actually not young people whom most of this debt belongs to. Fourteen percent of this particular debt that we are talking about is from borrowers from 1992 so let us not place this on young people again shall we? These are the figures inside the Government’s own report that unfortunately it would appear that the Government has not read. Fourteen percent of the outstanding amount is from borrowers from 1992. What this tells you is that it is unlikely you are going to get that amount of money—and that is 14 percent of the number of borrowers not 14 percent of the amount overdue outstanding.Let us go to the outstanding. Let us go to the fact that—and perhaps the Minister would like to answer this—the Inland Revenue Department recognises debt as overdue debt only when it is 5 years overdue or more. Just recently we changed the repayment holiday for overseas-based borrowers to a 1-year repayment holiday but prior to that it was a 3-year repayment holiday. Why on earth would you not recognise at the end of that 3-year period that this is now an overdue debt? For a debt collector the reality is that the longer you do not make contact with that person the less likelihood there is that they will pay it. So where inside this bill or any legislation or in any discussion is it stated that the Inland Revenue Department has been told to recognise overdue debt in the future as that that is perhaps 14 months old so that it starts making contact in a time frame in which it is possible to collect?The next point is how has the passing of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 affected the ability of borrowers to repay? Has anybody asked? The banks are currently looking at that. The banks are currently looking at the four groups of our citizens that have been disadvantaged by that particular Act—the money-laundering Act. It is an unintended consequence of that Act that if you are overseas and trying to send money back to New Zealand there is now a great deal more paperwork and a great deal more cost to you to do so. So has the Inland Revenue Department or the advisers to the Minister looked at how that 2009 Act has affected the ability of these people to pay? Is it about assisting our citizens to pay or is it as the Labour Party says merely a political ploy for this election?Is it the fact that there is actually nothing else the Government can get tough on with regard to crime—because it does not want to fund police and so on and so forth—so now we are going to just start putting forward sound bites like arresting our citizens at the border for debt? You get situations like with Mr Bennett who stands and rants and raves generally having never read the bill and generally having no concern at all for the New Zealand public or any student anywhere whom I have ever seen. But he stands there and starts to use clichés to try to spin what this bill is so that the New Zealand public thinks the Government is doing something. I can guarantee the New Zealand public—particularly if the Minister does not get up and answer these questions—that this Government is not doing something apart from putting in place another nuance to being able to actually arrest its citizens at the border when it sees fit.That is where we start to tend towards more of a police State. There is more and more and more of this insidious creep I think it is called where this Government starts to chip away and chip away and chip away at things that New Zealanders can do. New Zealand I implore you to listen to people like Mr Bennett listen to him very very carefully and see that there is no content whatsoever to what Mr Bennett said and have a look at what they are chipping away because this will be your son this will be your daughter and this will be your grandchild before you know it.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I rise to take a call on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). I want to assist my colleagues on this side of the Chamber to point out something that I find very troubling about this bill—specifically clause 8 in particular new sections 162A and 162B. I speak of course of the criminalising of people who have student loans and of arresting them at the border for a problem if they have defaults on their loans. Although I fully support the taxpayers of this country requiring us to repay what is clearly owed to them for the benefit of having a loan to support our study I think that we should be making it easier for students to repay this loan. It appears to me that we have missed several steps in this process in order to achieve a heavy-handed big-gun populist approach—a gimmick that sounds like it will achieve the objective but really it will achieve very little.Specifically in terms of clause 8 who is going to enforce these arrests at the borders? And I wonder how stretched our border authorities already are. Will it be the police then? Well I hear that they have already stated quite clearly that they do not have the resources to enforce it in the way that this bill is proposing. The bill and this clause in particular is punitive and basically takes what should be a matter for civil jurisdiction and turns it into a criminal matter. But that is not the only point that I want to make.The point I want to make is that this would not be required as an enforcement tool if we looked at intervening in this pathway a lot sooner in the process. If we are serious about ensuring that our students repay their student loans we need to be prepared to facilitate it by making it as easy as possible and without the threats potentially hanging over their heads. What kind of message do we send to our students? The potential for being criminalised for taking advantage of a student loan scheme—an interest-free scheme that I am proud to say was part of a Labour-led initiative and one that despite the fact that the National Party does not really like it National is currently not prepared to ditch because the scheme does a great job of supporting people into education.Many Pacific students have taken advantage of this very scheme. It is vital for our Pacific communities that they have the opportunity to access the student loan scheme and it is a great opportunity for Pacific students to attend higher learning and for those younger Pacific students to see that it is possible to hold tertiary qualifications. However as we have heard spoken about when the provisions are to arrest at the borders and we see Pacific people who are likely to be moving around our borders in that regard does it not then beg the question of who might be potentially most at risk?I worry about the message that we are sending to our students when we say: “If you get into trouble with your loan watch out. You will have to provide security you will have to surrender your travel documents or you will be arrested at the border.” What a massive disincentive to our student population and why would you even consider studying in this environment of threat and retribution? It goes to the very heart of the very Kiwi institution of the great OE whereby many of our young people have taken it directly after their study and travelled overseas. Like many Kiwis they have taken up employment in other countries and as Kiwis have a reputation for being conscientious and hard-working folk innovative and clever so our people are sought after. What do we do with this knowledge and experience that they have picked up in the overseas working environment? Do we bring this knowledge and experience back home to benefit the local businesses the academic institutions and the research organisations? Well we should but only if we welcome our people home rather than disincentivising them to return with their skills and experience. Let us face it. We are not the biggest country in the world and bringing ideas and knowledge home after testing it on the world stage is only going to be good for this country.So we are in effect making refugees of our own people because they are in fact exiled overseas unsupported and are not helped to return home to repay the loans as they should. Do we need any more evidence of a Government that does not understand the needs of its own citizens and that could permit a section of its citizens to become criminals rather than taking a rational approach to the issue?PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I moveThat the question be now put.