Woods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15960. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I am very pleased to take a call on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3). Hot on the heels of Budget 2012 and the fantastic plan from the National Government to tax paper boys Budget 2013 delivered us the “arrest the students at the borders” measure. This is simply a gimmick that is not going to achieve what the bill purports to set out as its purpose. We have heard the tired old rhetoric of the National members opposite who tell us that this is about making the student loan scheme sustainable into the future it is about people taking personal responsibility and it is about fairness. This is simply not true. This is a piece of legislation that is not going to do anything to achieve the aims that it sets out to do. It is a gimmick for the National Government to try to look tough to their constituents.The interest-free student loan scheme was one of the great achievements of the Clark-led Labour Government. It removed the punitive and unsustainable interest charges from student loans which became increasingly impractical andgenerationally unfair in terms of how we funded tertiary education. The braying from the members opposite underlines exactly what this piece of legislation is about. This is about a Government that knowselectorally that it cannot unpick a piece of legislation wholesale that it does not like. In fact in this debate we have heard the member forTāmaki Mr Simon O’Connor calling across the House—Grant Robertson: Who?Dr MEGAN WOODS: —the member forTāmaki Mr O’Connor—that the interest-free student loan scheme that Labour instituted when last in Government was nothing but a gimmick. This cuts to the heart of what this legislation is about. This is about a Government so desperate to cling to power that it will not do what it really wants to do and that is to do away with the interest-free student loan scheme. The Government does not like the fact that actually it is the opposite to the elitist view of education in the tertiary sector that it holds which allows greater access for people to go to university and to enter into tertiary education.The Government does not like this so what we have seen over National’s last 5 years in Government instead is that it has chipped away at the scheme. We have the ridiculous measures in the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) that we are currently debating. We have had the restriction of the student loan scheme in relation to the number of New Zealanders who can access this scheme. This exposes one of the fundamental differences between the Labour Party side of the House and the Government opposite. On this side of the House we in the Labour Party believe that tertiary education is an investment in our country’s future. Tertiary education is the way in which we will transform our economy. Having an educated workforce is something that we want to open up and something we encourage. We do not see tertiary education as a cost to be cut. That is how members opposite view tertiary education. The legislation that we have before us is yet another example of how the Government views tertiary education.We have had other speakers in this debate stand up and tell us about how they think this gimmick these punitive measures is going to bring in the additional revenue. It is going to make the scheme fair and it is going to make it sustainable because we will get—to use those words—“those shirking students overseas to pay what they owe”. Wein the Labour Party do not disagree with the principle that those people who have borrowed money under the student loan scheme should pay it back. We disagree with the Government however in that when we are going to introduce measures to increase payments under the student loan scheme we say they should actually work. As we have heard from the member who spoke before me Tracey Martin official after official has told this Government that the measures contained in this legislation will not work. Treasury has told the Government that it is not going to work. The police have told the Government that it is nigh on impossible for them to arrest students at the borders. It is simply not going to work. Then the Government has had advice from the Legislation Advisory Committee that this legislation is not going to work. The Government is not interested in looking at measures and at real practical solutions that will increase and have been shown to increase the collection of student loans and are not focused on gimmick policies.If we have a look at 2008 and at what the Labour-led Government did then we see that an amnesty was introduced for student loan borrowers who had fallen behind on their payments. In the short period of time that that amnesty was open 13000 borrowers signed up with the Inland Revenue Department and entered into a payment agreement with the Government. This is the kind of measure that we on this side of the House want to see. We want to see solutions that work and solutions that actually do allow the shirkers as the Government calls them to start repaying their loans and not be kept out of their own country. We do not see these people as shirkers. We see them as young New Zealanders whom we want to actually encourage to make a contribution to this country. We do not want to exclude them from New Zealand and set in stone the fact that they are never going to come back here. They are not going to share the fruits of their education. They are not going to share the fruits of the valuable experiences that they have experienced overseas.We have heard the nasty arrogant and out of touch reaction to the very personal stories that members of this House have told about people who have contacted them and who have tried to enter into negotiations with the Inland Revenue Department where those talks have broken down and now those people cannot re-enter New Zealand despite trying to enter into repayment agreements. The reactions from the other side of the House show that this is a Government that is more interested in demonising young New Zealanders than in finding real solutions for how we can address this issue. How is it that we can get more people paying back the student loan money that they owe?If we have a look at some of the other measures that this bill has in it—in terms of those who are young New Zealanders living overseas—it increases repayment rates for overseas borrowers. It makes absolutely no allowance for the amount of income earned. So if you are earning £150000 you will be paying back the same amount as someone who earns £25000 if your loan balance is over NZ$50000. This is not the kind of progressive way that we in New Zealand are used to addressing debt. This is not the progressive way in which the student loan scheme has been set up.This legislation is so very National. There is no evidence that it will increase compliance. We have not heard one speaker from the Government get up and tell us how it is going to increase compliance. Instead we have heard tired old rhetoric about a sustainable student loan scheme. We know that the Government does not like the interest-free student loan scheme so for Government members to stand up and tell us that this legislation is in the interests of protecting a scheme—about which they cannot control themselves and heckle about how bad it is—is just absolute bunkum. It makes absolutely no sense. We know that that is not what those members are trying to do. It is not going to work. It is not going to achieve its aim and it is yet more evidence of a Government that is not interested in connecting the dots of what we can achieve as anation if we truly do invest in our education system if we see education as something more than a cost to be cut and if we see the kind of country we can be with more people in tertiary education and where we do not have policies in place that explicitly seek to exclude New Zealanders from undertaking tertiary education. It is with pleasure that I have finished this speech by setting out why it is that Labour will not be supporting this legislation.