Hughes Gareth: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:9079. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. First up I would like to wish Roland a very happy birthday. He is one of the very hard-working parliamentary staff and we wish him all the best and I hope you and all the rest of the staff have a fantastic Easter break. I rise to oppose this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). The Green arguments as to why we and Mana are the only parties opposing it have been laid out very well by my colleagues Holly Walker and Jan Logie so I am going to make a short contribution. 
The Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) is quite a common name. We have had a number of these bills over the last 10-plus years. But although it has a common and maybe boring title I think a more accurate title would be the “Focusing on the Small Things Bill”. Or perhaps it should be the “Tinkering Around the Fringes Bill” or the “Fiddling While Rome Burns Bill” because we really have to question the priorities of this Government at a time when students and graduates are struggling and they really are struggling with the economy under that $12 billion millstone—that $12 billion debt that surrounds those nearly half a million graduates’ and students’ necks. But these Government members would spend their scarce parliamentary time their scarce governmental focus on broadening the definition of “adjusted net income” and “net income” to align with the definition used for Working for Families tax credits and then secondly introducing an information match with the Customs Service. 
There are some huge fundamental questions facing our country and particularly our students and graduates but at the heart this Government is tinkering around the edges. But what it is really doing is focusing its attention on an anti-education stance which we have seen very clearly over the 4 to 5 years that National has been in power. Let us list just some of them. We have seen considerable and significant year-on-year funding cuts. We have seen our universities decline down the international rankings. We have seen lifetime limits to student loans. We have seen restricted access for over-55-year-olds. We have seen the Government—the Government—decide how student levies should be spent not students as it goes ahead and guts our students associations around the country. We have seen the Government restrict access for permanent residents to student loans. We have seen the Government literally lock the door—it has locked the door—to thousands of students with its punitive retroactive rules and incredibly those prospective postgraduate students— 
Mike Sabin 
: How’s that member’s student loan going? 
GARETH HUGHES 
: I have paid off my student loan Mr Sabin thank you very much. But we know that New Zealanders are struggling with that $12 billion because this Government is just not supporting them. This Government is not supporting them. 
Mike Sabin 
: The man is a model—a model student. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: Let us go through that list because we have still got quite a few more of the anti-education initiatives from this Government Mr Sabin. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Metiria Turei 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is not appropriate for a member of this House to say that another member of this House is lying. I would ask that you ask the member to apologise for his comments. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is absolutely right. We do not refer to members lying in this House because it actually brings disrepute to the House of Parliament itself. If the member did that I would ask him to stand withdraw and apologise because it is an infringement against the House. 
David Bennett 
: I apologise. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. And also I might add too—I am sorry Mr Hughes—that when we are on the cross benches it is common courtesy and it is also convention that members do not interject on each other in those positions because there is a muffled effect it can have on the microphones. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: Good stuff Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you. Just continuing on that list of the anti-education initiatives we have seen under this current Government—you know Government members have locked the door to thousands of students. Unfortunately for them they could not reintroduce interest on student loans because interest-free loans were just so popular to New Zealanders so what they did is introduce it by stealth with the new class of special fees which they have put on student loan graduates and students. They have abolished the loan repayment incentives—the carrots if you will. They have increased the repayment rates to 12 percent of gross salary. 
All in all under National what we have seen is tertiary education become more expensive less accessible and in some cases downright impossible as National locks the door to students who want to study who want to upskill and who want to contribute to our economy. This Government has made it harder more expensive and in some cases impossible. It is not smart economics. We know that across the Ditch the Australians have invested in their tertiary education sector. They have spent $5.7 billion over 4 years— 
David Bennett 
: We spend more than they do. 
GARETH HUGHES 
: We know that the New Zealand spend is in the second half of the OECD average for Mr Bennett’s information. As a percentage we spend less than most of the OECD countries. It is not smart for our economy. 
I struggle to think of a single positive thing this Government particularly under Steven Joyce has done for tertiary education. I seriously do struggle to think of a positive initiative. But in contrast what the Green Party would do is actually prioritise it because it is in our economic interest. We want to support our students. We want to support our graduates. It is in our economic interest and this is what I just do not get from National. You know National is penny-pinching and reducing access to education yet it is finding billions of dollars for motorways to bail out various industries and to subsidise fossil fuel polluters. I think the priorities of this Government are just round the wrong way. 
So we see this as yet another tinkering around the edges bill. This bill does three main things that we have some issues with. The first is the definition of “income”—one of the two main parts of this bill. It is problematic in the way it relates to the Working for Families changes because with the Working for Families calculation your loan repayment which the Government in the Budget last year increased from 10 percent to 12 percent is not taken into account. We would prefer that Working for Families was taking into account student loan repayments because what we do not want to see is our families struggling with those increased repayment thresholds the Government brought in. 
With the Customs Service information sharing we have no issue with that but it is a reminder to this House that just last year we decreased the overseas repayment holiday time. It was 3 years and the Green Party originally supported that. Peter Dunne supported it and spoke very favourably many years ago but Peter Dunne was the Minister who reduced that to 1 year. Again this is going to have perverse incentives because Kiwis who are on their OE and traditionally do spend more than 1 year overseas are going to struggle to return to New Zealand given that the repayment holiday is only a single year now. Lastly and most egregiously is again this trend we see with the National Government in power. It is what I consider the abuse of the Order in Council regulatory-making provision inserted into this bill in the select committee consideration. This Government is abusing this quite considerable powerful tool where we are seeing less parliamentary oversight of important changes being made. 
So in summary this bill tinkers around the edges while $12 billion in debt is still negatively impacting our students and graduates. On top of all the negative initiatives this Government has taken to students it is clear it is not out for students and it is not out for a smarter economy. But that is what the Greens would focus on and it is what we would prioritise because it is in our economic interest. When people are going to the election and thinking about their votes those students will be voting Green. They will not be voting National. People who care about the future of our economy will be voting Green. Kia ora. [ 
Interruption 
]