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am happy to take a call on these amendments to the student loan scheme but I want to start by responding to some of the comments from David Bennett. I just cannot let them go unanswered. I want to start my contribution on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) by saying that it is somewhat ironic to be lectured by a Government that has clocked up a bigger Crown debt than any other Government in New Zealand’s history. It is lecturing us about debtrepayment yet it has clocked up a bigger debt than any Government in New Zealand’s history which will take generations—generations—to repay. At the end of this parliamentary term New Zealand will have more debt than we had at the end of Muldoon’s term in Government and that is Bill English’s legacy for New Zealand and John Key’s legacy for New Zealand.David Bennett talked about the people who really do the hard work and then of course excluded anyone with a tertiary education from that definition. He basically said that if you have a tertiary education in New Zealand by definition you are not one of the people who does the hard work and contributes to the New Zealand economy. You are one of the socialist elite if you have a tertiary education. That is just the typical anti-intellectual reverse elitism that we get from the National Government which hates anybody who might have an independent opinion and be able to think for themselves. In fact we do not have even a Prime Minister who can think for himself. He relies on Cameron Slater to tell him what he should think and we know that for a fact because he admitted it the other day.Well actually I think that if more New Zealanders had a tertiary education they would be able to see through the hollow spin that so frequently comes from this National Government and they would know that having a Government that is dictated to by Cameron Slater is not good for the health of the New Zealand democratic system. David Bennett seems to ignore the fact that we all benefit from an educated society. So yes the people who do not get out a student loan because they may get their education through a trade for example still benefit as part of a society from the people who do get a tertiary education.David Bennett: Oh socialist elite—socialism.CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh and this makes me part of the socialist elite! I am part of the socialist elite if I point out that somebody who does not have a tertiary education but might have a trades qualification for example which they got through an apprenticeship—and that is fantastic—still benefits from the contribution to society made by the people who do get a degree or take out a student loan in order to support their study. And of course David Bennett ignores the fact that many tradespeople have student loans as well. Actually many many tradespeople have student loans as well. So I think that David Bennett’s anti-intellectualism does not contribute very much to this debate at all.I want to talk to the specific provisions in the bill and in particular what I would like to do is examine the regulatory impact statement which Treasury helpfully has released. The regulatory impact statement is one of the most useful resources that we get as parliamentarians. It enables us to look at the options that were canvassed by the Government to look at the pros and cons of each option and the reasons why the Government chose one option or the other and to weigh up the legislation before the House in light of the other alternatives available.I was interested to see for example what the pros and cons were for the arrest at the border provisions in this bill. Somewhat helpfully Treasury has redacted all of the analysis of the pros and cons of that particular provision which of course begs the question: what on earth is the point of a regulatory impact statement that is supposed to inform intelligent debate on a bill if it is all redacted and if it is all withheld from the people who are going to be taking part in the debate? It actually means that the regulatory impact statement is worse than useless and we have to ask what the point of it is. So unfortunately I cannot canvass in any great detail really the pros and cons of the alternatives that were considered by the Government because Treasury has not supplied them.It could well be of course that the Government did not consider any alternatives because we know that this is in fact a fairly hollow measure. It is not exactly going to suddenly result in a massive decrease in student loan borrowing or student loan debt. In fact it will have a negligible impact. This is more that the Government wants to be seen to be doing something about something. It fills up the legislative programme and makes the Government look busy. It does not really make a heck of a lot of difference but it makes the Government look busy and makes it look tough on all of those mean nasty people who do not repay their student loans. Of course we know that there are actually very few people in that category.I was very interested in looking at clauses 10 and 11 of this bill which deal with the sharing of borrowers’ contact details that are received from their passport renewals. For example under the current arrangement if somebody applies for a passport the Inland Revenue Department can obtain the contact details that they supply with their passport application only if they are in default on their student loan. This provision extends to everyone even if they are not in default on their student loan.I think that there is a very legitimate question to ask about this provision. Why would the Inland Revenue Department have the right to obtain somebody’s passport application details if they are not in default? If they have not done anything wrong what right does the Inland Revenue Department have to obtain their personal private information? I do not think the department does have the right. I do not think that there is a good reason for doing that. There is no case.I have read the regulatory impact statement. I have read this little document here—the commentary on the bill which Todd McClay the Minister of Revenue has put out. The case has not really been made at all as to why details can be given to the Inland Revenue Department in respect of somebody who has done nothing wrong has made all of the student loan repayments that they are required to make and applies for a passport because they want to go away on holiday. What right does the Government have to give that information which is submitted for a passport application to the Inland Revenue Department for the purposes of student loan administration when that person has done nothing wrong and when their repayments are up to date? There is actually no good reason for that. No case is made for that. This is just a case of the Government sharing people’s information willy-nilly. It may as well give it to the ACC and then everybody could have it.Grant Robertson: Or just give it to Judith Collins.CHRIS HIPKINS: Or just give it to Judith Collins—Grant Robertson: Or Cameron Slater.CHRIS HIPKINS: —or to Cameron Slater and then he could publish it and then John Key would know what everybody is up to of course because we know that that is one of John Key’s main channels of information. Actually no case is made for this information sharing. I think that Government departments should share information where there is good reason to do so. There is no good reason for sharing this information in the cases where people are not in default on their loans. If they are meeting all of their repayment obligations the Government should just leave them alone. And as long as they continue to do so good on them and I do not think that the Government has any right to be delving into their private personal passport applications.I want to come now to the arrest at the border provisions. I think that one of the really important messages that we want to send to student loan borrowers who are living overseas is that we want you to come home.Grant Robertson: Come home.CHRIS HIPKINS: We do want you to come home. We want you to contribute to New Zealand society. You are valued members of New Zealand society and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to come back. But of course what this Government has done is first of all made it more likely for people who are away overseas to get into default in the first place. Previously there was an amnesty or a holiday period from repayments. Those who went away on their OE for example might take 18 months off. That was fine. But this Government has reduced that period. People who go away on an OE might intend to be away for only 1 year but of course things happen. Things happen while people are away on their OE and they extend it. They might extend it to 18 months or 2 years but suddenly without ever having really thought about it before they left home—because they were only ever intending to be away for a year—they will find themselves in default on their student loan repayments.Most graduates go away for a year on their OE and I encourage them to do it because I think that they are better contributors to New Zealand society when they get back and that sense of perspective that somebody gets from travelling is good for New Zealand. So I would encourage them to do that. They go away for 1 year and they do not really think about their student loan and nor should they really need to because if they are away for only 1 year then there are no penalties for non-repayment. But previously that period was 3 years and it did allow for those situations.Of course I do not know what the overall experience of members of the House is but most of the people I know who go away overseas for a period of time are normally back within a couple of years. They go away—they might do a bit of a working holiday they do a bit of an OE—but then they do come back and when they come back they start repaying their student loans. These are the people who are now going to be captured by this Government’s somewhat Draconian and punitive measures. What it does is send a message to them that New Zealand does not want them back. Actually we do want them back. We do want to make it possible for people at the end of their study or at some point—they might have worked for a few years to save some money beforehand—to travel overseas and then we want to make it as easy as possible for them to come back. But not this Government—this Government does not seem to be interested in that.So I think that this bill is window dressing but it is actually sending the wrong messages in its window dressing. Yes people should repay their student loans but simply being punitive about it and threatening to arrest people at the border is not a progressive forward-looking move. It is actually quite retrograde. That is one of the reasons why the Labour Party is opposing this bill.ALFRED NGARO (National): I moveThat the question be now put.