Barclay ToddTODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): It is actually a privilege to speak in opposition to the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill. The ironic thing is that I am probably the only member close enough to it to remember what it was like to have a student loan and go through the process of purchasing their first home and I can assure you that—Chris Bishop: Hey hey hey!TODD BARCLAY: Oh Mr Bishop as well—sorry. But one thing I wanted to talk a little bit about is that this so-called housing crisis that exists which the Opposition is upon every day in this House and every day out in the community is very centralised into a couple of aspects of New Zealand that are experiencing high growth.If you look at what is happening in places like Gore and Balclutha in Southland and on the West Coast and in other parts of New Zealand where there are plentiful jobs great study opportunities and really good lifestyle opportunities to start and bring up a young family the people there do not see that as a housing crisis at all. The average house price in Gore at the moment is $201000 the average house price in Clutha is $175000 and the average house price in Queenstown is $900000 but there are choices for people to go where the jobs are and to go where the study opportunities are. We talk to the Opposition members here about the trade-off that they say there is around getting a student loan and buying your first home. You can study at Southern Institute of Technology under a zero fees scheme and implement a deposit on your first home.I suppose the point to talk about here—the point to consider and the reason why I oppose the bill—is that it is expensive and it is completely unnecessary but also there is a lot of statistical research that has been demonstrated to show that the motivations behind the Green Party's bill are not actually realised. So the presence of the size of a student loan does not appear to affect the probability of a couple having a mortgage. The presence of a student loan has no effect on a mortgage size; nor does the presence or the size of a student loan appear to reduce the number of children a couple has.When you look at the contribution that the Government makes into subsidising and paying for the cost of study the Government puts about $4 billion a year into tertiary education funding. Already 28 percent of tertiary education funding goes to supporting students through their studies including nearly half a billion dollars that goes into student allowances. The share of the full cost of tertiary education study per student over the duration of their lifetime is about 82 percent covered by the Government.As a young New Zealander who has recently—not too recently mind you—completed their studies and purchased their first home I have got to say that the one motivation that I had to continue with my studies and to make sure I tried to do a good job to the best of my ability was the fact that I knew that my parents had made a contribution towards my studies and also that I would be having to pay a lot of that back myself. I think that if you are just getting everything for free then what is the motivation to do well and to succeed and to get good results and good qualifications?The other thing looking at people in my position and students around my age is that when you finish your study—the thought process that I went through was I wanted to pay off my student loan and then I wanted to embark on going into my first home. I think the pressure on young people to try to do both while they are trying to build a career trying to build a reputation around the qualifications they have got if they have studied and trying to look for and pay for a first home is an incredible amount of pressure and I do not think that there would be many young people who actually want to try to duck-shove the cost burden of paying off their student loan even further just so that they can get into their first home.I think that at a fundamental level what the Greens are proposing in this bill is jiggery-pokery. It is moving one level of debt from one column into another and if you are a student you are still going to have to pay it back by one means or another. That is the thing. I think that when you look at the fact that 10 percent of your salary is deducted to pay off your student loan if you have that paused momentarily while you are generating a deposit for your first home and then that is automatically applied again that is a significant cost burden and it has high levels of cost burden on a new graduate trying to budget.So these are the reasons why I oppose this bill notwithstanding the fact that I am probably better placed to speak to it than some of the other members who are likely to be speaking following me—not to be making ageist comments or anything like that. But I thank you for the opportunity to make this contribution.