Robertson Grant: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16037. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Part 2 of this bill the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) makes a series of amendments to schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013. That is right. The Government has to amend the legislation it passed last year because it got it wrong again when it comes to student loans. Part 2 of this bill amends schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013.This is one of the problems that students have with the current Government—its constant tinkering and mucking around with the student loan scheme yet not actually getting to the heart of the issues that lie within it. For instance this part talks about borrowers who are shareholders in close companies those who are involved in trusts and people who have employment benefits—and I will come back to that particular provision in a moment—none of which actually addresses the real issues that are involved in the student loan scheme. The biggest one is that at the moment the living costs component for student loans is $173 a week. Well in Wellington a whole lot of students are arriving in town right now and very few of them will find accommodation that costs them less than $173 a week. If they add in their bills if they add in anything to do with food it is gone. They cannot meet those needs through the current living costs arrangements of student loans.Steven Joyce stood up in Parliament today and said that postgraduate students who have lost their allowance because National abolished it can just borrow from the student loan scheme. Well the reality is that they cannot afford to live on that. Many of those people who got the student allowance—for instance for the clinical psychology course that was raised today—are parents who were earning around $350 a week off the student allowance system to help bring up their children. They are now being asked to live off $173 a week and they cannot so they are giving up their study. That is the impact of the changes that this Government has made to student loans and student allowances.Rather than tinkering around with schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013 this Government could be coming to the House with a reform of the student loan and allowance system that actually works in facilitating people into study.Paul Goldsmith: Ah the solution: more money. More money.GRANT ROBERTSON: Well no Mr Goldsmith it does not necessarily have to be more money. More money would be useful. How about this Mr Goldsmith: how about cracking down on the kids of parents who put all their money into trusts so that they get an allowance whereas other people from working families who do not have the money to pay for an accountant do not get a student allowance? How about coming to the House with a bill that does that? How about coming to the House with a bill that actually says to people who have lost their jobs and who happen to be aged over 55: “We are going to support you into retraining.”? But no what this Government did was it said: “People over 55 you are not eligible for the living costs component of studentloans.” I have had people in my electorate office in tears because their ability to retrain and their ability to get a job that will sustain them through to their retirement is gone under this Government.Every step of the way the National Government has undermined the student loan and allowance scheme. It has said: “We don’t want people in tertiary education. We want to limit the number of people who are involved in tertiary education and we are going to use the student loan and allowance schemes to do that.” Well I think that that is just plain wrong. It is short-sighted and it is selling young New Zealanders short. It is selling people who are retraining and those who have lost their jobs short. This bill could have been a bill that said: “Yes we’ll make it easier for people to repay their loans. Yes we will support people through student allowances and through access to student loans so that they can achieve their potential.” Instead Part 2 of this bill is simply tinkering around with schedule 3 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Act 2013.One aspect of that is the aspect around the question of income from employment benefits. I will credit Tracey Martin for raising this in her second reading speech because although on the surface it makes it look like we are dealing with a benefit like a motor vehicle that somebody might have as part of their job if part of their job involves travel they often are not recompensed for that beyond a mileage rate perhaps if they are lucky and here we are throwing that in to people’s income. It is already hard enough for people having had the Government increase the repayment rate from 10c in the dollar to 12c in the dollar. It is already hard enough for people who have not had a wage rise under the 5 years of this National Government without imposing these kinds of things on them.The Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) is nothing more than a bunch of window dressing and slogans put together in a bill and now some corrections to a bill that was passed last year. Students all around New Zealand are starting off their courses at universities and polytechs and other training institutions at this time of the year. They are looking at how they are going to finance their way through their studies. If they are over 55 if they are over 40—for student allowances—if they are a postgraduate student or if their parents’ income has shifted at all in the last few years they are worse off under a National Government. It is more difficult for them to study and students end up taking on more and more hours of part-time work in order to just get by. The amount of $172.50 a week is not enough to live on under the living costs component of the student loan scheme so what do students do? They take on more part-time work. What does that do? It has an impact on many students’ study and their ability to actually achieve the results that they should.The interest-free student loan scheme is not a system that the National Government is committed to. We know that. John Key said he did not believe in it and that he was going to oppose it with every bone in his body. As a result of not being able to have the political will to stand up for what National actually believes—that it wants to put interest back on student loans—its answer because it is not prepared to do that and because it does not have the guts to put that before New Zealanders is to tinker around with the system through bills like this which makes it more difficult for New Zealanders to repay their loans if they are overseas. Let us be absolutely honest about this. This bill will make almost no difference to the repayment rate for student loans. In fact the evidence that the Finance and Expenditure Committee saw was that it actually is going to be harder for people to pay back their loans. They will actually pay back less of their loans. They will not come back to New Zealand.So as a bill it does not even achieve the purpose it set out to. It is a bunch of slogans. Part 2 of this bill adds absolutely nothing other than correcting a hopelessmistake of this Government which clearly does not know what it is doing with the student loan scheme.