Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2)

Part 2 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) is the part that introduces the “Henry VIII” clause into the legislation. It is the part with which the Labour Party has the biggest problem. We think this clause is entirely unnecessary. It is a clause that is perhaps appropriate in a situation like that of the Canterbury earthquakes. We note that the Labour Party joined in supporting giving Gerry Brownlee powers that became known as those of an earthquake tsar. We can debate hither and yon about how well those powers have been applied, but what seems clear is that in such an emergency situation, having powers beyond those that would normally be at the discretion of Ministers is entirely appropriate, and the judgment of Parliament is that it is appropriate in those circumstances to give “Henry VIII” powers to make law essentially without reference to Parliament. In the bill we are now debating we have clause 39(4), which inserts a regulation-making power and gives the Minister of Revenue discretion to implement or not implement legislation according to any technical hitches.

The officials who serviced our Finance and Expenditure Committee were excellent, I have to say, and they did a very good job of servicing our questions, of answering our queries, and of trying to come to grips with the concerns of members in the committee. If I take one example, we had great concerns about where overseas borrowers were located. We wished to know where they might be and what the likelihood of collecting tax from them was. I will come back to that point. One thing the officials shared with us in response to our inquiries about the “Henry VIII” clause was that indeed it was primarily there as a backstop should the computer system not be able to implement legislation. That is a huge admission. That is a huge admission—admitting that a problem had previously been spotted, that a problem with implementing other legislation had come to notice. In fact, that the bill currently enables the repealing of previous decisions that could not be implemented is right there in front of us. It was something that was unavoidable to debate. The officials told us that, really, this clause ensures that should further technical issues come up, the Minister has at his discretion the ability to revoke decisions made by Parliament, in order to ensure that the thrust of this legislation is implemented fairly.

That is where we really come to the point of debate. We in the Labour Party will probably have quite a different view from the current Government about what is the thrust of this legislation. We believe that it is the duty of Parliament to debate these issues, to resolve them, and to pass law that has been overseen, that has been scrutinised, by parliamentarians on behalf of the taxpayer. That is what we are paid to do as our jobs, to make sure that the best possible law is created. This clause, although entirely appropriate in an emergency situation where Parliament would not have time to sit and meet, seems entirely inappropriate in a situation where there is no particular hurry. The Government could come back to this House should it wish to in order to repeal yet more of its decisions. It could bring them to Parliament and explain that it has been unable to implement them, as it has done in this legislation, and come back with a different set of recommendations that it could implement and that it thinks are roughly in line with the original intention of the principal Act.

The overarching point I am making here is that there are different ways and means of repealing legislation. What we have here is a Draconian measure inserted into a piece of law where it is not needed—in fact, where it is inadvisable. We had the legal advisers, also at the select committee, warning us that this is an unusual but increasing trend in Government legislation. It was a very rarely used measure in days gone past and is increasingly being used by this Government as it passes legislation and runs up against troubles, particularly in the area of student loans and particularly in the area of tax collection.

I wanted to touch just briefly also on the potential gains from this bill, which is, despite our grave concern about that clause that we will be opposing, why the Labour Party will support this bill. It goes back to the comment I made on the first part of the legislation, which was around the frustration that many New Zealand borrowers feel when repaying their loans, as they look across the Tasman and further afield and see that their compatriots abroad are not paying their fair share. We asked officials to supply some estimates of the amount of money that could potentially be collected overseas if there was appropriate compliance, and we heard from Mr Dunne earlier about how low the compliance is currently. The estimates we got back were that if there was 100 percent compliance, we might expect to see an extra $110 million collected in the March 2012 tax year, which would indeed be very good. If there was a compliance level similar to New Zealand’s—a 96 percent compliance level—we might expect to see $106 million returned to the taxpayer. A more likely figure of 70 percent compliance was also provided, which would see $77 million returned to the taxpayer.

There is a real paucity of information about where overseas borrowers are, and this is something else that was brought to be understood by the committee. Borrowers with an unknown place of residence number 50 percent of those who are overseas—32 percent are known to be in Australia, 12 percent in the United Kingdom, and 6 percent in other countries. These borrowers, who make up the bulk of those overseas, are borrowers for whom there is a “no address” recorded of their overseas residence. The Government has attempted through various means to begin tracking down these people and trying to make sure that they meet their obligations.

