Mackey Moana: Address in Reply 
Mackey Moana: Address in Reply 
[Volume:628;Page:365] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a call in this debate. Let me congratulate you Mr Deputy Speaker on your election and also Ross Robertson Ann Hartley and the Hon Margaret Wilson on the positions they continue to hold in this Parliament. I am sure they will serve the House extremely well. 
I would also like to pay tribute to the new members of this House. We have heard many maiden speeches already in the last week or so and I have enjoyed listening to all of them even though I have not agreed with most of them. It would appear that we are moving away from the long-held parliamentary convention of not making personal attacks or negative personal remarks in maiden speeches. I do think that is a shame. It is something that we need to keep an eye on lest it get away from us. Certainly when I made my maiden speech it was made very clear to me by the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt that the convention was to talk about oneself and one’s aspirations and not to attack other members of this House for what they may or may not have done on the campaign trail. 
Firstly I would like to record my condolences to the Green Party and its members on the loss of their co-leader Rod Donald. I sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee; Mr Donald never ceased to amaze me with his incredible breadth and depth of knowledge on electoral law. He will be sorely missed on that point and for everything else as well. 
I would also like to record my condolences at the loss of David Lange. As I grew up in a Labour Party household David Lange played a fairly significant part not just in politics but also because my father graduated in law at Auckland University and David Lange was one of the people who mentored him. My father still has in his possession a matchbox that David Lange wrote a brief on the back of to help him out at one of his first trials. 
I also remember the 1996 campaign. I went back home from university to help campaign with my mother and David Lange came to help out. He went out to my old intermediate school and talked about Telecom New Zealand. One of the students asked him whether he had met Spot the Telecom dog. David Lange replied to a hall full of five hundred 10 and 11-year-olds: “If I ever saw Spot the Telecom dog I would kick him!”. He then went on to explain eloquently why he disagreed with the commercialisation of telecommunications but I fear that that part of it was lost on the 10 and 11-year-olds at Ilminster Intermediate. 
I would like to talk briefly about one of the key policies for Labour in this election campaign which is the policy of charging no interest on student loans. I see that Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith is in the House. I heard him make his speech last week and refer to himself as the proud architect of the student loan policy. Well when I was at university Dr Lockwood Smith was so proud of his student loans policy that he was climbing out of the windows of university buildings in order to avoid talking to students about it. If one had had a student loan at the time one would understand why that was the case. 
Under Dr Lockwood Smith’s scheme my compulsory repayments did not even come close to covering the interest on my student loan. When I left university my student loan ended up being thousands more dollars than the amount I had actually borrowed at the time despite my being a full-time student for that entire period. 
Under the scheme of Dr Lockwood Smith and the National Party which they are so proud of some graduates faced the very real prospect of never ever paying off their student loans. Many graduates knew they would probably die still with their student loan having paid to the Government over the course of their lifetime 10 percent of every single dollar they earned in order to cover the interest. 
Removing interest repayments from student loans will make a real difference to young people in this country. The National Party tries to tell us that 100 percent of enrolled students will now go and max out their loans— 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. If the Labour member is going to attribute things to another member in this House she should at least take the trouble to get them accurate. She made a statement a moment ago that under a student loan scheme I designed interest that was not covered by payments made accumulated— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is not a point of order. That can be corrected at the end of the speech. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. If she is going to bring a member into it— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Yes the member would like assurance. 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: She should not do that. If she is talking about the policy in general there is no problem but if she brings me into it personally she should get the information correct. Her information was false. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Thank you Dr Smith. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well I will mention that to the Inland Revenue Department who charged me all that interest then! 
The National Party is trying to tell us that 100 percent of all enrolled students will now max out their student loans particularly the living allowance portion because of this policy. But of course more than half of the enrolled students study part time so they are not actually eligible for the living allowance portion of the loan. If they study part year part time they also are not eligible for the course costs; they are eligible to have only their fees paid by the student loan which goes directly to the tertiary institution. 
