Tanczos Nandor: General Debates 
Tanczos Nandor: General Debates 
[Volume:617;Page:13067] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Today is the New Zealand University Students Association’s day of action on student debt. Today we are seeing people gather all over the country to protest the Government’s continued policy of supporting the student loan scheme. Today we will see people gather in Hamilton Auckland Palmerston North Wellington and Dunedin to protest this Government’s policies. It is good to see students hitting the streets because the reality is that students will get nowhere with their demands for a universal student allowance until they get active until they take to the streets and until they make their voices heard. They can take their lessons from the students of the past—the student activists of a few decades ago such as Mr Maharey Phil Goff and Helen Clark who took to the streets in their time to make known their issues. 
I totally support this campaign to draw attention to the disaster that is the student loan scheme and the disaster that the student loan scheme represents for New Zealand students and for New Zealand as a country. Two weeks ago co-leader of the Greens Rod Donald presented a petition to this Parliament on behalf of more than 35000 New Zealanders who put their names in support of the campaign by the University Students Association. That petition said that those people recognised that the current system of student allowances discriminates against those under the age of 25 and forces students to borrow to meet their basic living costs. They therefore called upon the Government to immediately adjust allowance’s parental income limit for inflation since 1992 institute a system of a living allowance for all tertiary students and set the level of the student living allowance equal to that of the unemployment benefit. 
What that petition represented was really a new level of activity among students. What was notable was that the signatures on that petition were not just from students; they were from New Zealanders as a whole. Students are starting to gather support across the population for their campaign because more and more New Zealanders are waking up to the realisation that the student loan scheme is not just a student issue. It is actually an issue that affects our entire country and everyone in it. 
The student loan scheme involves a huge number of issues. I would like to draw the House’s attention to the words of Brian Easton in looking at the sustainability of student loans. He pointed out that student debt is not simply a liability such as a mortgage or an overdraft and that repayment is contingent upon the income stream for the debtor and that that income stream is uncertain. So in effect it is a contingent liability. But he points out that proponents of the scheme are very hesitant to call it a contingent liability because that would display to the world that essentially the scheme is no more than a raising of the income tax levy on some parts of the population—that is those with a contingent liability from the student debt—in order to lower taxes for the rest of us particularly those of us who got a free tertiary education or who have been able to pay off their contingent liability. That would include many many members of this House and many members of the Government. 
Brian Easton also points out that there is a second reason for the hesitancy to call it that—it shows that the net worth shown in the Crown balance is not as healthy as it first appears. In looking at the 2000 figures he talked about the net worth being $8.2 billion made up of $60.9 billion of assets less $52.6 billion of liabilities. But at that time $3.4 billion of those assets were contingent assets dependent on the students for whom they are contingent liabilities earning sufficient income to pay them off not going bankrupt not disappearing out the country and out of the Inland Revenue Department’s records and the like. That debt is now $7 billion. It has doubled from that time. Therefore slightly less than half of the so-called net worth of the Crown is covered by the contingent assets of the student loans. We know that if we go around the country and talk to people—