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Despite Mr Bennett’s very strange rantings in this Committee tonight nobody on this side of the Chamber disagrees that people who have borrowed money through the student loan scheme should pay back the money that they owe. I do believe that New Zealanders living overseas who have taken out a student loan should make their repayments just like I did just like many of us on this side of the Chamber did. That is not what our opposition to the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) is about.I suggest that Mr Bennett rather than trying to be a one-man band rewriter of the Crosby/Textor line book by coming up with his new slogans and trying to get some traction on them for 2014 should actually stop and listen to our objections to this bill. Our objection to this bill—and why we are not voting for this piece of legislation—is that it will not work. This bill is a gimmick it is window dressing and it is not going to do what it purports to do which is to increase the rate of repayment of outstanding debt on the student loan book. It just simply is not going to work.There are a number of clauses that I want to look at tonight in Part 1 of this bill. I want to look at clause 4 clause 6 and of course clause 8 which a number of my colleagues have traversed in the course of this debate. The first one that I want to turn to is clause 4. Clause 4 and I think that Tracey Martin alluded to this in her speech is where we have this Government enacting yet another piece of retrospective legislation. It has already put these rules in place. This is legislation playing catch up because it is a Government that is not keeping up with its legislative agenda. This bill has taken a very long time—since Budget 2013—to come to this Committee and yet the Government has already put this into play. So that is one of the things I object to.Then I want to turn our attention to clause 6—which I think Grant Robertson alluded to—which is the very blunt tool that has been put in place around how borrowers who are living overseas are expected to repay their loan. So if you have a loan and you are living in New Zealand then your loan is repaid according to how much you earn but if you are living overseas your repayments are calculated on the balance of your loan. Although previously there was a three-step repayment threshold under this legislation this is now increased out to five steps. It means that if you have a loan of over NZ$60000 you are liable for repayment of NZ$5000 per year no matter what you are earning. If you are earning £150000 and you have got a loan of NZ$61000 you will pay back NZ$5000 on your loan each year. If you are earning £12000 working in a pub somewhere in London and you have got a loan of over NZ$60000 you will also be required to make a repayment of NZ$5000 per year. This is setting people up to fail. This is setting people up to get into trouble with their loan and then you know what? It will be “catch them if you can” because you can arrest them at the borders when they come back in.We are not setting in place a scheme that incentivises and makes it easy for New Zealanders who are living overseas to repay their loans. On this side of the Chamber we have supported it when the Government has put in place measures that we think will work to increase the number of people who repay their loans and make it easier for them to do so. We supported the measure around making it easier to make repayments through the Inland Revenue Department website. We thought that was a good measure and we gave our support to that because it simply was going to improve how people do it.But in increasing the thresholds under clause 6 of this bill in concert with what we have already seen in previous amendments to the Student Loan Scheme Act—I think it was amendment bill No. 2—which was about contracting the repayment holiday that was available for students we are simply setting traps for people to get into trouble. When Labour put in place the interest-free student loan scheme when we were last in Government it was done for several reasons. One was to address the amount of money that people had to pay at the end of their education.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I moveThat the question be now put.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to speak to the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). I want to focus on the border aspect as well as on the fantastic bright young people who have moved away for better wages and better conditions and to get a broader experience so that they can come back to New Zealand some time. There is a whole range of scenarios for the people who have left. We know that economics have driven a lot out. It seems to be unusual that here we are putting something up to discourage some young people from coming back—but it is not “we”; it is National. National is discouraging our best and brightest from possibly come back. They will possibly end up paying amounts of money that are just not fair because the ones back here are paying something different—or maybe that is the incentive. It is a little bit hard to work it out.At the same time the elite of National are keeping wages down in New Zealand by making it easy to bring in more and more temporary migrant workers and to keep wages down in order to look after its elitist farms and its elitist businesses to make money and to hold wages down for New Zealanders. It then keeps our brightest young people overseas or makes them pay money in a wholly disproportionate way. It is a damned mess and it keeps—[Interruption]Tracey Martin: Ignore him.STEFFAN BROWNING: —yes—the inequity of repayments for New Zealanders overseas compared with those at home. Then we keep wages right down and conditions right down—disgusting situations. We bring people in by the truckload for our horticulture and our agriculture and we keep our New Zealanders overseas or we penalise them.It is very interesting because this is a gimmick in another way and yet it is holding back a batch of good Kiwis as well. It is holding them down. It is going to be penalising them inappropriately. The figure I am told is that this will target 3.2 percent of the $13 billion student debt. This is all about that 3.2 percent. We will have police acting as debt collectors at the border to discourage or to catch young New Zealanders—and older New Zealanders as well as we have heard.I think this Government needs to have a deep look at itself and ask what it is doing.John Hayes: Oh nonsense.STEFFAN BROWNING: Oh yes! We have seen the big line-up and the multimillionaires splattered across here. They can send their kids overseas. They do not have to worry about student debt. But the others—the real New Zealanders the ones doing the grunt and the work—have to pay bloody heaps of interest. This lot does not. No no—they can send their kids through because they are just all right thanks mate. So that is the issue. That is the issue [Interruption] The members making the noise over here—continual noise—do not have a real idea of what it is like for a lot of people. They do not care because they have got the money. So we need to look at some positive incentives for decent wages and conditions and not use these punitive methods to try to address a very very small amount of the student debt. Thank you.JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa): I moveThat the question be now put.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I believe that when someone moves a closure motion all that they are allowed to say is: “I move that the question be now put.” After you called John Hayes he said: “Mr Chair I move that the question be now put.” I do not think that that is in the Standing Orders.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No it is quite OK. You are allowed to address the Chair.GRANT ROBERTSON: After a member has already been called?The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Yes. You are allowed to acknowledge the Chair.