Walker Holly: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Walker Holly: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Sitting date: 30 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2668. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
8. 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
 to the  
Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment 
: Does he stand by the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday that the amount a student can borrow for living costs under a student loan each week is “very similar” to the student allowance? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment) 
: 
 Yes because for the majority of students undertaking postgraduate master’s or PhD study their allowance of $170.80 per week will be replaced by the student loan living costs of $172.51 per week and that seems quite similar to me. Of course the member also needs to take into account the accommodation benefit and accommodation supplements when drawing comparisons for individual students before and after Budget 2012 changes.  
Holly Walker 
: Did he tell the Prime Minister then that there is a $72 difference between the $172 a week that a student can borrow for living costs and the $245 maximum that they can receive on a student allowance with the accommodation benefit and does he also consider those two amounts to be very similar? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Well I think the member is if I may say so being slightly disingenuous because she refers to the accommodation benefit with allowances but does not refer to the accommodation supplement which is available with student loans sometimes. For example—and it does vary for— 
Grant Robertson 
: Sometimes.  
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: No it does vary for different students. Some of them are better off. For example if you had a single 23-year-old with no children not working living away from home in Wellington and the parents living together with no other full-time students in the household and a combined income of $42000 then their allowance plus their accommodation benefit would be $212.51. Next year their student loan plus the accommodation supplement would be up to $272.51 depending on where they are living.  
Holly Walker 
: Can he guarantee then that with the accommodation supplement every student currently eligible for a student allowance for postgraduate study will have the same amount to live on each week as they have before these changes? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: No I cannot guarantee that for every student but what I can say is that a number will be better off. There are some who will be worse off but I will make a couple of points about the transition measures that were announced at the time: firstly students with current student allowance applications that start in 2012 and finish in 2013 will continue to be eligible until the end of that period; students who apply for student allowances in 2013 for an enrolment period that started in 2012 will not be affected; and students with a dependent partner or children can continue to receive a student allowance for up to 1 year until 31 December 2013 or until they use up their 200-week lifetime entitlement to student allowances whichever comes first in which case the student must be continuing the same qualification. So we have sought to place those transition measures in place but the important point of the policy is that we are expecting that those who have gone on to postgraduate study in a master’s or PhD area will be earning on average between 20 and 50 percent more than a person who gets an undergraduate degree once they qualify. Those people will be expected to use the student loan scheme and therefore pay that back so we can reinvest in further tertiary education.  
Holly Walker 
: How does he imagine a third-year clinical psychology student who is required to work full time 4 days a week as an unpaid intern attend one full day of classes and complete assignments and exam preparation in the evenings and weekends will survive on the $172 per week she can now borrow under the student loan scheme? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: I need to clarify with the member. She is referring to a person studying at what level of study? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I invite the member to clarify her question. 
Holly Walker 
: Third-year clinical psychology is a postgraduate qualification. 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: I cannot answer that particular member’s example because it differs. The point that is being made through this question is that it varies depending on the person’s individual circumstances. So on the base allowance and the base student loan it is the same but depending on their personal situation and their accommodation situation it could be either more or less and we do not know the answer to that question until we know that person’s absolute circumstances. 
Holly Walker 
: How much longer will it take students of clinical psychology or indeed teaching or other postgraduate qualifications to pay back their student loans with the addition of the $172 extra per week they must now borrow to live and how will that add to the country’s student loan debt burden? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Again I cannot give the exact numbers for that. What I can tell the member again is that the postgraduate people whom we are talking about are going to earn on average significantly higher sums than not only the people who get an undergraduate degree but also people who do not get a degree at all. And we are asking those people—the ones who never go to university—to subsidise through their taxes 70 percent of the tuition costs of the students who go to university to subsidise more than 40c in the dollar of the cost of their student loans and in some cases to also subsidise their student allowances. That is a very big subsidy from somebody who does not go to university to somebody who does and who actually could be earning anything between 70 and 100 percent more than that person once they leave university.