Hughes Gareth: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 03 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1616. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. It is great to rise to take a call on the third reading of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill which the Greens will be opposing. We would like to thank the officials thank the submitters and I guess in this very short call round up some of the debate.  
The bill does essentially three things. Firstly it requires you to have a contact person for your student loan. I do not think anyone in the country let alone this Parliament could disagree with this common-sense move. It changes some loopholes around the New Zealand - based borrowers from excluding losses. Again we support closing this loophole. But the third thing and it is a point that I have not heard being raised in the debate by the National members—of course they just want to focus on the non-controversial parts—is reducing the repayment holiday that borrowers overseas can apply for down from 3 years to 1 year. That is why this bill really more accurately should be called the “Kiwis Moving Overseas Bill”.  
We know that at the moment we have record numbers of Kiwis moving overseas. We have a deficit in our net migration figures so we have more Kiwis leaving than people immigrating. Despite members opposite when in Opposition trumpeting on about this issue now we have got more Kiwis going overseas and what members opposite want to do is put legislation in place that will see more Kiwis move overseas and more Kiwis stay overseas.  
At the moment those students who have graduated—they have got a student loan and they move overseas; they are already being charged interest—can apply for the repayment holiday which as we have heard in the debate Peter Dunne introduced as a very pragmatic measure. But what we are going to see is this repayment holiday being reduced from 3 years to 1 year. We know that the average is between 3 to 5 years not 1 year and we know it takes 18 months for the average Kiwi to get set up in an overseas country start earning and start repaying their student loan.  
We are going to see student loans balloon. That is what we heard from Treasury and that is what we heard from the Ministry of Education. We could see loans balloon to two to three times their original size because when you add up the interest when you add up the fees and when you add up the penalties we are going to see these massive loans that sometimes hit the headlines of our newspapers. Those Kiwis who have these massive loans are not going to come home. They are going to stay and it is going to worsen our student loan balance book. It is going to worsen the country and our economy going forward.  
We heard from Holly Walker about the fiasco about the law coming into effect before this Parliament has even passed the third reading and we have seen the Royal assent given. There was a precedent I found in my researching the Maui’s dolphin question today. In fact Prime Minister Muldoon was taken to court in 1974 when he prematurely before legislation had passed announced changes to the superannuation legislation. He was taken to court. What we know is that the law is the law until the law is changed. The law has not changed and the Inland Revenue Department is absolutely inappropriate. It is a shoddy process for it to be advertising that the law has changed when the law has not changed. In fact it is illegal.  
We would like to welcome Labour’s change of heart on this bill. Unfortunately we did not see the amendment to reduce the 3 years to 1 year changed back to 3 years. That was not successful but good on Labour for changing the vote. But what we are seeing in this debate with this tinkering around the edges in this bill which will only see more Kiwis go overseas and stay overseas is that National has a fundamental hatred for interest-free student loans but with the fundamental popularity of interest-free student loans in New Zealand it cannot get rid of them. The politics is too strong. So what National is trying to do is water it down around the edges along with the other changes to the sector which have seen tertiary education become less accessible less affordable and in some cases downright impossible as it slams the door to students with its capped enrolment and as it slams the door to access to student loans for the over-55s.  
This Government is doing everything it possibly can to reduce the numbers. Basically the principle is that the Government does not mind those higher-income Kiwis whom they are representing in this House getting an education because their families can afford it. The gap between the rich and the poor has grown under National. Those lower-income Kiwis have to fend for themselves. If they are on Struggle Street they are going to stay on Struggle Street because this Government is not doing enough to help them and this bill is just another measure to make it harder for Kiwis to get an education.  
 We could have gone down a different track. We could have looked at ways of paying off debt for those Kiwis who stay in New Zealand—I know New Zealand First has a policy like the Greens’ there—and we could have actually put some carrots instead of these punitive sticks in front of New Zealanders. We could have even looked at agreements with overseas countries like the UK or Australia where we could see taxes paid by Kiwis working in those countries paying off their student loans. Why are we not sending delegations to those Governments to try to negotiate those points? That would be better for the country better for the economy and better for students. It is a pity that the Government has put its focus on this bill.