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 1 be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes60New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 1 agreed to.Part 2 Amendments to Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Part 2 of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) makes a series of amendments to schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013. That is right. The Government has to amend the legislation it passed last year because it got it wrong again when it comes to student loans. Part 2 of this bill amends schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013.This is one of the problems that students have with the current Government—its constant tinkering and mucking around with the student loan scheme yet not actually getting to the heart of the issues that lie within it. For instance this part talks about borrowers who are shareholders in close companies those who are involved in trusts and people who have employment benefits—and I will come back to that particular provision in a moment—none of which actually addresses the real issues that are involved in the student loan scheme. The biggest one is that at the moment the living costs component for student loans is $173 a week. Well in Wellington a whole lot of students are arriving in town right now and very few of them will find accommodation that costs them less than $173 a week. If they add in their bills if they add in anything to do with food it is gone. They cannot meet those needs through the current living costs arrangements of student loans.Steven Joyce stood up in Parliament today and said that postgraduate students who have lost their allowance because National abolished it can just borrow from the student loan scheme. Well the reality is that they cannot afford to live on that. Many of those people who got the student allowance—for instance for the clinical psychology course that was raised today—are parents who were earning around $350 a week off the student allowance system to help bring up their children. They are now being asked to live off $173 a week and they cannot so they are giving up their study. That is the impact of the changes that this Government has made to student loans and student allowances.Rather than tinkering around with schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013 this Government could be coming to the House with a reform of the student loan and allowance system that actually works in facilitating people into study.Paul Goldsmith: Ah the solution: more money. More money.GRANT ROBERTSON: Well no Mr Goldsmith it does not necessarily have to be more money. More money would be useful. How about this Mr Goldsmith: how about cracking down on the kids of parents who put all their money into trusts so that they get an allowance whereas other people from working families who do not have the money to pay for an accountant do not get a student allowance? How about coming to the House with a bill that does that? How about coming to the House with a bill that actually says to people who have lost their jobs and who happen to be aged over 55: “We are going to support you into retraining.”? But no what this Government did was it said: “People over 55 you are not eligible for the living costs component of studentloans.” I have had people in my electorate office in tears because their ability to retrain and their ability to get a job that will sustain them through to their retirement is gone under this Government.Every step of the way the National Government has undermined the student loan and allowance scheme. It has said: “We don’t want people in tertiary education. We want to limit the number of people who are involved in tertiary education and we are going to use the student loan and allowance schemes to do that.” Well I think that that is just plain wrong. It is short-sighted and it is selling young New Zealanders short. It is selling people who are retraining and those who have lost their jobs short. This bill could have been a bill that said: “Yes we’ll make it easier for people to repay their loans. Yes we will support people through student allowances and through access to student loans so that they can achieve their potential.” Instead Part 2 of this bill is simply tinkering around with schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013.One aspect of that is the aspect around the question of income from employment benefits. I will credit Tracey Martin for raising this in her second reading speech because although on the surface it makes it look like we are dealing with a benefit like a motor vehicle that somebody might have as part of their job if part of their job involves travel they often are not recompensed for that beyond a mileage rate perhaps if they are lucky and here we are throwing that in to people’s income. It is already hard enough for people having had the Government increase the repayment rate from 10c in the dollar to 12c in the dollar. It is already hard enough for people who have not had a wage rise under the 5 years of this National Government without imposing these kinds of things on them.The Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) is nothing more than a bunch of window dressing and slogans put together in a bill and now some corrections to a bill that was passed last year. Students all around New Zealand are starting off their courses at universities and polytechs and other training institutions at this time of the year. They are looking at how they are going to finance their way through their studies. If they are over 55 if they are over 40—for student allowances—if they are a postgraduate student or if their parents’ income has shifted at all in the last few years they are worse off under a National Government. It is more difficult for them to study and students end up taking on more and more hours of part-time work in order to just get by. The amount of $172.50 a week is not enough to live on under the living costs component of the student loan scheme so what do students do? They take on more part-time work. What does that do? It has an impact on many students’ study and their ability to actually achieve the results that they should.The interest-free student loan scheme is not a system that the National Government is committed to. We know that. John Key said he did not believe in it and that he was going to oppose it with every bone in his body. As a result of not being able to have the political will to stand up for what National actually believes—that it wants to put interest back on student loans—its answer because it is not prepared to do that and because it does not have the guts to put that before New Zealanders is to tinker around with the system through bills like this which makes it more difficult for New Zealanders to repay their loans if they are overseas. Let us be absolutely honest about this. This bill will make almost no difference to the repayment rate for student loans. In fact the evidence that the Finance and Expenditure Committee saw was that it actually is going to be harder for people to pay back their loans. They will actually pay back less of their loans. They will not come back to New Zealand.So as a bill it does not even achieve the purpose it set out to. It is a bunch of slogans. Part 2 of this bill adds absolutely nothing other than correcting a hopelessmistake of this Government which clearly does not know what it is doing with the student loan scheme.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to follow the previous speaker Grant Robertson. I am intrigued because I hear all the Opposition spokesmen saying that the Opposition is not opposed to the idea of people paying back their loans and being obliged to pay back their loans but it just seems that those members never happen to agree with any of the ideas put forward. The approach of the Labour Party seems to be that if we talk to people and we ask really really nicely then perhaps they might pay back their loans. Well it does not work that way and it has not been working that way and that is why this legislation has been brought in as a very last-ditch measure. If you have one of the 61000 New Zealanders overseas who have got student loans who have left the country and who are not paying back their loans and if you have exhausted all other opportunities to get them to start paying back their loans then this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) gives us the tools that we need.Do we really think that the hard-working factory workers on modest wages should be paying taxes to pay for highly trained overseas people who have bunked with the cash and are not paying back their loans? Well then I think that is why the Labour Party is a bit out of touch. It was interesting to see also the previous speaker Mr Robertson suggesting that we do something about people hiding their money in trusts so that they could get student allowances. Well you know we actually passed legislation that broadened the definition of income of parents for student allowances and for student loans. We have been doing that and we will continue to work in that area.It is a long slow process because it does take and it will take decades for New Zealanders to wean themselves off this entitlement culture that has developed: the idea that somehow every solution to every problem we have got in this country is that we just need more money. Mr Robertson was a perfect example of that in the previous speech. The solution to the problem is just more money. That is what we need to do: have more money to spend on student allowances and student loans. Well there are not necessarily endless supplies of more money. New Zealand has to fight its way and be