Delahunty Catherine: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Delahunty Catherine: Student Loan Scheme (Exemptions and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5866] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. He mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. The Green Party likes some of the Student Loan Scheme (Exemption and Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill especially the bit providing interest-free loans to overseas borrowers but I am sorry to say that the love fest for the legislation stops right there. I will speak very briefly on the bill because Metiria Turei who is our spokeswoman on tertiary education is not here tonight. 
I acknowledge that if Malcolm X were here—he was referred to by the previous speaker Stuart Nash—I very much doubt whether he would be supporting any aspect of any bill in the House that supported the student loan scheme in any way whatsoever. I am sure Malcolm X would have been horrified by the impact of the student loan scheme on this country and on the aspirations of young people in this country—particularly the impact of the student loan scheme on indigenous youth. 
However I will get down to the detail of the exemption and miscellaneous provisions of the bill. The bill makes several changes to student loans and replaces how the interest rate where applicable is set by a formula. The formula is identical to the formula currently in use and the change is to take it out of regulation and put it into the principal Act. We do not have a problem with that provision. The bill also enables the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to increase the standard rate for repayment deductions from salary and wages from 10c in the dollar to up to 15c for borrowers who have failed to make the correct deductions. We have a problem with that provision because for many people that increase is quite serious. The bill extends interest-free loans to borrowers from Niue the Cook Islands Tokelau and the Ross Dependency. That is all good. We would really like to be able to support the bill because we really believe in providing interest-free loans to our Pacific neighbours. That is very important. The relationship is absolutely vital and it enriches both our country and the rest of the Pacific. We also do not have a problem with a number of the non-controversial technical amendments in the bill. 
But we have to look at the context of the changes to the deductions. When we were consulted on the bill’s predecessor last year we opposed its introduction on the basis that increasing the powers of the Inland Revenue Department to recover debt in this manner is a very bad move. One of the drivers of the bill which was stated to us at the time was that the Inland Revenue Department had mistakenly failed to collect from some borrowers who are now in arrears. Compulsory student loan repayments already kick in at a low threshold. Increasing the deduction to 15c in the dollar would have a severe impact on some borrowers because that low threshold which is $19084 gross is not enough to live on. It is a scary amount of money to try to live on. Changing the deduction level could have a major impact.  
The bill suggests that alternatively the department could simply allow those who are behind in their repayments to take longer to pay off their loans. We would rather see that happen. We are very very concerned about the fact that the Inland Revenue Department made the mistake. Why should the students of this country pay for the tax department’s mistake? I do not know how many members have had the experience—I certainly have—of the tax department making a mistake and trying to make them pay for it. I do not think that approach should be applied to the students in this country. The Inland Revenue Department has to take responsibility for making mistakes. We should not penalise our students in that way. Regrettably we cannot support the bill although we support the overseas borrowing provisions.  
I make a general comment about the bill. The student loan scheme is possibly the most effective tool with which to depoliticise and alienate an entire generation. Here many of us sit as recipients of a publicly funded university education system. We paid maybe $125 per year for books for our courses. We left university debt free and burden free. We grew up thinking we had the right to an education and that we were valued members of a caring society that invested in us.  
John Hayes 
: Some of us were. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY 
: Some of us were. Some of us who are making the decisions here tonight got that free education. It did not work so well for tangata whenua who were still experiencing the loss of lands resources and taonga katoa including their language. But for those of us lucky enough to go to university there was no debt. There was no questioning of whether we could ever afford to have a family or to buy a house. Sure now everyone can go to university but everyone must pay. Some of us who did not pay are not even listening to this speech. We did not have to pay. That is the irony of the situation. We who were privileged enough to feel that our society invested in us and that we did not have to go overseas to get the money to pay back our debt sit here in judgment deciding that our students should increase the amount they are paying because the Inland Revenue Department made a mistake. The Green Party does not agree with that.  
University used to be a place where students debated ideas and engaged with civic issues. Now they talk about how to pay back their debts. Now students are hard to enrage or activate. They are a passive compliant and debt-ridden mass who are focused on what they need to know in order to pass the test and get their qualification so they can get a job and pay back their debt. That is not an intellectually rich environment; it is a place where ideas take second place to the debt mountain—the food bank for some—and to the pernicious individualism of immediate personal indebted survival.  
I was lucky to be a young person and a student when participating in political activity and lively dialogue within an education about ideas was the norm. But now if one goes to a university one will find people scurrying through the corridors not focused on anything to do with a civil society or a political society but focused on how they can pass the test on not being asked to discuss ideas and on just getting through so they can get a proper job in order to pay off the debt. Now that we do not even have proper jobs because we are in a major recession the Government is talking about increasing the amount some students might have to pay.  
Much as we support the idea of interest-free borrowing for overseas students we regret this bill. We stand as we have stood before and will stand again against the student loan scheme as a disempowering and ineffectual way to invest in young people. I listen to all the rhetoric in this House about the value of education. The bill is not about education; it is about the dollar. We have forgotten that education was once about investing in our young people yet we wonder why they rush overseas are deeply alienated from our communities and think only of themselves. Let us look in the mirror. We cannot support the bill. Kia ora.