Woods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woods Megan: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8947. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I want to continue talking about Part 3 of this bill and in particular about clauses 63 to 66 of this legislation and that is around the definition of income for student loan repayment purposes that is contained in this bill. This is one of the reasons why Labour is supporting this bill. We support the fairness that is enshrined in broadening out the definition of what counts as income that can be assessed for the repayment of student loans. What this bill does in clauses 63 to 66 in Part 3 of this bill is make changes to the definition of “adjusted net income” for student loan repayment purposes to ensure that a borrower’s repayment obligation accurately reflects their ability to repay their loan. Amendments make further adjustments to net income to broaden out that definition of income to include any other type of income not currently captured. 
So what this bill does is it actually tidies up and makes it much fairer where you have the definition of income now including business profits and income from trusts. Labour certainly supports measures that do move beyond looking just at wages and salaries as income for which student loan repayments should be made. 
In fact Labour supports fairer approaches to taxation and taxing wealth where it occurs across the board and an analogy would be our support for a capital gains tax and how this ties into that. So this is a loophole in this scheme that Labour is happy to see closed. 
Mike Sabin 
: What about GST on fresh fruit and veges? 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: And I can hear from Mr Sabin’s calling across the way that he is overjoyed with our support for this bill and with the fact that we are supporting it. Actually broadening out this definition of income will save the Crown approximately $7.5 million over the next 5 years according to Treasury advice that was given. 
But what I want to do is juxtapose the fairness that is enshrined in these clauses 63 to 66 in this broadening of the definition of income with the fact that this bill does not address some of the other unfair decisions that this Government has made in relation to the broader area of student support. This is a very technical bill that tinkers around the edges but what it does not do is comprehensively review the whole issue of student support and how it is that if we truly really want to be an innovation-led economy that is based on having a very skilled very educated and very trained workforce then what we do is we support our people into education. This bill does nothing to address that. 
What Labour thinks is that we do actually need to take this broader more holistic look at things and see how it is that we can achieve these aims. What this Government is committed to is what Steven Joyce calls the dampening down of demand for education. For Labour this is absolutely counter to the kind of New Zealand that we want to see. We want to see a New Zealand where our young people are encouraged into this training. Actually Treasury has estimated that the changes made in Budgets 2010 and 2011 would result in 25000 people losing access to student loans and do you know the people who will not go on to study to train and to get an education? It is those 25000 people who cannot afford to pay their own fees and support themselves while they are there. We do not see that cutting off access to 25000 people is a way to build the kind of New Zealand that we want. 
What this Government has done is it has made some very very unfair decisions. It has cut off student allowances for postgraduate students and this is at a time when we have a whole lot of rhetoric from the Government about how we need more people with higher degrees in this country yet we take away the student support. I just want the Government members to reflect on how this compares with the fairness that it is trying to enshrine through clauses 63 to 66 of the current legislation. I want them to pause and think about how these two decisions and these two actions fit together. I want them to dwell also on taking away the right of people aged over 55 to take out a student loan. Where is the fairness in that? We do not see that there has been fairness. I would also like them to pause and reflect on the fact that the Minister of Labour ignored advice from the Ministry of Education in passing the youth rates legislation last week which said that youth rates will add to the burden that students have to shoulder as they study. Now when they go out and they are not getting their allowance they do not have access to loan or they have reduced access to loan. To add insult to injury these young people if they are students who are aged 16 to 19 years of age will be facing youth rates when they go out there. As someone who has taught and tutored at a university I can tell you that students who spend all their time working and not applying themselves to their studies certainly do not get the most out of their education that they otherwise would. 
What is contained in these clauses 63 to 66 is one of the bases of why Labour is willing to support this bill because there is fairness in there. But in talking about the fairness that is in these clauses of the legislation I would like members opposite to think about the very unfair—