competitive in a global world that is competitive. We get to spend resources on education and on tertiary education and on supporting students only if we have a strong economy and we have a strong economy only if we are disciplined about the way that we spend our money. That is why this Government has been successful by having a disciplined approach to spending getting back to surplus and doing a good job and it is why we continue to have the same levels of support that continue. It is why Labour is I think struggling to get attention and traction because it is all about spending more.Just dealing with some aspects of Part 2 that I wanted to draw the attention of the Committee to in terms of the new arrangements in terms of paying back loans previously yes we do have overseas-based borrowers’ repayment obligations—Kris Faafoi: Bring out the formula!PAUL GOLDSMITH: —being based on their loan balance while New Zealand - based borrowers’ obligations are based on income. I do not want to confuse the Opposition by dealing with the mathematics because I am sure that not all of them are so good at mathematics but what I would say is that if there was a perfect way of figuring out what the income of overseas people was then that would be a sensible way of doing it but there is no practical way of doing that so the loan balance is what we are using here. This bill extends that. At the moment a balance of over $30000 has the obligation to pay $3000 a year. Now that obligation for loans of between $45000 and $60000 will be to pay $4000 a year or $5000 a year respectively. If people on the other side think that it is unreasonable to ask New Zealanders who have a loan of morethan $60000 that they have not paid back to their fellow New Zealanders that they start paying back that money then I think they have got a serious problem. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): David Clark.Hon Members: Oh!Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): That vote of confidence from my colleagues is welcome. Of course everybody wanted the opportunity to speak after that purler from Mr Goldsmith. There was quite a lot of competition on this side of the Chamber to draw attention—further attention—to the speech that Mr Goldsmith has just made. Mr Goldsmith just told New Zealand students that they need to wean themselves off their entitlement culture. If people at home heard that Mr Goldsmith said that it would take a lot longer than 5 years for them to wean themselves off their entitlement culture. That is Mr Goldsmith’s O-week message to the students of New Zealand. Students need to wean themselves off entitlement culture. [Interruption] What was that?Grant Robertson: It’s an entitlement they have to pay back.Dr DAVID CLARK: It is an entitlement they have to pay back Mr Robertson points out. This of course is a boon to members on this side of the Chamber because it points towards the very difference that we are debating here. We have in this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) encapsulated National’s punitive approach towards students. Those members do not like the interest-free student loan scheme. They never have. They introduced the scheme with interest and then Labour introduced the interest-free scheme and of course subsequently National introduced some administrative fees as a substitute for an interest charge because it could not get away with putting an interest charge back on.It is O-week so I am hoping that those students at home are not out doing other things like toga parties and the other culturally enriching things that students do during orientation week but are at home reminding themselves of the stance of Mr Goldsmith and that message that students need to wean themselves off entitlement culture.Mr Goldsmith lives in a world where this is in his view free money—this is free money. It is wrong that students are given loans—loans—to better themselves to better their lot and to better the lot for their family and the communities around them. I think we just need to watch Mr Goldsmith’s speech again. I am sure that other colleagues will comment on it as well but I will come back to some material that is actually in the bill. I can see colleagues are wanting to share Mr Goldsmith’s messages on Facebook and I urge students to watch his speech.In a previous life I ran a university college down in Otago. I am very very aware of how much some students struggled to meet the payments that were required of them not just in the college that I was running but in other similar colleges across Otago and that is in a place where the cost of living is somewhat lower than in other areas in the country. The reason they struggled is that the fees that are charged just to live reflect the real cost. Obviously a college can buy in bulk and get some discounts and can do things cheaper perhaps than an ordinary citizen could do them but they still cannot be low enough and affordable enough to meet the kinds of demands that students have placed on them financially. A student who works 40 hours a week for example in a minimum wage job throughout the whole summer holiday is going to really struggle to pay the deposit at the beginning of the year for a hall of residence in New Zealand. That is the way our country is structured. The wages are kept low by this Government. It has had only tiny incremental advances in the minimum wage. It has also got to do with the costs of tertiary education and the lack of generosity in the student loan scheme. This is what Mr Goldsmith calls an entitlement culture: the ability to eke through. The ability to eke through on borrowed money is what Mr Goldsmith is calling an entitlement culture.We on this side of the Chamber view education as an investment in our young people and we note that the changes proposed in Part 2 of the bill really look at the minutiae of how the formula will apply to those who are shareholders in close companies those who use motor vehicles and those who have voting interests. These details are important and they are important to get right to make sure that the system itself is fair but they do not get to the heart of the issue which is about generosity and we do not see that so much covered in Part 2 of the bill. The formula of course is laid out there. Mr Goldsmith seemed to be occupied with Part 1 of the bill and we noticed that he talked about the repayment amounts for those arrested at the border but coming back we see that Part 2 actually has a formula that adjusts for net income in the income year and it is calculated using a formula that looks like a mathematical formula—“a x (b - c)”. That formula is applied in different ways according to the voting interest the nature of the company that is held the dividends paid and so on.These are important details in respect of fairness in the system but I will come back to the point that Mr Goldsmith raised about an entitlement culture. I simply cannot take that comment seriously and I think that few New Zealanders will. Any New Zealanders who have studied will struggle to take that seriously. It might come from someone who ran and lost in Epsom with a particular world view that they were promoting that thought that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were good but did not go far enough. It might come from that particular world view that this is an entitlement culture but we on this side of the Chamber view those who borrow to better themselves and who want to repay that loan as doing a good thing for themselves and for society and we believe that this loan scheme is a good thing. That is why Labour introduced the student loan scheme in an interest-free format in the first place—so that we could have this paying forward to each generation this money that would better our society over time.I want to take a minute just as I reach the end of my time speaking to give a special welcome—a shout out—to the students arriving in Dunedin North the finest electorate in the country at the oldest and finest university in the country. Those students are very welcome in Dunedin. It is great to see their energy returning to the city. We are proud on this side of the House to support students to support the interest-free student loan scheme that we introduced and to support more generous allowances over time working towards making education more and more accessible not like the changes that this Government has brought in restricting the number of years that students can study. We see students coming in to my electorate office who are studying medicine but have now had their funding discontinued. They cannot complete their medical degrees for goodness’ sake! We have students who have undertaken a Master’s degree put off drawing down their payments because they have children and were relying on the payment in their last year to get them through who now find that they have used up their allowance availability and who are now stranded unable to complete degrees.We see a Government here that is restricting access to education in every way that it can. It is making sure that its own people are looked after but it does not care about most of New Zealand—the greater part of New Zealand society that is struggling to get ahead under a Government that really does not seem to have a