Joyce Steven: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Joyce Steven: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19343] 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education) 
: 
 The member David Shearer should not let the facts get in the way of a good story and he obviously does not do that. Firstly people can still borrow on a student loan if they are over 55 years old. They can borrow fees for courses if they are over 55. They cannot borrow for living costs and there is a reason for that: once people are past 55 taxpayers end up writing off over 70 percent of their student loans. We thought about how we could strike a balance there because yes we want to have people of that age upskilling but we also have to acknowledge that they do not have as much time at that age to repay their student loans which is the contract of course with the taxpayer. So we thought we would have a bit of balance and we would have borrowing for fees but not for living costs. That is actually what we are doing so the member made his first mistake there. 
His second mistake was in talking about compulsory course costs for part-time students. Of course part-year students have never been able to get compulsory course costs from the fees component—we have changed the rule for full-year students to ensure consistency—but of course they can still borrow for fees. Once again the facts got in the way of a good story. 
But the really good story here is the work that the Tertiary Education Commission has done. I salute the Tertiary Education Commission for the work it has done in improving the outcomes from our very large tertiary education spend which across student support fees and tuition subsidies is over $4 billion. The commission has had a real focus on value for money and the evidence in terms of outcomes is very impressive indeed. This year we will have the highest number of fulltime-equivalent students ever in New Zealand universities. It is a tremendous outcome. We also have the highest number of full-time core places at universities polytechnics and wananga right across the public tertiary sector—16500-odd more places than 3 years ago when the previous crowd left Government. But overall our expenditure has not gone up because we have had better value for money. This year we also have more private training establishment places—750 more. The previous Government froze those in about 2002. We have lifted the freeze this year. We have more opportunities for New Zealanders right across the board including more places at higher levels on the spectrum of qualifications. 
We have also managed to achieve better results out of industry training. That area was actually a horror story inherited from the previous Government—an absolute horror story. That Government had trebled the industry training budget over 10 years but it had not ensured accountability for the funding. It had not ensured that there was any accountability at all. As a result when the Tertiary Education Commission audited industry training in 2008 and 2009 we discovered that 44 percent of trainees had not earned credits over that 2-year period. Labour’s phantom industry trainees had disappeared from the scene. Some had not had training agreements signed some were not actually employed by the companies they were supposed to have been employed by and to be getting industry training from and a dozen even were deceased. They were deceased and the previous Government had not noticed. 
We have put in a much more reasonable industry training budget and we have cut it back a bit. Do members know what? We will get better results out of industry training with a lower-cost budget than Labour members managed to achieve with theirs because they are the crowd as I think Dr Mapp said who just like to get the bucket of money and keep tipping it in at the front and not think for a moment about what the accountabilities are at the back end. That approach was right across the public sector when we arrived and we are sorting it out. 
We are also sorting out a number of other areas. I think that adult and community education is very important but like Mrs Tolley I am not at all sure that the Government and taxpayer should be paying for people to do their hobbies. So we have refocused on literacy numeracy English for speakers of other languages and Maori language and I am very very proud of that. There is no doubt that people can take up their opportunities with adult and community education. 
Finally in the limited time I have available I refer again to the excellent job the Tertiary Education Commission is doing. It has managed to come up with additional funding over the next 4 years for English for speakers of other languages—$17.5 million. That has not been talked about a lot but it will be good for migrants and it will make a real difference for refugees in this country. This Government cares; this Government is focused on getting real value for money out of tertiary education and we are doing that. The previous crowd just could not get off their backsides for long enough to check what was going on.