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: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8670. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) 
: 
 I would just like to back up what many of my colleagues have said in the Chamber tonight on the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2)—that Labour is supporting this bill because we think that the changes will make the repayments of student loans fairer. But I would like to also underscore the point that my colleagues have made that this is a bill that does not do very much. It tinkers around the edges and it does not address the fundamental problems of what the student loan scheme is meant to do. 
The student loan scheme is about access to education. When we put allowances and loans together it is about how it is that ordinary New Zealanders access tertiary education in this country. What we have is a Government that is really moving the balance between loans and allowances and shifting this. We have seen an attack on both of these by the present Government. We have seen that postgraduate students are being denied access to student loans and we have heard members opposite during their calls tonight—I believe it was Mr Goldsmith—saying that what National was doing was limiting it to 7 years of study. Well this is not the full story because it is not just about limiting the student loan access to 7 years. The changes that National brought in in its last Budget explicitly excluded postgraduate study: Master’s degree and PhD. So any postgraduate study beyond the Bachelor’s degree with Honours level has been explicitly excluded. This is a very worrying trend in our education system in this country. It is yet another example that this is a Government that talks big on the rhetoric of innovation. It talks big on the need for us to have an innovation-led economy. Well these things do not happen by magic. They require really skilled New Zealanders and really educated New Zealanders in there. Limiting the access of people to do postgraduate research is just counter to that. 
Paul Goldsmith 
: Let’s not waste money. You’re leaving it overseas. Let’s not waste it overseas and not get it paid back. 
Dr MEGAN WOODS 
: This pretty much sums it up—we have Mr Goldsmith over the opposite way calling this a waste of money. That is the difference between Labour and National. Labour believes that postgraduate education is to the betterment of New Zealand—that this is the way that we will get ahead. That is the kind of thing that this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) does nothing to address. Postgraduate education—my colleague David Cunliffe is quite right—is an investment. It is an investment in our country and it is an investment in our future. 
What we have seen also is a tightening up of access to loans for various people by this Government over the last 4 years. We have those over 55 now being denied access to the student loan scheme. This is something that we view with a great deal of concern. We put this in the context of the economy that we currently live in and we see that there are a number of people who are losing their jobs yet still have a number of years in which they need to earn an income and actually some retraining would be the best way for them to go about that. So we do not think it is particularly fair what this Government has done in terms of limiting access to this. 
What are the other things in terms of access? We have to remember that when Steven Joyce did take the reins as Minister for Tertiary Education 2 years ago it was made very apparent that National was going to introduce a series of cuts to student support in the area of both loans and allowances in an effort to do what it called “dampen demand” for tertiary education. So we see in Budget 2010 that part-time students can no longer borrow from the student loan scheme for course-related costs. This has real ramifications. My colleague Dr David Clark talked about being a warden at Otago University and seeing the change from when he was a student to when he had responsibility for caring for students in that environment. I also observed that change in my time from being a student to teaching at the University of Canterbury. By the time that I finished teaching at Canterbury it was not unusual for undergraduate students to be working 30 hours a week. 
This is simply not the way that you get a university education. University education is about immersion in learning. It is about being able to devote yourself full time to that and about having the time the energy and the focus to devote yourself to that. What we are seeing this Government introduce in terms of access arrangements is really damaging to the experience and the benefit that students can get from the scheme. I guess there is a number—and a growing number—of us now in this Parliament who stand here with student loans being not just a theoretical issue—