Peachey Allan: Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Peachey Allan: Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2820] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 What an interesting debate we are having late on a Thursday afternoon when our thoughts really are turning to getting back to our electorates and families! Who would have thought that a bill as simple as the Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill would become one of the defining points between what those of us on the Government side of the House believe and what those retrograde socialists over there believe? Who would have thought that members of Parliament representing the Labour Party— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That’s specifically for me—for the electorate committee. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: —and I have Mr Mallard very very much in mind—wanted to define a very simple bill in terms of old-style class warfare? 
I believe that members of the electorate listening in to this debate will begin to realise just how irrelevant the Labour Party has made itself to the future of New Zealanders. What do we have over there? We have some very very young extremely left wing and naive new members of Parliament and we have a couple of beaten old warhorses who now have to live with the knowledge that they failed so badly in Government. If I were Mr Mallard I would not want too much attention drawn to my record of imposing mediocrity on the New Zealand schooling system. 
But let us just get back to this bill—a very simple bill. It is straightforward and logical. All it says is that if people do the right and decent thing and pay off their student loan—or part of it—early they get a 10 percent bonus. The bill goes right to the very heart of what the National Party believes in: individual responsibility. If students have borrowed the money they pay it back. It is an initiative and a reward for hard work. It was interesting to hear one of the former Ministers say in his speech earlier on that the bill is not good for poor people and it is not good for rich people either. What a load of nonsense! If members listened to what Mr Mallard said—and I wrote it down because I did not want to forget it—they would have heard him say it was a “rip-off”. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Yes it’s a rip-off. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: The students are getting “ripped off”. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No the graduates. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: The graduates are getting “ripped off”. 
Let us think about that idea for just a moment. If people borrow money they pay it back. That is the ethical decent thing to do. We all know that the easiest way to get ahead in this country is to get out of debt so anything that facilitates our young people in particular to get themselves out of debt a little more quickly is good for those young people good for graduates and good for New Zealand. I am actually appalled to hear what the socialist members of Parliament are saying—and they are socialists; maybe they need to go back and read Karl Marx again to remind themselves of what they actually believe in and get a bit of consistency into their argument. 
Who would have thought that a Cabinet Minister from the previous Government would get up in this Chamber and tell people not to pay back their loans but to use them to buy houses or cars instead? That is where this side of the House is so different from that side. The ethical thing to do—and dare I say it the decent New Zealand thing to do—is to pay back the money. 
Members opposite want to use the phrase “rip-off” but if one thinks about it one will ask who is actually getting ripped off. When a student borrows money to fund his or her education he or she is not borrowing money to have an overseas trip buy a car or contribute to a mortgage on a home; he or she is borrowing that money for the purposes of an education. How dare the members opposite say that graduates will get ripped off if they pay off their loans early? An individual can never ever be ripped off when he or she pays back debt. I want to stress this point. It does not matter whether an individual borrows money that is interest-free or is paying interest on it; one of the keys to prosperity is paying off debt as soon as possible. 
I reflect on my own electorate of Tamaki and particularly Glen Innes. It should not even be safe for me to walk in Glen Innes such has been the Labour control of that community for so long. But now increasingly residents are turning against their own and voting for me. Why? Because they have come to the realisation that the sort of socialism that the party opposite advocates—as it has in this House today—does not hold the key to the future of their children and young people. The debate this afternoon has demonstrated to New Zealand how far to the left and how far away from reality that party has moved and we will see that happen more and more. 
Let us just focus on the purpose of this bill and the values that are contained within it: for graduates to pay off student loans quickly and sooner than they might otherwise have done. The incentive is there a 10 percent bonus but in actual fact—[ 
Interruption 
] I am listening to Mr Mallard and I would be very very happy to match my majority against his any day. There is a 10 percent bonus for doing the right thing the decent thing the ethical thing—the New Zealand thing. I certainly do not want our young graduates thinking in terms of how they can rip off the taxpayer. The party opposite gave young graduates plenty of advice as to how to take advantage of other New Zealanders. But the interesting thing is that our young people do not actually want to do that. They know they have been given a huge step-up courtesy of the taxpayer to get their education. What really reassures me is the knowledge that our young people want to pay back the money they have borrowed. They want to pay it back as quickly as they can. They do not want to take advantage of the taxpayer. Above all else they want to do something that Labour will never understand which is to do the ethical decent New Zealand thing.