Those who do study full time could potentially take out that weekly living allowance and invest it if that is what they wanted to do—but they could do that now. There is no interest now on loans while students study. If they wanted to they could take out that money and invest it. Then when they graduate they could pay back the loan they borrowed and keep the interest. In fact that is what the National Party said would happen when Labour introduced a policy of having no interest on student loans for students while they were studying full time. Now we hear from the National Party that no one will pay it back because with the incentive of the accumulating interest there would be no incentive in order for people to make voluntary repayments. 
As someone who actually has a student loan which will be gone by the time this policy is implemented I can say that the interest on my student loan was the biggest disincentive to making any voluntary repayments that there was. The biggest incentive to making a voluntary payment on a student loan is finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and realising that in a few months’ time one will get back 10 percent of one’s salary which one has not seen since 1996 despite the fact that in that time one has repaid the student loan—the value actually borrowed—three times over in interest alone. If charging interest was a disincentive against borrowing and an incentive to pay back we would not have the credit card debt in this country that we have now. 
One of the important things about this policy which really goes untalked about is that it provides an incentive for graduates to remain in New Zealand. I have a number of friends overseas who said to me over the course of the election campaign that if Labour were elected they would return to New Zealand under the amnesty period promised by this Government in order to straighten out their student loans and come and get a job back in New Zealand. We have heard a lot of National Party members talking in their maiden speech about those people who were overseas. So I am surprised that they do not support such a bold move which will incentivise people to return home to New Zealand and to stay in New Zealand following graduation in order to pay the loan off. 
This policy very much fits into the vision of this Labour-led Government and I am proud to stand here as a member of this third-term Labour-led Government. I congratulate the Rt Hon Helen Clark on the fantastic job she did in what at times was a very nasty and a very underhand election campaign. This Government represents all New Zealanders. We went into the election campaign wanting to represent every single New Zealander in this country. We did not pick and choose which New Zealanders we thought deserved representation. We decided that a Government in New Zealand should aim to represent everyone even though not everyone necessarily agreed with us on everything. 
We are a Government that chooses not to pit New Zealanders against New Zealanders and it amazes me that the National Party a party that showed such disdain to significant numbers of New Zealanders in our society during the campaign can claim to be nation-builders. How can a party that had such backward and offensive views on Maori—and I heard them during the election campaign—claim to be the party that will solve race relations in New Zealand? 
It has been interesting to watch the mutual admiration society forming between the National Party and the Maori Party. I had no doubt during the campaign—and the eradicator is chipping in; I mentioned the word “Maori” and he rose to his feet—that the Maori Party could go with the National Party. I was called a liar for saying that but I have been proven right. I had no doubt that National would backtrack on everything it said in the Orewa speech in order to get power. 
National talked a lot about the mainstream. And what did the mainstream mean? It meant the Exclusive Brethren. National claimed not to be concerned about the fact the Exclusive Brethren were helping out. Why then did Dr Brash lie about meeting with representatives of the Exclusive Brethren if he was not concerned about it? 
The reality is that Dr Brash’s idea of a non-mainstream New Zealander is anyone who does not look or sound like Dr Brash and who stubbornly refuses to look and sound like Dr Brash. It is those pesky women who think that it is not enough that we gave them the vote 100 years ago but now actually want to be paid the same as men as well; it is those selfish union members who cannot understand that somehow losing pay and conditions is good for the country; and it is those Maori with their fake war dances and poking out of tongues who will not accept that their lives would be so much better if they behaved and acted like Pakeha. Anyone who is not mainstream or who does not hold National Party mainstream values is PC. 
What was the National Party’s answer? It was the eradicator—the right-wing superhero eradicator upholding the rights of the white and the privileged across New Zealand; upholding one law for all. Why then is it OK to give Dr Mapp that job because his wife is a Maori but not OK to give anyone else a job because he or she is Maori? Why was I told by a local member of the National Party that the National Party’s constitution says that one has to be a member of the National Party for a prerequisite number of years before one can be a candidate unless one is a Maori; that if one is a Maori then that prerequisite can be waived? 
Why is it that karakia are PC but Christian prayers are not? Apparently according to Dr Mapp Christianity is part of our history but Maori language is not. Why if race does not matter and is not an important factor does Dr Brash feel compelled to tell everyone of non-European descent that his wife is from Singapore? There is a word I am not allowed to mention to describe the National Party and this country can feel very pleased that it has a third-term Labour-led Government.