Harawira Hone: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Harawira Hone: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Volume:638;Page:8283] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker tenatatou katoa i te Whare. First of all I would like to say I am quite amazed at how the public talk has changed. A few years ago when people were jumping up and down about how all our kids were disappearing overseas people first of all tried to make out that that was not happening and that it was not the reality. Then as the statistics started coming out the brutal reality kicked in that yep our kids were doing a runner. Now all of a sudden the Government is talking as if it recognised that our kids needed to get away for a few years and that it will try to encourage them to come back home. 
Let us not con ourselves here folks—our kids are running away overseas because they have had a gutsful of being driven into the ground by this massive student debt. They get out of college and in their first adult years they are trying to get a degree so they can do something with it but we are making them build up a debt as big as a house mortgage. They are getting on the plane and running away; they are not playing society’s game about going overseas to get a bit of this and a little bit of that then coming back and bringing back all this worldly experience. 
So we should stop conning ourselves. Our kids are doing a runner on the massive student debt that has been imposed upon them by this Government and by the previous Government. We should at least be honest with ourselves about what is going on around here. We should stop conning ourselves and stop lying to our kids. 
Just about a year ago Professor RodolphoStavenhagen was here and he presented his report on human rights and indigenous issues in Aotearoa to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Paragraph 62 of that report pretty much sums up the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) from the Maori Party perspective: “The Maori Students in Tertiary Education of Aotearoa complained to the Special Rapporteur that a limitation to their progress to higher programmes in tertiary education is the high burden of student debt and decreasing public funding to support Maori students.” 
That is what the United Nations was told and that is what the world now knows about the situation facing Maori students. Mind you that is what Maori have known ever since this crippling student loan facility was first created—student debt will overburden those who already carry the burden of high expectation from their whanau limit their future options and lead to years of continued debt repayment. 
When I spoke during the second reading of this bill I mentioned comments I had received from an old Pakeha guy. This is a lovely statement. He asked: “If education is the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next then who are we to charge our children for something that we”—those of us in this House anyway—“got for free?”. When I went to varsity it cost $120. I did not get anything but that was all it cost. 
This bill aims to amend the student loan scheme in order to encourage students with loans to come home. But the $9 billion—and ever rising—student debt will not change a heck of a lot when many of our students will not come back because they are now getting way more than they could ever get here. When students commit to improving their knowledge and the Government commits to supporting their endeavours everybody benefits. But when our students’ commitment is matched by a Government driving them into debt we should not be surprised when we lose them. The way to get our kids to come home is to slash the debt. We would then maximise our return from the productivity of those who would come back tomorrow in a flash if the Government had the courage to slash the debt. 
Maori of course are finally figuring higher in student debt because of their higher participation over the last few years in tertiary study. Maori are finally beginning to turn back decades of educational disconnection. I believe the recent increase in Maori tertiary study is very much the result of wananga enrolments and I take this opportunity to record the Maori Party’s heartfelt thanks to the wananga pioneers: people like emeritus Professor Whatarangi Winiata Dr RongoWetere and Professor HiriniMoku Mead and to those who have taken on the mantle on their behalf. Yesterday’s statistics are a clear reminder of the very very impressive results that the three wananga in particular have achieved in improving Maori tertiary qualifications noting a massive jump of 10000 Maori who have achieved bachelor degrees or higher over the past 5 years. That is not to undermine the excellent work our whanaunga are doing in universities polytechnics colleges of education and other tertiary institutions as well but it is more of a recognition of the genuine relevance of wananga to Maori learning. 
So Maori are there in bigger numbers than ever before but I ask whether it will make a difference. Will there be jobs for our kids when they graduate or will their first choice still be Auckland International Airport? Ministry of Education data tells us that for Maori their getting a degree does not actually lead to them getting a job but it does lead to a big student debt. That brings us back to the whole matter of the debts that Maori accrue under the student loan scheme—currently $1.5 billion and climbing—which the Government dismisses as just a consequence of higher participation by Maori in tertiary education. But its implications for the financial well-being and future prosperity of those Maori students and their whanau simply cannot be ignored. 
When high schools fail Maori—and 50 percent of Maori go into tertiary study with no formal school qualifications—it is not hard to see why so few choose tertiary study as an option. And when they do choose tertiary study before they can enrol in it they get into debt right away in just getting the high school equivalent qualifications that their high schools failed them at. 
When Maori do not like to apply for student loans because they are worried about debt levels it is not hard to see why Maori struggle to get through tertiary study. When Maori do get loans and end up with bigger debts than non-Maori it is not hard to see why getting into debt is such a big issue for them. When the average Kiwi earns $24500 but Maori get only $21000 it is not hard to see why the debt repayment issue is such a big deal for them as well. 
So when all those factors combine it is not hard to see why it takes Maori a whole lot longer than non-Maori to repay their student debt. When that is the experience on which they base their future then the cost of an airfare to Aussie becomes a positive choice for far too many of our young people. 
Finally although we will support this bill to try to get our kids to come back home I have to speak against the snooping culture that has surfaced in this bill too. This bill introduces data matching between the Inland Revenue Department and the Customs Service to determine which repayment rules the students leaving the country will be subject to. But it also leaves out there the distinct possibility that that information might be put to a whole lot of other less positive uses. 
I will leave it there but I wanted to raise the Maori Party’s concern about the Government’s continued invasive use of computer-generated data in order to keep tabs on our own citizens. Using information to develop our strengths as a nation is good but using it to snoop on our kids who are trying to get ahead in life is quite simply unacceptable. Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tenatatou katoa.