Hipkins Chris: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15962. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It is a bit rich to be lectured by the National Government on elitism when it comes to tertiary education. This is a Government that seems to think that the only people who should have access to tertiary education are the people who have parents who can afford to pay for it. The Government continues to put more and more financial hurdles in the way of peopleparticipating in tertiary education while it continues to erode the financial support that has previously been available.This is a Government that seems to think that tertiary education should be the preserve of the wealthy and the wealthy alone and I think that is disgraceful. We know that because we had Simon O’Connor over there before talking about the interest-free student loan scheme and calling it irresponsible. Does that not remind everybody in the House of when John Key came down to the House not that long ago—it does not seem like that long ago—and railed against interest-free student loans and said that he was going to fight them with every bone in his body? Well perhaps he is some kind of reptilian overlord after all because interest-free student loans are technically still here. But of course what the Government is doing is slowly progressively dismantling them—little bit by little bit. First the Government has introduced an administration charge which is effectively a form of interest every year which students have to pay and it is on the basis that it costs that much money to administer the student loan scheme. And yet the Inland Revenue Department does not apply that under any other policy—only for students; only under student loans do we have this administration charge. Then we have a whole lot of other punitive measures introduced by the National Government to increase the cost to students of their tertiary education and to gradually slowly erode the value of interest-free student loans because we know that Government members are opposed to them.The Government will not front up to New Zealanders before the election and admit it but the reality is that if National gets a third term interest-free student loans will be history. The National Party never wanted there to be interest-free student loans. Simon O’Connor still believes that it is irresponsible to have interest-free student loans. It is very clear that if New Zealanders have the misfortune of having a third-term National Government interest-free student loans will be gone.The other thing that this bill does is that it hangs a very big sign over New Zealand for expat New Zealanders saying: “Don’t come home. Don’t come back. If you’ve got a tertiary education you’ve borrowed for that and you’ve gone overseas don’t come back.” That is the message that this National Government is sending to those New Zealanders who have gone overseas. Actually we should be making it as easy as possible for New Zealanders overseas to come back and the prospect that they are going to be handcuffed at the border certainly will not do anything to bring them back.I do believe that people should repay their student loans but I believe that the responsibility of the Government is to make it as easy as possible for them to do that. What we have seen is this Government keep making it harder and harder. It keeps making it harder for graduates to keep on top of their student loan debt particularly those graduates who are living overseas. Actually one of the progressive things that this Government should be looking at is how we make it easier for people who are overseas to work out how much they should be paying back making it easier for them to actually keep on top of their repayments so that this problem does not arise in the first place. But no no the National Government is not interested in that at all. It is more interested in a punitive measure—Grant Robertson: A gimmick.CHRIS HIPKINS: A gimmick that basically says to people living overseas: “Don’t bother coming back to New Zealand. We don’t want you back.”Well actually here in the Labour Party we are not that arrogant. We do want people who live overseas and who are New Zealand graduates to come back to this country and to contribute to the New Zealand economy. We want to make it as easy as possible for people who are overseas to come back because of course we know that they have been leaving in droves under this National Government. Remember how John Key stood inthe stadium and talked about the Westpac Stadium - load of New Zealanders who were leaving to go to Australia every year? Well they would not fit in the Westpac Stadium—Grant Robertson: He’d have to do it at Eden Park now.CHRIS HIPKINS: He would have to do the ad at Eden Park these days because under this National Government the exodus to Australia and to other countries around the world has gotten even bigger. There are more and more New Zealanders leaving every year and we should be saying to them that we want them to come home. We value the contribution that expat New Zealanders could make to New Zealand if they came home.That is not what members of this National Government are focused on. They are interested in election-year stunts. They are interested in appearing to be tough on people who are not paying back their loans. Actually what they should be doing is making it easier for students to pay their loans back in the first place. They should be making it easier for people to participate in tertiary education in the first place. They should not be focused as they are on making sure that tertiary education is the preserve of the wealthy elite. That is very much what this Government is doing and I do not think that is right.