Delahunty Catherine: Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Delahunty Catherine: Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6311] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. I rise to take a brief call on the Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill. I suggest to members who did not like Stuart Nash’s speech that they will like mine even less. They may as well prepare themselves for complaining shock horror wincing and nausea because they will not agree with what I am going to say.  
Interruption 
] Exactly. I am not the Green Party’s tertiary spokesperson but I am on the Education and Science Committee which heard the submissions on this bill. Several of them were from student associations. The Green Party stands with those submitters; we are opposing the bill. 
I acknowledge the members of the Education and Science Committee. It is a good committee. I would love to be able to agree with everybody but sometimes we have to stand our ground. We are here to represent the community to stand with the submitters and particularly to stand with the students. The students were against the bill. The associations lobbied very clearly on that matter and we stand with the students. 
Paul Quinn 
: We represent the community. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY 
: Absolutely. 
The Green Party is also interested in the comments on taxpayers because we are more than happy as taxpayers to invest in education. In fact we think it is one of the primary reasons why we pay tax. But we remain resolutely unconvinced by the student loan scheme. 
However in terms of this bill the main problem we have with it is timing. Why in a recession would the Government suggest a reform that benefits only borrowers who can already save up money unless it wants to reward a specific constituency of the privileged and ignore people with very little capacity to get the bonus on offer? 
The bill is consistent with the current modus operandi of the Government around education which could be described as cut tweak and twist. Cuts include adult and community education classes Enviroschools drama advisers literacy classes Youthline training etc. Cuts could include student unions if by some ghastly act of fate Sir Roger Douglas’s bill on unions in universities gets drawn from the ballot. [ 
Interruption 
] If it is supported by the Government then it is an even more ghastly tweak of fate. 
However this bill is not a cut. It is actually a tweak rather than a cut. The tweak is that the Student Loan Scheme (Repayment Bonus) Amendment Bill is very unhelpful to a majority of student loan holders. It is a classic tweak bill and it is an annoying waste of time except for a small group of people who get a limited benefit. The twist strategy I am referring to includes a mean twist for people who have no savings to pay off extra debt. The twist also includes the somewhat twisted logic that we need things like national standards in education when we already know who is struggling and why they are struggling. It is pretty twisted to give $35 million as Stuart said to private schools rather than to the public system. In the end if the children of the poor do not get the best possible public education they will not become tertiary students. 
Who is being targeted here to benefit? Not women not tangata whenua not Pasifika nor any other migrants not many current students not the poor students not the people at the bottom of the heap and probably not even the Inland Revenue Department which must be absolutely thrilled to have more complex variables added to the delivery implementation and debt collection associated with the student loan scheme. Even people who believe they should make a financial contribution to the cost of their own education will not necessarily benefit from this bill. As was pointed out previously graduates who have decent paid jobs can afford to save up and get a bonus but that is not the case for many students who are currently in the process of going through their education. 
As I mentioned before we are in a recession and we have rising unemployment. We do not know how far unemployment is going to go or when it is going to stop. It should be pretty obvious that many people cannot afford to put aside money to get what is a relatively small bonus. If the Government really wanted to do something about student debt it would design a provision that actually affected the people in most need of help not the people at the end of paying off their loan who might be beginning to recover economically from the loan scheme and who might be able to put aside extra money to attract the bonus. 
The Greens see this bill as somewhat similar to the Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill although it is not quite as heinously unfair—just not very useful. People would be better off investing their money in an interest-bearing savings account. The bill is no doubt designed to get more people to pay back their loans faster. I do not know a single person who wants to be in debt and who would not like to get the student loan monkey off his or her back. Some people choose not to attempt higher education because they see debt as a deterrent. So why are we not finding ways to fund public tertiary education that do not involve useless tweaking and token forms of assistance? At the Education and Science Committee we had some very cordial discussions on this issue. Some members commented that if people were motivated they could pay off debt no matter how wealthy they were. But in my view and in the Green Party’s view paying off debt relies on certain factors such as having a supportive family some kind of decent job lower rents or mortgages and not having a whole lot of children. The motivated poor always already prioritise their money and as I have said in this House before they prioritise the power bill and the doctor before they pay off their student loan. 
I enjoyed Maryan Street’s first reading speech about this bill in which she asked questions about the underlying Government agenda. Very useful points were made and good questions were asked. The Green Party totally supports the speech made by Te Ururoa Flavell about the effect of the student loan scheme on Maori students. Even within whanau or families inequity can be reinforced when people who choose education get into debt while those who go straight into work have disposable incomes and much nicer clothes. What is the message here? Is it that education is too costly and that we should not bother? That message has had an impact on my family and on many other people. Some of the kids are doing very well but are not educated whereas others are in major debt. 
So let us get the fairly weak idea of this bill off the Order Paper and let us start addressing the substantial issues in tertiary education like fully funded public education and support for everyone not for the few. I know that this House may see these suggestions as a quaint idea but they will actually create a better world. Kia ora.