Ball DarrochDARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill. I am speaking on behalf of Tracey Martin.First of all we will not be supporting this bill for some very good sound reasons and I will get to those in a moment. The first thing—I think the major one—that I have noticed sitting here just today is that all of the speakers are not really speaking too much about student loans themselves; they are speaking about the problem that they are trying to address which is homeownership. I think that the main issue with this bill is that it is trying to address an issue by shifting debt through the student loan system and New Zealand First does not agree with that. This bill is really not about student loans; it is about three things: it is about investment in young people it is about the principles of the different parties here in this House and it is about what we do for the overwhelming problems challenges and impossibilities that our young people face due to this mismanagement of the country by the National Government currently.The first thing I want to talk about is investment. New Zealand First's point of view is that we need to invest 100 percent in our young people and we need to invest 100 percent in our young students. The problem with this bill is that it is not about 100 percent investment. What it does is it acknowledges a problem. We have heard the different speeches in the House today and previously and acknowledge the huge issue—it is a huge issue. I think it was mentioned in the House today that Auckland has got the highest affordability rate for houses in the world. So that is an issue and we do need to address it. But this is not the way to do it.Not only that this is reacting to that problem. What New Zealand First believes in is not reactive policy but proactive policy. Unfortunately what this means for the Greens is that they are showing that they have given up on the 100 percent investment in our young people. What will suffice for the Greens at the moment is a half-pie ka pai solution. [Interruption] Half-pie is not ka pai.The fact is that if we did not have a housing crisis if we did not have a housing affordability crisis this bill would not exist. That is the essence of the issue and the essence of why New Zealand First will not be supporting this concept. What we need to do instead is sort out the problem. We need to sort out that problem first—the housing issue and the housing affordability issue—and not create more debt for our young people. In essence this is what this concept does. It delays the payment of debt it deflects the payment of debt and more importantly it just moves that debt around. It is not addressing the problem.The second thing I want to talk about is the foundation principles of all the parties here. I know there are some people who are listening who might question whether the National Party does have principles because they change so often. But New Zealand First certainly does have 15 fundamental foundation principles. We have had them for 24 years and they have never changed. We have copped a lot of flak from all the different parties in this House about our standing up for our principles and maintaining those principles. The one that I am talking about is that education is an investment.I would just like to read out our principle: Money spent on education will be treated as an investment not as expenditure. Educational advancement is both in the national and in the individual interest. Educational investment is critical for economic and social recovery."New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill because no matter what anyone says and no matter how much criticism we get from anybody or any party in this House we stand by our principles. We stand by the fact that education is an investment. That is why we have got the Up Front Investment Tertiary Policy that Tracey Martin has put forward. We believe it is a social contract between the Government and the students. We want those students educated we want those students skilled and we invest in them 100 percent. What we want back is a skills debt to this country. That is what we believe is the solution to this problem—not just shifting the debt. That is why we will not be supporting this bill. Thank you."