Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. A pleasure to rise and speak after Tim Macindoe—the Hon Tim Macindoe?—after his contributions with regard to his constituency. There have been a number of MPs and Ministers across this House who have shouted out to their constituencies. I as one of the younger members in this Chamber am actually amongst a constituency that a number of members of all age demographics are engaged in and that is one of students.There are a number of members of Parliament across this House that are actually currently engaged in a post-graduate course at Victoria University of Wellington. I see my colleague Kiritapu Allan over there looking incredibly stoked about our class later tonight. But to get to the core point that I'm really hoping to put across in this very brief speech today: fundamentally I think that all of us in here can agree that education is a passport. It is an opportunity or a pathway to social mobility to travel to future opportunities and to contribution. The Greens strongly believe that it is the right of all of us to be able to access that education in this country entirely unencumbered and barrier free. Everybody should have the opportunity to unlock that passion that potential that talent that exists inside of all of us regardless of the backgrounds that we come from and to walk into the future with that education unencumbered by the anchor of debt around their neck.This is an entirely possible reality because in fact student debt was only introduced in 1992. It was a choice to do that. Since then student debt in this country has ballooned to $16 billion. The New Zealand university students' association actually held a sweet 16" kind of lamenting exactly that fact earlier this year. The average balance for all of those who have student loans around this country is on average more than $22000 per person. That is an immense amount of money for younger people in particular but also those who have lost their livelihoods and who are seeking to retrain to carry into the future as they seek to contribute. And nowhere has this commodification of the education system—the higher education system the tertiary education system; heck even in apprentices and in polytechs—been more obvious than in the commodification of student accommodation. It is an issue that has been brought to light particularly in the mainstream media over the past few weeks.I have to say as one of the members across this House—and I'd like to acknowledge actually my colleague the honourable Dr Shane Reti who as well has decided to throw his weight behind supporting students who are seeking to not have to pay for accommodation they are not using—that the more that I have dug into this situation as a member of Parliament with supposedly all of the resources that are open to us all of the doors that are supposed to be open to us I have found how un-transparent how unaccountable and how precarious a house of cards the current situation is with student accommodation in this country. I have found out that there is an absolute patchwork of approaches not only in the eight university institutions across this country but also in the polytechs. We've discovered for example that the two provided private institutions by way of the Auckland University of Technology—otherwise known as AUT—actually is sold on to investors which are able to use that accommodation in a kind of time-share type of way. They are essentially being guaranteed yield by those who are selling it on as investment with students again being those who end up holding the bill in situations of turmoil.Students who are in the student accommodation also are unable to access regular consumer protection. They don't have recourse to the Tenancy Tribunal. In fact the only avenue that is available to them as a form of protection is the recently passed interim domestic pastoral care legislation which came into effect on 1 January this year and even that has proved ineffective. Fundamentally that is the tip of the iceberg but it proves that we need massive reform in this sector. We need to do massive changes in terms of increasing investment in our future."