plan to share the benefits of any recovery we are seeing a Government that is out of touch with New Zealand and a Government that does not seem to care about our students. On this side of the House we say: “Welcome students. Welcome to Dunedin. Have a great time. Make the most of your educational opportunities. We support you. We support you with interest-free student loans and student allowances. We on this side of the House support you. Don’t elect those guys again. They are looking for opportunities to take opportunity away from you.” On the other side of the House those members are interested inpreserving the capital the people who have the wealth. They are not interested in seeing people progress up the ladder to make themselves better and to make their families better and to increase their opportunities. Those members are against progress. They are for only entrenched interests. We support ordinary New Zealanders who want to get ahead. That is why we support the student loan scheme in its interest-free form and that is why we support student allowances that are generous. We in the Labour Party say: “Welcome students. Great to have you in town.”TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. I just acknowledge how great it is to have the author of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) in the chair next to you. Hopefully he will have seen my contribution earlier on Part 1 and the questions that I asked and perhaps the Minister of Revenue may actually rise to his feet during Part 2 and answer some of those questions.I also want to address in Part 2 the concept of fixing what was the bill from 2013 and the moving around of some of the parts inside the schedule there. I want to bring this conversation out of the 20 percent of our young people who go to university and actually talk about the 60 percent of our young people who are currently in the workforce or who are trying through education to gain employment. I want to talk about the fact that it actually costs a baker $5000 to do a pre-apprenticeship course and he or she has to gain that through StudyLink. I want to talk about the fact that it costs an animator $10000 a year to actually go and do that at a polytechnic. Let us just go to actually even doing an early childhood education qualification inside the workplace run by a wānanga or one run by another polytech organisation. That will cost you $1800 via StudyLink.What about inserting as we are working around schedule 3 in Part 2 some sort of responsibility on behalf of the lender Minister to make sure that the young people who go to StudyLink understand the repayment obligations? If you go to StudyLink now to the applications web page which I have here for you should you wish it will tell you every way under the sun how to gain a loan and gives not a single comment about your repayment responsibilities at all. There is not a single comment on that front page about the repayment responsibilities of any young New Zealander. It is no wonder we now have outstanding debt. As a debt collector as a Parliament we have put into place or are looking at legislation on loan sharking in South Auckland where we say that a loan shark a lender must make it clear inside the documentation the repayment obligations of any individual who is borrowing money from them. Where inside any of this legislation inside the rewrite of schedule 3 in Part 2 has this been made clear?I meet young people day in and day out in my town. I met a young person the other day who has an $18000 loan to study animation. He had no idea he could not leave the country. He had no idea that he did not have to start repaying his student loan until it was over a certain threshold. He had no idea it was interest-free. He had no idea that if he left the country after 1 year he would get interest on it and that he had to make contact with the Inland Revenue Department. Why did he have no idea? Because there is a multitude of people out there who are signing our young people up to debt and it would appear there is not a single requirement for those people to make sure they know how to repay it. It might be something that the Minister could work on so that it is clear before our young people sign up.I am tired of hearing about the 20 percent at the top. Certainly university students have loans. There is no doubt about it. But so do many of the other young New Zealanders in that 60 percent bracket. They are not the most vulnerable. They are not the ones receiving free support. They are the ones in the middle who are trying to find employment and who are doing what we have asked them to do. They are not getting a degree. They are not getting a Bachelor’s degree or whatever. They are doing a pre-apprenticeship course or whatever. It may be that the Finance and Expenditure Committee is not aware that if you have National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 1 and the majority of New Zealand students interestingly enough do have level 1—it is level 2 that is the target—you cannot gain entry to a Youth Guarantee course. So you must get a loan. You must go in. Only 1 percent of all the people involved in a Youth Guarantee course are allowed to already have level 1. The majority of the level 1 courses do not cover baking do not cover animation and do not cover other things.The reality—and this goes to new section 12A inserted by clause 17 put in in Part 2—is that that includes a car now being incorporated into the salary package of any worker. Again I believe that this provision has been written in there because there is a bias that all the people with these loans are university students or post-university—that they are all doctors and lawyers or whatever and that they are on $110000 a year plus a Mercedes. I brought the case before of a Department of Conservation ranger who I believe can expect to earn between $33000 and $47000 a year depending on approximately 5 years’ worth of experience. Often there is a car involved in that. I do not think anybody sitting in this Chamber is going to say that $33000 plus having a Range Rover or whatever those things are—a Land Rover or whatever it is—to use as you go out to make sure that all the bins in a regional park are clean or whatever makes you a wealthy person.New Zealand First has serious concerns that there has not been a practical eye cast over this bill. This has been written with a bias. It has been written with a bias and when it hits the ground it is once again going to disadvantage all those who are in that low or middle-income area. This is not going to target the people who somehow Mr Paul Goldsmith thinks are the people who need to be pursued like this. It may be that in Mr Goldsmith’s electorate—well not actually the electorate he is the MP for but the electorate that he lives in—they have all got $150000-a-year jobs and drive a company Mercedes. But I can tell Mr Goldsmith that where I live in Rodney which is 46 percent of the land mass of Auckland with social deprivation scores of 8 in two of our townships those young people are getting jobs as Department of Conservation rangers and they are getting jobs at $33000 a year. They have got a car placed at their disposal for them to do their job. They will be penalised further through this new section because it has not been well-thought-out like the majority of the rest of the bill.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Earlier in the debate this evening Parliament was subjected to a tirade of very poor sloganeering by the member David Bennett. The thrust of his argument was essentially that Labour supports some intellectual elite—the group of people who actually study and go to university—and National supports somebody else. I am not quite sure who he was trying to say National supports. I do not know—he was trying to do some sort of framing around Labour as being intellectually elite. But I heard somewhere in his tirade something along the lines of: “They’re the real people who pay their taxes like people who work in agriculture.” Well Mr Bennett I want you to know that a large number of the people who live in my electorate in Palmerston North are people who are going to make their living working in agriculture. They are studying getting degrees getting Master’s degrees and doing postgraduate study at Massey University. So a lot of the people whom David Bennett decided to attack this evening—a lot of the people whom David decided to attack this evening—are people who are going to be working in the very industry that those members over there pretend to be the champions of.But do you know what? There is a group whom I want to talk about this evening who have been even more abused by the changes that National brought into the student loan scheme which Part 2 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) attempts totinker around with—that is the eligibility for student allowances. Another group of people who study exclusively at Massey University are vet students. A veterinary degree takes 5 years to complete. That is somewhat more than the 200-week maximum that you can take a student allowance for. So right from the start anyone who embarks on a veterinary degree is not going to be eligible for a student allowance for the whole time that they are studying for a vet