Speech : Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill. Te Ururoa Flavell

Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill.
Te Ururoa Flavell, MP for Waiariki

Thursday 15 September 2011; 5pm

Tena koe Mr Speaker.

Kia ora tatou katoa. If I can cut to the chase around this particular Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill, as others have said, the purpose is to make the retrieving of student loan repayments from overseas based students easier.

In that respect I suppose we might say that it is not so much about the cost of education but about the administration of loan repayments. The Minister of Revenue puts a reasonable case I think, that overseas borrowers are not paying their share of the student loan bill. This is an issue because the cost burden naturally falls on the Government and overseas based loan-holders are not contributing to the economy or the development of the country, because they are not here.

As I understand it, according to the Minister, the best they can do is pay back the money they owe for the education the country afforded them through an interest loan scheme and we as a party have some sympathy with those general views.

The Maori Party policy around student loans is to reduce the cost burden to students. This bill obviously does not increase the cost burden in any way; it simply makes repayment of these loans easier to enforce at least from the government’s end. But it does raise, I think, an interesting age-old issue for debate: what should be free and what should we expect students to pay for?

Other questions could be whether the State should pay for basic degree courses, and then if students want to take their education further should they then pay for those extras. I ask these questions because education and jobs are not about individual gain and benefit. They actually benefit the whanau, the hapu, the iwi, the community and the nation and those extras also benefit all of us. We believe that education and job security are about the future of the nation, so the nation should be responsible for educating all of its citizens to the extent necessary to ensure its citizens have secure futures.

Those citizens should then be responsible for making that same opportunity available to those after them. Education costs should be met by all of us through the State. But it is about the application of kaupapa tuku iho, about rangatiratanga, whanaungatanga and manaakitanga and the restoration of mana through utu and muru. So if I was to look for a relevant example I would want to turn back the page of history to an organization many may not have heard of, namely the Maori Education Trust. This was a Trust established many years ago – and I think it is still available at present. In the case of anybody who is applying for Maori Education Trust money, those who apply for assistance are interviewed firstly and are expected to give back to the whanau, to the iwi, to hapu and to the marae in return for the contribution made to their education.

So it is our contention that we should expect the same with those who seek taxpayer money – that they have to give back to the taxpayer. Whether they use taxpayer money through free education or through student loans, they should reciprocate in some tangible way, so we should not make repayment an insurmountable hurdle. An interesting point that came up in our discussion around this bill was the possibility of making repayment not necessarily in money; it could be in kind, which is probably an interesting concept for many. We thought of possibly saying to loan-holders that if they were going to payback the loan how about donating back in time to voluntary organizations, helping out at the school, or helping out at the hospitals, here or overseas?

We might have to be creative in providing students with opportunities for using what they have learnt for the betterment of the community. I like to think it is an innovative idea that may well be worth pursuing. These are, perhaps, ideals, but in the meantime we are, of course, aware that the total student loan book held by Inland Revenue Department is around $9.1 billion last year. That is a lot of money.

During our discussions with relevant parties about this particular bill we got some notes from one particular Maori student, who has been in the leadership of a student association, about the changes and what might be anticipated from this. The view of this particular person was that it was pretty difficult to argue against reducing the repayment holidays because the reality was that if a student was spending more than a year away from home, then it was pretty clear they were on a holiday. That is what he said. Furthermore people who had spent three years out of the country were likely to stay overseas. According to this particular student leader, the Government may as well get on with recouping the student loan debt sooner rather than later. It would be fair to say however, that not all students share this particular view.

Jacqueline Poutu, tumuaki of Te Mana Akonga, the Maori students association, could not support anything in the bill. Her question about the repayment holiday was “why are we treating adults like teenagers?’. For younger students she could see some rationale for it but not for grown adults. In her view she believed that the bill was an attempt to force students to stay in New Zealand, but the reality is that the salary in New Zealand is not enough to enable students to repay their loan at a reasonable pace. I wanted to place those questions on the record and to put the views out there and really to get a response as to whether age matters. Should it be different for younger or older students and should we be placing more focus on incentives to stay in New Zealand rather than accepting the inevitable drift offshore?

There are many issues we could be raising about the student loans and in particular the relationship to the barriers faced by Maori students and how they participate in the tertiary education sector. The disproportionately high uptake of student loan scheme by Maori students is indicative of the fact that many Maori students need financial support in order to be educated at the tertiary level. I do not think there is too much doubt about that. For many Maori students, the student loan scheme provides financial backing that is necessary for them to participate in tertiary education. Although the cost is still a major barrier, Maori have seen the student loan scheme as an opportunity for them to gain qualifications that they could otherwise not afford to even contemplate.

I think we should support that. I know of course, that this bill is singularly focused on student loan repayments from overseas based students and it is not, as such, an opportunity to talk about the inadequacy or more to the point, the inadequacy of financial support available to students. But they are critical issues for the future of the nation and the house can rest assured that even if this debate does not provide the change to debate the range of issues that we in the Maori Party, at least, would like, there is another chance coming up in another few weeks or so. That is called the election and we look forward to that coming up. Kia ora tatou.