Harawira Hone: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Harawira Hone: Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:638;Page:8164] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa i te Whare. When we were on the road during the election campaign back in 2005 this old Pakeha guy sat me down to talk about education and the cost of education etc. What he said stuck in my mind and I will share his thoughts with the House. He said: “If education is essentially the passing on of knowledge from one generation to another then who are we to charge our children for something that we got for free?”. That is the thinking that guides me in this and every debate on education because the Maori Party believes that if we are going to be silly enough to charge our kids to get a tertiary education then we should not be surprised when they all fly overseas as soon as the ink dries on their degrees. 
As for the debt what does the student debt add up to? Well I invite folks to take a seat pat themselves on the back and shake their heads at the foolishness of it all because it seems we have mortgaged the future of our nation to the tune of $9 billion. That is the level of student loan debt in this country. For once Maori are right up there with their own student debt level at $1.5 billion. That is a heck of a lot of money in anyone’s calculations—in any Maori’s calculations anyway. Certainly it is right up there for Maori. That sum is more than the Government set aside to settle 150 years of land stolen confiscated and just plain ripped off from Maori over the last couple of centuries. 
But still for all that I cannot help thinking that the debate is just a little bit skewed. It should be more than just a discussion about money owed. The debate should also be about the return generated by our young people’s academic endeavour. It should be about the commitment the time the energy and the sacrifice and about the benefits that accrue from our young people being more educated more creative and more productive. But it ain’t. Instead the debate is about paying back loans interest rates penalty clauses repayment obligations holiday repayments and how to keep paying money back even when people are overseas. Yeah right! 
So we checked it out with some of the whanau to see what that debt really was. My own daughter is in her third year at law school racking up $10000 a year in student debt. My advice to her is to get her degree then jump on a plane fly away overseas and forget about her debt for a few years. She should go and enjoy the world have a life and fingers crossed she will come back when she is good and ready and worry about debt repayment then. Certainly she should not worry about paying it back while she is overseas; she should ignore it completely. For heaven’s sake it is tough enough just getting by these days without having to spend all one’s life at school flog oneself to death getting a degree then have to start paying off a debt the size of a home mortgage before even being able to afford a house. 
Another young woman qualified with a prestigious environmental land management degree but in the process racked up a loan of more than $35000. She applied right out of university for 59 jobs without success and ended up as a waitress in a pub. So for a laugh she applied for a job to teach English in Japan. Hello! Job application number 60 was successful so off she went. That was OK for a while. Then she wanted to come back home but the salary was a pittance compared with Japan and to get a decent wage would mean having to go back to teacher’s college and rack up another student loan and even more debt. So what would this legislation have done for her? Well it would have meant that she had a number of options. First she could keep working in Japan and still pay off her debt. Yeah right! Secondly she could study in Japan and not pay interest on her loan. Or thirdly she could even enrol with a tertiary institution here do her studies in Japan and get another student loan to go with the one that she started with. 
But here is the thing: debt repayment policies will not stop the brain drain. Increasing student fees and costs and the lack of access to decent student allowances mean that student debt continues to rise and student flight along with it. At another level Waitangi Tribunal claim Wai 910 lodged by Te ManaAkonga states that the student loan scheme breaches the Treaty of Waitangi in that it unfairly discriminates against Maori. It notes that first Maori have to borrow more from the student loan scheme than non-Maori; secondly Maori have more student loan debt over $20000 than non-Maori; and thirdly Maori have greater difficulty repaying student loan debt than non-Maori. 
So here we have the old catch 22. Because of the failure of secondary schools a lot of Maori students are more likely to study at certificate and diploma levels which means they move into lower-paying jobs and consequently take longer than their non-Maori counterparts to repay their loan debt. The only time that things seem to even out is when one compares Maori and non-Maori degree-level graduates. The irony of that of course is those degree courses are the most expensive. 
The Maori Party supports any move to reduce student debt. We support the notion of a repayment holiday although we would make it 5 years rather than the recommended 3 years. But I go back to our fundamental concern that we are driving our graduates into crippling debt before they even start work. Education is supposed to be a nation’s investment in its own future and we need to be visionary and bold in how we approach student cost and student learning. The Maori Party sees MataurangaMaori as a treasure and its protection is guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi. We also see a decent education as being a treasure that we should guarantee to all our youth. Accordingly we support a greater investment in tertiary education in order to help reduce student costs and student debt. 
We also support the submission from the National Council of Women which stated that although some people claim education is primarily a private good and therefore students should pay for it the council believes that keeping and attracting students is actually in the public interest that it makes good sense to reduce student debt in exchange for student commitment to society at large and that if tertiary study was seen as a public good then we would not see the numbers of graduates we have seen being driven overseas. 
As recently as 1989 student fees were $129. In 1990 the Labour Government introduced a flat fee. That flat fee was ten times the amount of the previous fee—$1250. Then National got into Government and changed the Act so that institutions could set their own fees. Since then fees have increased and increased. It is a shameful legacy that both Labour and National have created—of which the Prime Minister herself said back in 1999: “Tertiary fee rises are crippling our future.” 
Last year’s annual report of the student loan scheme talked about ensuring that the student support system promoted equity and fairness was consistent with the wider income-support systems and made tertiary education affordable for all. If that means my daughter with her $40000 debt the young woman with her $35000 debt who received 59 job rejections before taking a job in Japan and the thousands of other Kiwis who have had to borrow under the scheme and then skip overseas so they do not have to pay it back will not have to be burdened with massive debt at a time in their lives when they should be preparing for their own future and our nation’s future then it is all good. If not then excuse the Maori Party for continuing to fight for a future that includes our own kids running our own country instead of leaving it and us having to bring in immigrants to cover the gaps we have so foolishly created. Kia Ora Mr Deputy Speaker.