Faafoi Kris: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill Student Loan Scheme (Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill Student Loan Scheme (Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2491. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Taloha ni Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you very much for the call in this the third reading of the Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill and the Student Loan Scheme (Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. But I do not think I can leave the comments from the Green list member Kennedy Graham go unchecked. This is a House of Representatives it should be a place of robust debate it should be a place with colour and I think that the fact we all just received a lecture from Mr Graham—someone whom I have a lot of personal respect for—may be just a little bit over the top. I think this place should be robust. I am sure the Assistant Speaker in the Chair at the moment may think that from time to time it may get a bit out of hand but this should be a place where we should feel free to express ourselves in any way that we choose as long as it is within the Standing Orders. But I will go back to the bill now that I have dealt with Mr Graham’s sermon.  
I think that this bill is a sorry sign that the Government lacks any real leadership in terms of an economic plan to make sure that we deal with some pretty serious issues that New Zealand faces. Instead of getting real leadership I think as Mr Winston Peters said yesterday we have got reruns. We have got reruns of failed economic policies that are not going to do anything to address some of the serious issues that New Zealand faces. We have had the worst economic growth in 50 years. In fact every week of the last 12 months 1000 Kiwis have thought it better to get on a plane and head to Australia to make their living usually with their families than to stay in New Zealand their country of origin their country of birth. I think that is very sad. It is also very sad that there is no real leadership on the fact unemployment has risen by 52 percent in the 4 years that this National Government has been in power. So we have gone back to reruns of the last 20 years. It is almost like  
Star Trek 
—this Government has gone where no Government has gone before. It has gone into the pay packets of our paper boys and our paper girls. It is very very sad to see that we are passing legislation that targets those little critters who are out there— 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Bludgers! 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: —those bludgers—who are delivering our papers and our pamphlets in our communities!  
I just want to talk about a couple of people who are doing this job. There is a person in my electorate whose name is Mark James. His two young daughters go out every week and deliver this Porirua paper I have here. It is the  
Citylife Porirua News. 
Andrew Little 
: A good newspaper. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: It is a very good newspaper. Every fortnight it runs a very excellent comment by its local member of Parliament! Mr James was to encourage his two young daughters to know the value of work so they can earn some money and know the value of money. 
Andrew Little 
: Good parents. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: They are very very good parents. Mr James is such a good parent but in October last year his worst nightmare came true. The company that contracts his children to deliver these newspapers sent something to them that they did not want to deliver. It was this National Party leaflet. But because he is a professional and he wants his kids to be professional he said: “Come on kids. Despite the fact that we don’t want to deliver these we’re going to go out and deliver them.” So they know about good work ethics. They are good professional young kids but this Government want to penny-pinch off them to the tune of $240 a year. How miserly can you get? Instead of real leadership on the big economic issues that matter to New Zealand we get penny-pinching on our paper girls and our paper boys around the country.  
We wanted real leadership. When people read their newspapers this morning—the  
Dominion Post¸ 
 or the  
New Zealand Herald 
 or the  
Press 
 or the  
Otago Daily Times 
—they wanted to see real leadership. But what are we debating here? We are debating a bill that removes three tax credits: the income under $9880 tax credit the housekeeper and childcare tax credit the children’s active income tax credit. It also deals with the abolition of elections to leave the herd valuation scheme. Mr Cunliffe has already mentioned that change in detail so I will not go into it. 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Bold stuff! 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: The Student Loan Scheme (Budget Measures) Amendment Bill also abolishes the student loan repayment bonus scheme. Bold stuff!  
Andrew Little 
: They didn’t tell us about that. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: Where was that mentioned in this National Party leaflet that was delivered by these young professionals in my electorate?  
I just turn to the changes that are made to the student loan scheme. It has been debated quite well in the Committee stage. We supported that move because we thought the repayment bonus was a daft thing to do initially anyway. But I did want to point out some of the quotes from National when it passed this legislation. Anne Tolley said: “We estimate that this measure will reduce repayment times of those who take up the bonus by 1.5 years and we believe that it will decrease the upfront cost of new lending to 39.4c.” How could anyone vote against that?  
Next we have Mrs Louise Upston who said: “This bill is a significant step to encourage student loan repayment and more important to reduce the overall repayment times. The message very clearly”—and I will stress this—“is that our young people will be debt-free sooner”. Peter Dunne—the Minister in the chair in the Committee stage—said: “I say to the House that this is a significant incentive for students to pay their loans earlier. I cannot fathom why anyone would oppose the introduction of such an incentive.” But then the truth comes out—in the regulatory impact statement for this bill. Under “Conclusion and recommendations” it essentially says that they got it wrong: “The voluntary repayment bonus does not appear to be improving the value of the Student Loan Scheme. The bonus aims to encourage borrowers who were slow to repay to pay off their loan more quickly. However many borrowers who were already paying back their loans quickly are also claiming the bonus.”  
It basically has not worked. It is what we said. So finally the penny drops for the Government. One of its big announcements in this Budget for real economic leadership is to do away with something that it should never have done in the first place. So where is the leadership? Where is the leadership from this Government in Budget 2012? We do not think there is any. We were asking serious questions of this Government in the Budget but what we get is penny-pinching from our paper boys and paper girls.  
The next bill also shows how it is not just the young that it is targeting but also the old in our rest homes. We look forward to debating that issue in the House because that was not really highlighted in the Budget speech. I trawled through with my highlighter hoping to get it out and say: “Well there it is. They are being quite upfront about this.” But no there is not one mention in Bill English’s speech about changing the threshold for residential homecare. There was not one mention at all. Where is the leadership on growth? Where is the leadership on growth? There is none.  
We commend the fact that the Government has finally again recognised that research and development might be a good thing to do but doing that 4 years after it scrapped the research and development tax credits just does not cut the mustard. It is 4 years too late—sorry National. It is 4 years too late. That is another good point.  
As well as the changes to the student loan scheme which we agree with in this legislation this Government is going to make it harder for low and middle-income families to support their children who might be clever and want to do some postgraduate study. No—the Government will not do that because after the fourth year the student will have to go back to mum and dad and say: “Mum dad I’m not getting the student allowance any more. Can I grab some food from the fridge? Can I bum 20 bucks so I can make sure that I can go and get to university tomorrow?”.  
Is that good enough? Is that going to encourage our students who want to better their lives by going into postgraduate study? I do not think so. Essentially there is no leadership in this legislation—there is no leadership at all. It is absolute tinkering. It is picking on our paper boys and paper girls. Where is the strategy for growth? Where is the plan to make sure we get people into jobs? It certainly is not in this legislation and it certainly was not in this Budget.