Street Maryan: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Street Maryan: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9374] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak now to the Committee stage of the Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill which is where we get down to some of the nuts and bolts around this legislation. But I have to say to begin with that it is very timely the legislation has reappeared on the Order Paper now because between the time this bill was first introduced and referred to the Education and Science Committee and the time when it has come back for its second reading a number of signals have come from the Government about tertiary students and in particular about the loan scheme. Here we have legislation that Labour will support but about which we are unsure there is a long-term prognosis. 
Most recently we have had the Prime Minister’s statement at the beginning of this session of Parliament in 2010 when he referred to the fact that the Government would “take a careful look at the policy settings around student support”. That led me and other Labour members to ask what on earth that meant. What does that mean? Will the Government make student allowances and loans harder to access? In the drive to cut costs is the Government seeing the cost of student loans and student allowances as simply an impost on the Government coffers without recognising the extent of the investment they represent in tertiary education? 
A Government of a different hue particularly if the hue were red might have seen fit in fact to invest more in tertiary education not less in order for New Zealand to escalate out of a recession and in order for us to equip ourselves as a country with the kind of economic growth and development we aspire to and with the kinds of wages and incomes we aspire to. But the only signals we have received from the Government are signals that contradict Part 1 of this bill and those signals are about making things harder for students. 
This bill—and most of the relevant provisions are in Part 1—in fact extends the scope of student loans to others who live in what has been quaintly called for a long time “the realm of New Zealand”. At least it now appears quaint but it is those countries such as Niue Tokelau and the Cook Islands which are constitutionally and in every other way dependent upon New Zealand and which will now be embraced and brought into the scope of the student loans provision that currently exists. 
So here we have a bill that extends the scope of student loans at a time when the Government is saying that it will cut back or look at cutting back on opportunities for people to access tertiary education. Let me just underscore that point for a moment by referring to a statement made recently an article in the paper that appeared recently about the Universal College of Learning the polytechnic centred in Palmerston North with satellite campuses in Wanganui and Masterton. Its chief executive Paul McElroy has been saying he will have to cut back on student admissions in order to meet the Government’s requirements—to cut back on student admissions and entry to the Universal College of Learning. 
That is a tragedy. Just at the moment when we are looking for people to upskill and reskill this Government is putting in place pressures and parameters that will make our tertiary institutions turn students away. The student cap is not something set in stone; it is something negotiated. This Government should lift that cap in order to ensure that we have the kind of skilled workforce that will take us into the future. People in tertiary education whether in a trade or an apprenticeship or at a polytech wananga or university will be the people who will provide the economic development of New Zealand and the future sustainability of that economic development. But that is being shut down by this Government at exactly the time when we are looking at legislation to extend access to tertiary education. 
We in Labour believe in extending that access. We also believe that students should pay back their loans. Loans are not called loans for nothing; they need to be paid back. Therefore there should be some incentives and this bill also provides additional incentives to encourage people not to default on their loans but to do their best to repay them. As a rejoinder a complementary clause in that respect the bill also extends the hardship provisions. This bill extends the hardship provisions so that in the case of students legitimately not being able to repay their loans at the rate that has been determined there is scope for the hardship provisions to be enacted beyond the immediate tax year. That is important. 
So we do not think that the bill is unbalanced in that respect. Yes it raises the cost of defaulting from 10c in the dollar to 15c in the dollar but it does provide additional hardship coverage. That represents an investment but this Government by its signals from the Prime Minister and more recently by the very explicit declaration of the new Minister of Tertiary Education Steven Joyce has shown that it wants to make it harder. The Government wants to make it harder to access skills and education and that is what the problem is here. The problem is that we have a Government talking out of both sides of its mouth and that is problematic. It will be problematic in the long term and it will be problematic in the short term for institutions that are under extraordinary pressure at the moment and that are in the situation like that of the Universal College of Learning of turning students away. 
That is not what should be happening in the escalation out of a recession. It is short-sighted of this Government and it will cost us dearly in the future. There are some things that a Government must invest in. Other Governments are doing so. Australia the United States and the UK are investing heavily in tertiary education. This Government is going in the opposite direction at 100 miles an hour and that is wrong; it is not appropriate. Although Labour supports this bill and the provisions in Part 1 we need to set this in context. A dangerous collision is about to happen in the Government’s tertiary education policy—a dangerous collision. We have people aspiring to upskill and to improve themselves. 
This is not just about going to university. This is about accessing tertiary education opportunities across the gamut. We have seen what the Government has done with adult and community education which is low-cost accessible education in the community. The Government has axed it. It has disappeared off the face of parts of our country and it limps on in a skeletal form in other parts. That is a disservice to the skills development that needs to occur in this country. This bill which Labour supports goes in a different direction.