Woods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8963. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 of this legislation the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) in regard to the title. If we note that the title— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: We are on the clauses not the— 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: Sorry clause 1—clause 1 of this bill in terms of the title the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). In particular I want to talk to the “No 2” aspect of this title of the legislation. Of course what we have before us is a piece of legislation that is putting in some consequential amendments to the legislation that was passed last year amending the Student Loan Scheme Act. Our concern here is that this is a Government that is having to come back and continually amend this legislation. In fact we have seen that the Minister of Revenue has lodged a number of amendments to this legislation which we are debating tonight in this Committee because they were picked up as we went through. What we think is that there is a certain amount of uncertainty in terms of what is trying to be achieved. 
What we saw throughout the submission process in relation to this concern around the very piecemeal way in which this Government was operating in regard to student support is very much encapsulated in the title of this bill that we currently have before us in that it is titled “No 2” and we are coming back only a year later for a second bite at this cherry as it were to try to get this right. We support in the main the amendments that are being put forward in terms of the redefinition of income and the data matching with the reservations that my colleague Kris Faafoi and others have outlined tonight. Although we do support that we do have a concern about the piecemeal way in which this Government is approaching the issue of student support. The fact is that this is the second piece that this is the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) and that we are here debating the scheme only a year later. My colleague David Cunliffe has talked about the fact that within the consequential amendments we are seeing in this No. 2 bill there can be a lot of change that is occurring. More alarming—and my colleague Dr David Clark has talked about this tonight and indeed he has talked about it many times when this bill has been discussed at the Finance and Expenditure Committee and when we have debated this bill in the Chamber—is the “Henry VIII” clause which is the ability that the Government is giving itself to make amendments if it is seen to be within the spirit of the Act. We do have concerns about that. What we want to see is a Government that is going to get it right that is not going to take a very piecemeal approach to the very real issue of student support and that will not come back. We do not want to be debating the “Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3)” in only a few months’ time. 
My colleagues have put forward a number of alternative titles for this bill. I think they are very colourful titles some with a bit more character than Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). If we have a look we have talked about the “Little Bit Fairer Bill”. Kris Faafoi had a similar theme but called it the “Glimmer of Hope Bill”. What we see is that this is a bill that is a little bit fairer. I think either of those titles would be very fitting titles for this rather than Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) in terms of clause 1. What we see is that this is a little bit fairer. It does redefine those incomes but it does nothing to address the fact that this is a Government with an explicit agenda to dampen down demand for tertiary education in this country. Student loans are meant to be about giving access to education to students not taking it away. Our concern is that this is the policy agenda that this Government has been going with so we would suggest that either the “Little Bit Fairer Bill” or the “Glimmer Of Hope Bill” that my colleagues have suggested would be better titles for this bill. I think they are very very good suggestions. Treasury estimates that 25000 New Zealanders have lost access to student loans due to the cumulative effects of Budget 2010 Budget 2011 and what this Budget has delivered. That is why we think a name like “Little Bit Fairer Bill” is appropriate because really what we are doing on one hand by making the assessment of income a lot fairer does not offset some of the very unfair things that this Government has done in relation to student support. So I think that is one very good suggestion that has been put through by my colleagues. 
The other that I would like to suggest is the “Tinkering Around The Edges Bill” because I think that is one that picks up some of the aspects of this bill. Although there is nothing that we really disagree with in terms of what the Government is putting through here in that it is making it a fairer scheme and is doing things to increase that it is not doing anything to holistically address the issue of student support. That is where Labour wants to see things go. We want to see students supported. We do not want to dampen down demand for education as a necessary policy objective. We think that people having access to tertiary training whether that be skills training or the ability to learn a trade to go to university or to a whole raft of different tertiary education courses is a good thing. We do not want to have an explicit policy agenda to dissuade our young New Zealanders from accessing this. So that is why we think it could be the “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill”. 
When you put this bill in the context of the other things this Government has done over the course of this term the title “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill” makes a whole lot more sense. It makes sense if you put it in the context of the Government limiting postgraduate students’ access to the student allowance and the fact that this is not a Government that wants to encourage postgraduate study. On this side of the Chamber we think it is something we should be committed to and it is certainly something that we see as vital to our future both as a society and as an economy and it is something we will seek to encourage. We also see that this is a Government that has limited access to student loans to those aged over 55. Given the high levels of unemployment that we have in this country which this Government does not seem to have any answers for or any plan for we do not think it is good to limit people aged over 55 from having the opportunity to retrain and pick up some new skills. That is why we think clause 1 would be better amended to read the “Tinkering Around the Edges Bill”. 
My colleague David Clark has gone through some other suggestions and one of his favourites I think was the “Embarrassing Back-down Bill”. This bill is something we have had to come back to and I spoke about this earlier when I spoke about the specific reference to the “No 2” part of the title of this bill. It should be called the “Embarrassing Back-down Bill” because it is something the Government has had to come back and correct over and over and over when it comes to the issue of student support. We need to get this right. We need to look at the whole issue holistically. 
My colleague Kris Faafoi made a very good contribution I thought. I particularly liked his suggestion that the title should be the “Can We Trust this Government with Our Information Bill”. I think there are some real concerns. As someone like my colleague Kris Faafoi who has a student loan I have concerns about what the Government might do with the information it holds on me in relation to my student loan and whether or not that information is safe. I have presumably just had my information about my Earthquake Commission repairs revealed to the world so I would not like to see this. That is why we think the “Can We Trust this Government with Our Information Bill” is a much better name. This is a Government that has shown that it really is not to be trusted with the information and data of many of the citizens of this nation. Indeed what was spoken about was the very agency that is named in this bill the Inland Revenue Department. We have already seen that there have been problems with the way in which the Government holds information in the Inland Revenue Department. We have had problems with 6300 people’s information in that very agency and that is why my colleague Kris Faafoi’s suggestion of the “Can We Trust the Government with Our Information Bill” is a very very good one. 
 One other thing I would like to throw in there is that the “We Don’t Want Another Novopay Debacle Bill” could be another suggestion for what this bill could be called because what we see in the officials’ report to the select committee is an acknowledgment that the computer systems are just not going to be up to it. They are not going to be able to put the systems in place. We have a section in the officials’ report here that says: “Because of the complexity of the student loan system the detailed analysis has identified that the systems design development and testing required to implement some of the 1 April 2013 changes is significantly greater than originally expected. To ensure timely delivery of the core Government policies contained in the 2011 Act and the policies that have the greatest benefit for borrowers it is proposed to not proceed with some of the measures in the 2011 Act.” 
Here we have a Government that knows it is under the gun and has seen the muck-up that it has already done in education in terms of Novopay and the fact that teachers in this country are not being paid. So we think that changing the title to “We Don’t Want Another Novopay Debacle Bill” would be another good amendment to clause 1 of this legislation rather than using the rather bland name that it has been given the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). We see that the officials’ advice actually shows that this is a Government that not only is incapable of protecting our data but also is incapable of dealing with data and putting systems in place in order to deal with large numbers of data like that. So Labour does support this bill but—