Street Maryan: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Street Maryan: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:9419] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to support this legislation which was introduced by the Minister of Revenue who has just resumed his seat. At its third reading I have to say that I have been feeling sorry for the Minister. This Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill should have been reasonably pedestrian legislation to usher through the House. It had the support of the Labour Party and the only dissenting voice was from the Green Party for the reasons that its members have described earlier in this debate. This legislation has been loaded into urgency for no good reason. It could have been dealt with in December; the report of the Education and Science Committee was presented to the House on 27 November and if I remember correctly we sat quite late in December. It could have been dealt with in the ordinary scheme of things with sufficient attention being paid to it allowing it to be in force by 1 April which is one of the critical dates. 
However for the reasons that we have described previously in this debate the Government has seen fit to cover its own sins and inadequacies by putting this bill into an urgency motion that was sought predominantly to avoid question time and to thereby protect weakened ill-performing Ministers from the democratic scrutiny that occurs at 2 o’clock every day of parliamentary sittings. On top of that I have been feeling sorry for the Minister about this because—[ 
Interruption 
] Members opposite might not have noticed but we did not have question time yesterday. Because of the sting that the Government received from that in the media it decided to give in today. But more important I have been feeling sorry for the Minister in his presentation of something that should have been reasonably pedestrian legislation because since the select committee reported back on the bill to the House we have had an explosion of antagonism towards students by the Government. Now this Minister has to front a perfectly good bill in the context of several depth charges that have been dropped into the tertiary education arena by this Government. Let me cite three. 
First of all there was the Prime Minister’s statement at the beginning of this year in which he said that the Government will take a careful look at the policy settings with regard to student support. Of course that left everybody wondering what it meant. Does it mean that the Government intends to restrict access to tertiary institutions by not making them open entry for people over the age of 20? I will come back to that one in a moment. Does it mean that the Government is intending to make loans and allowances harder to access? I will come back to that one in a moment too. The Government unleashed that set of imponderables to begin with upon this Minister and upon a perfectly ordinary piece of legislation. I say that without meaning to be dismissive of it at all I tell the Minister. Secondly the Minister for Tertiary Education was removed from that portfolio; Anne Tolley was taken out of that portfolio and replaced by Steven Joyce. Steven Joyce went on to say just last weekend in the Christchurch  
Press 
 newspaper that the student loans policy was in his sights. What are we meant to take from that? I ask whether we are to assume that he is also inclined to make student loans harder to get thereby limiting access to our tertiary institutions and limiting people’s ability to take up educational opportunities and reducing the cost of tertiary education to the Crown. We on this side of the House say that the cost is justified and that investment ought to be made by the Government and increased in line with other comparable nations as a way of promoting economic growth and development and as a way of securing our future. 
On top of that the Government decided to support at its first reading the voluntary student membership bill which was drawn out of the ballot and is Sir Roger Douglas’ member’s bill. That was an antagonistic gesture as well. The Government will not say whether it will support that bill at its second reading. It will support the bill at its first reading but it could have stymied it in its tracks as it has done with other bills that have been drawn out of the ballot and not been given the privilege of being referred to a select committee. This Minister now has to field a bill in that context. Perhaps people are wondering why we have been getting so agitated about a bill that would not normally cause this much fuss. It is because it is being dropped into an environment that is now explosive for students. Students around the country have launched a website in response to the voluntary student membership bill. It is called Save our Services and they are getting support in the process. 
I will say a couple of other things particularly about whether this Government intends to make it harder to access student loans—access that this bill expands. If that is the case then let it say so. If it is the case that the Government wants to make it harder by virtue of ramping up the NCEA qualifications required to get into university then that is one issue. If it wants to make it harder to access student loans by ramping up the requirements to pass while at university wananga or polytech then that is another issue. But let us be very clear that whichever way the Government goes about it there will be people who will miss out. I will cite two examples of people who accessed education after the age of 20 or who accessed education not in the usual way of progressing from school and I will demonstrate how important access to education is. 
The first example is the chief executive officer of the Universal College of Learning Paul McElroy who is now in the position of having to turn students away because this Government will not renegotiate the student caps and it will not invest in additional student places in order to equip our country adequately for the future. That breaks his heart because of his own background. He said that he knows firsthand about second-chance education because as a teenager he ran away from home without university entry qualifications. His life was transformed when Wellington Polytechnic took a chance on him. It took a chance on him. He did not come in through having UE or any kind of entry qualification but the polytechnic in Wellington at that time took a chance on him and it changed his life. If this Government is proposing that National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) qualifications be made more difficult or that the threshold be raised so it is more difficult for people to enter tertiary education then members should look at Mr McElroy who has now gone on to be the chief executive officer of a polytechnic. 
The second person I will cite is somebody who came to New Zealand at the age of 23 years as a young mother. In fact she needed to do something to improve herself and her prospects. She enrolled in education at Massey University and in her first year she passed all her courses. It took her 4 years to complete her BA and she was awarded a Massey scholarship as a top graduate in psychology. Later after a series of courses and scholarships having benefited from open entry after 20 years of age she graduated with her PhD. The rest is a matter of public record: a lectureship at Massey University a promotion a move to Canterbury University 6 years as a member of Parliament and now 8 years of running her own research company. That person is of course Liz Gordon. Those are examples of people who have contributed to this country by virtue of accessing tertiary education. If this Government wishes to inhibit that— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry but the member’s time has expired.