degree.But it is worse than that because not only do they have to do about 250 weeks of study or maybe slightly less than that but also they have to work over the summer doing placements that are credited towards their study. Those are absolutely compulsory. There is no way out of doing those placements over the summer. The good news for them is that they can get a student allowance whilst they are doing those placements over the summer but of course that eats into the 200 weeks. So for most vet students they are facing at least a year of their study without the student allowance.But it is even worse than that. These days because the competition to get on to that veterinary course is so intense—the places are so few—a large number of students have actually completed an entire qualification before they start their veterinary degree. So vet students in particular are very heavily penalised by the National Government’s decision to limit the availability of student allowances.Qualified veterinarians are absolutely vital to New Zealand’s primary industries. New Zealand’s agriculture—our dairy industry our beef industry our lamb industry our alpacas; anything you want to name that is an animal that is vital to our economy—absolutely depends on high-quality qualified veterinarians. Yet that is one of the groups that that National Government—of all parties to attack a group that is so important to the primary industries it is the National Party that has made it so difficult to go and get a veterinary qualification. Maybe—maybe—the National Party believes that only the sons and daughters of immensely rich people deserve to be vets. Maybe it believes that if you grow up in South Auckland you do not have a right to be a veterinarian. Maybe that is why it decided to put that barrier up to stop people being able to qualify as a veterinarian.I think that it is rich coming from a member like David Bennett who tries to throw slogans around about what one party or another actually believes when that party comes to Parliament day after day and says that it is the champion of agriculture. It says it is the champion of the primary industries and yet in so many ways it makes it more difficult for the people who are working day in day out on the front line in the primary industries.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 2 be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes60New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 2 agreed to.Clauses 1 to 3GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Clause 1 of course as we know is the title clause and this bill is called the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). The critical element in that title is the number three because we have been subjected in this House to the National Party’s tinkering with the student loan scheme. The National Government has come to this House repeatedly since it came into officein 2008 to make small incremental changes to the student loan scheme because it did not have the guts to say to New Zealanders the thing that Steven Joyce and John Key believe which is that the interest-free student loan scheme is wrong. They do not like it.National Party members are fully entitled to their view that interest-free student loans are wrong but if that is the view of National Party members then they should have the gumption to come to New Zealanders and to come to this House and say that they are putting interest back on student loans. But they have not done that because they know that it is politically unpopular. So instead Steven Joyce’s approach is to introduce bills with innocuous titles like the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) and to make the changes that effectively limit the enabling mechanism that is the student loan scheme.So the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) as we have been traversing tonight is essentially a set of slogans and gimmicks around the arrest at the border provision. It is the latest attempt by the National Government to come to this House and make changes that will restrict people’s ability to get loans and in this case it will actually provide a disincentive to paying them back. From day one it is saying to students that the interest-free student loan scheme will not be available to people who are 55 years old or over when it comes to living costs and is saying to people that the $172.50 that is the living cost component of student loans will not be altered despite the fact that rents are spiralling well ahead of that particularly in Auckland and Wellington. The Government has put on an administration fee which is effectively adding interest because it is an administration fee that has no basis and it has no justification. That has been added in an earlier student loan scheme amendment bill.Little by little the eligibility for these loans has been restricted while at the same time eligibility for the student allowance scheme which is covered in the regulatory impact statement for this bill has also been restricted. If you are over 40 you can have only 3 years of student allowances in your whole lifetime—only 3 years in your whole lifetime. If you are trying to do postgraduate study you cannot have student allowances at all no matter what your circumstances are.These kinds of restrictions and limitations on loans and allowances are limiting the ability of New Zealanders to get a tertiary education. So it is all very well to propose a bill with an innocuous title like this but it is one further step in limiting opportunities for New Zealanders. It is one further step in Steven Joyce’s stated desire in 2010 to dampen the demand for tertiary education and to restrict in other words the number of people receiving tertiary education.We on this side of the Chamber stand for the opposite of that. We stand for investing in tertiary education and investing in New Zealand’s future by encouraging people into study. We are proud of the fact that we expanded eligibility for student allowances and that we made loans interest-free because we wanted to give New Zealanders an opportunity.If you wanted to retitle this bill it could actually be called the “Student Loan Scheme (Denying New Zealanders Opportunity) Amendment Bill” because that is what this bill in effect does. It adds to a litany of decisions around the student loan and student allowance schemes that are actually limiting those opportunities for New Zealanders.The other element of clauses 1 2 and 3 is of course the question of the commencement date. There is a little bit of confusion about this because proposed new section 4 of the bill has a commencement date of 1 April 2012. I might be mistaken but 1 April 2012 was a couple of years ago now—I think that is right is it not? I have not lost those years. It has been a terrible terrible time over the last few years with a National Government and I have tried to block out a number of the years that we have been through under National but I am pretty confident we have been past 1 April 2012.That is because new section 4 effectively covers yet another mistake from this Government when it comes to the student loan scheme having failed to deal with the way in which deductions occur from a borrower’s account. So we have got retrospective legislation within new section 4.Then proposed new section 6 which is the one around the repayment obligations that we have previously covered comes into force on 1 April 2014 and well it might come into force on April Fool’s Day because it is a foolish decision to set such an arbitrary repayment figure for borrowers who are overseas. The decision that has been made there is that effectively no matter what you are earning when you are overseas you are subject to these flat rates. People who are actually meeting their obligations under the loans scheme will not even be able to pay their loans back because of the flat rates. It is called flat-spotting. We went through it as borrowers in New Zealand before we introduced interest-free loans while studying.Dr David Clark: I got flat-spotting.GRANT ROBERTSON: Flat-spotting was another of the things that happened in Dunedin I think Dr Clark but in this case it means people who cannot even meet the interest payments on their loans.What is needed here is some imagination from the National Government to try to come up with a scheme that is based on actual earnings and to actually work with borrowers so that they identify their own earnings and then identify what they can pay. That would be an inventive way of dealing with this but instead new section 6 of the bill in coming into force on April Fool’s Day simply implements an arbitrary repayment regime that I do not believe will improve repayment rates whatsoever.Then proposed new section 7 just to ensure that we do not get ahead of ourselves comes into force we are told in clause 2 on 1 April 2013. So it is back to last year for new section 7 of the bill which is around late payment interest reductions. Here the Government is clearly covering up for yet another mistake that it made in one of its many student loan scheme amendment bills.Clauses 1 and 2 of this bill highlight for me the fact that this Government has not got a clear idea of what it is trying to do with student loans and allowances. All Steven Joyce can see are costs that he wants to cut. He does not see the opportunity to invest in the future of New Zealand and in the potential of New Zealanders. On this side of the Chamber we see student loans and allowances as an opportunity for New Zealanders to get ahead. We will continue to support those.We do need to review the student loans and allowances systems. They have not kept up with the changes in terms of the cost of living for people and too many incremental changes have been made to it so there are now loopholes. There are now places where people can hide money in trusts and get allowances for their children while other people who cannot afford accountants do not get those allowances. Labour is committed to a review of this scheme but it is a review that is about increasing the opportunities for people to study and to be supported while they are studying. We cannot support this bill although we would like to see more legislation that actually helps people pay their loans back and helps people get through tertiary education. This bill is not that.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Dr David Clark.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Thank you for the call Mr Chair. I realise that out of the wealth of options you had before you that I should be honoured that you selected me to speak at this point in the debate.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sure.Dr DAVID CLARK: It is very touching. I rise really to support Mr Robertson’s suggestion that this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) Bill be renamed the “Denying New Zealanders Opportunity Bill” because I think that does aptly describethe general thrust of the bill. The Tertiary Education Union said in its submission—and this really clarifies the point—that this bill is a poor alternative to making education more affordable and accessible.This bill uses Parliament’s time to refine a few rules in this legislation and primarily to put a gimmick in place that provides the provision to arrest at the border. We know it will see a few New Zealanders victimised at some stage when they are selected from those who owe money when they are perhaps returning to the country to attend a family funeral or a wedding or other significant occasion. It is a distasteful gimmick. The police have said that they do not have the resources to implement it and we know that it is a crazy idea but the Government seems determined to persevere with it and so that is why we are here this evening.This bill moves in the wrong direction. It is designed to make the scheme more punitive. We on this side of the Chamber support a review of student loans and allowances to ensure that they really do support every New Zealander to have the opportunity to make the best of their gifts and talents so that they can contribute to New Zealand in the way that they have the energy to do and in the way that they want to do. We do not think that the original intent of the student loan scheme was to turn New Zealanders in exile into enemies of the State—far from it. On this side of the Chamber we think the intent was to support students and it should be strengthened in that regard rather than working our way through the kind of authoritarian posturing that has been put forward here by the Government members.The one lighter note in all of this of course is the tongue-in-cheek additions and flourishes that the officials have put in there. I think that they really must be commended for their ingenuity. Making the commencement dates in the past and on 1 April really does highlight the point that this bill is a joke. It really does. I would like to tip my hat to the official who proposed these dates. I think that subtle sense of humour is the dignified way in which officials make it known that their political masters have reached the edge of ridiculousness and that is certainly what we see in this bill which is indeed all about denying opportunity.We have heard this from others in the debate. Mr Goldsmith talked about an entitlement culture amongst students essentially asking that students reform themselves stop borrowing money to afford to live and somehow magic their way through university. That was his contribution. We had Mr Bennett stand up and suggest that those who went to university or undertook tertiary education—even trade training—are some kind of socialist elite and essentially some kind of enemy of the State. That was a bizarre contribution but that really has been the sum total of contributions from that side of the Chamber. Government members have not been prepared to stand up and defend this ridiculous notion that we ought to be arresting at the border those who do not have the means to repay their student loans. We on this side of the Chamber would like to see more constructive solutions put forward. Perhaps the Minister responsible—who is the Minister sitting in the chair the Minister of Revenue—will finally take a call to defend this bill because his silence at the moment is very telling and the words of the officials—those clauses coming into effect on 1 April—speak far louder than the Minister’s own contribution in this debate.On this side of the Chamber we would really like to see the Privacy Commissioner’s concerns looked into more—the data-sharing arrangements behind the scenes for those who are in fact compliant borrowers. We would like to see a more generous student support scheme so that more New Zealanders are supported into education that betters their lot and the lot of New Zealand over time. We would like to see a New Zealand that is going forward and where everyone is benefiting and everyone has opportunities to get ahead not just the wealthiest few who can afford to hire accountants to get around thelaws in order to preserve their wealth and access the things that we would all want access to for our society.The bill itself really is all about amending the interest-free student loan scheme which was one of the achievements of the Clark Labour Government. I would like us all to reflect upon that great achievement of making studies more accessible because the punitive and unsustainable interest charges from student loans that were introduced by the National Government were making education less and less accessible in the 1990s. We are seeing here a retread policy from the National Party as its members seek once again to exclude people. This is part of a broader package. We have heard from Mr Lees-Galloway about vets in his electorate who have been punished through this restriction of access to loans and allowances. I have mentioned the medical students in my own electorate who are struggling to get through their studies now that their time has run out. Mature students—in particular those who have taken the time to have a broader education before getting into medicine—are amongst those who are particularly disadvantaged. Master’s degree students and those looking to retrain and make a contribution to society—having taken time off perhaps to raise a family and now returning to study—find themselves punished by this Government.We on this side of the Chamber think that is not right. We think education should be something that is available to more and more New Zealanders not fewer and fewer New Zealanders. We believe that there should be incentives in place for people to get amongst it to do the hard yards to study and to contribute to New Zealand in new ways. We opposed of course the charges that National put in place as administration charges when National members realised that they could not put interest back on to loans—that it was not politically sustainable. Through gritted teeth they are trying to wean us off the loan scheme but they have not got there completely yet.I ask students everywhere in the country to note what is happening here tonight in this bill to note the pattern of this National Government which tries to restrict study and ask themselves whether that is the right thing for our future in New Zealand and to vote in the next election accordingly. This Government has a terrible track record in student support. It does not like supporting students from all backgrounds to get ahead. It does not think that education is something that everyone should have access to in the way that Labour does. Welcome again to the students of my electorate of Dunedin North who are arriving there this week. It is great. I look forward to seeing them tomorrow in Dunedin. It is always great to have students in Dunedin. They bring so much life to our town and I am very glad that they can still access an interest-free student loan despite the wishes of this Government.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes60New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 1 agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Can I just make the point that votes are taken in silence because the noise is a distraction. I can hear the conversations.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes60New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 2 agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 3 be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes60New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 3 agreed to.Bill to be reported without amendment presently.