This is something the Labour Party supports. We believe in the importance of full student support. Indeed, there is good international evidence that we should be providing more student support, particularly to those from low-income backgrounds, who would find a lack of student support a barrier to their participation in tertiary education. I recall many years ago working on a project at Treasury where I had the opportunity to look at Canadian studies, which showed that people from wealthier backgrounds overestimate the costs of education and underestimate the benefits of education manyfold—manyfold. That is people from wealthier backgrounds. Those from poorer backgrounds underestimate the benefits by a factor of 10 or more, because people fail to understand compound interest, and overestimate the costs, because they are perceived as a huge barrier. There is Nobel Prize - winning research that suggests that for talented students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, in fact, the State should pay the whole amount of their tuition, because not only is that better for the individuals concerned—

Paul Goldsmith: It’s not the State.

Dr DAVID CLARK: —but also it is better for their families and better for society as a whole, because GDP goes up, Mr Goldsmith, and we are all better off because of that if we grow the economy. This Government is so unfamiliar with growing the economy that this may be a challenging concept to wrap one’s head around on the other side of the Chamber. But it is true that if we grew the economy, we could afford better social services and we could continue to move towards providing free education from which we all benefit, not only economically but also socially. So the paucity of information is something that definitely needs to be addressed, and I believe that the measures in this bill, if they can be successfully implemented, will go some way towards improving that situation and towards collecting money that the taxpayer has loaned in good faith, not necessarily all to people from modest backgrounds, in order to retrieve it.

There is no doubt that the Government will struggle to implement this bill. It would not have needed or felt the need to put a “Henry VIII” clause in if it thought it was something that could be implemented—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Can I just remind the member that we have actually passed clause 39. That was in Supplementary Order Paper 185.

Dr DAVID CLARK: It’s in Part 2.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, it is not; it is Part 1. Most of your first call was actually on Part 1, and now you are coming back to Part 1 again. We have dealt with Part 1; we are now on Part 2.

Dr DAVID CLARK: Well, I’m very briefly—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. In fact, the member’s time has expired.

Firstly, may I record my agreement with the substantive points made by my learned colleague Dr David Clark. It is a matter of procedural nicety that the earlier Part 2 was inserted by Supplementary Order Paper 185 into Part 1 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2), as it were, at the last moment, and thus the offending “Henry VIII” clause has been embedded in Part 1—just for the benefit of the listeners.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Let me just reply to that. We have actually dealt with Part 1, so let us just concentrate on Part 2.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: I move to the substantive Part 2, which is a collection of transitional provisions relating to other parts of the Student Loan Scheme Act 2011. Unlike the offending “Henry VIII” clause, which delegates from the legislation a regulation-making power that is thus not subject to the oversight and supervision of Parliament or to the full measure of the democratic process, these clauses are, in fact, in some cases perfectly sensible ways of handling the transition.

If I might draw the attention of the Committee to clause 55 of Part 2, it says that it replaces a fixed nominal interest rate, which is the late-payment interest charged on an unpaid amount, which was in section 139(2)(a) and (b): “replace ‘0.843% of’ with ‘the late payment interest rate multiplied by’.” New section 139(3) makes clear that “late payment interest rate means the base interest rate plus 4%, calculated as an equivalent monthly rate expressed as a percentage and truncated to 3 decimal places.” That is extremely useful for us to know, because what it does is provides a living mechanism whereby the legislation sets the rule, which is then automatically updated as the base interest rate, and thus the late-payment interest rate, which is the base plus 4 percent, changes over time. That is an example of how to do a transitional provision without offending either the Regulations Review Committee or the estate of the late, great Henry VIII. It is not delegating an opaque, broad regulation-making power; it is delegating only a very specific numerical formula that replaces a formerly static number that, of course, became less and less meaningful over time because of the time value of money and inflation.

It is a matter of some interest that the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Revenue, has presided over this piece of legislation, which in one place offends the best principles of parliamentary scrutiny—as you say, Mr Chairman, quite rightly, now vested by amendment in Part 1 of the bill—and here in Part 2 has other clauses that do not so offend the Standing Orders, the Regulations Review Committee principles, or the best practices of parliamentary democracy in the Westminster system, and that would leave McGee, for example, perfectly comfortable with the mechanism being followed. The question is why the Minister has a bob each way in two different parts of this bill. If it was good enough to do it properly in Part 2, why did the Minister feel the need to insert an offending clause by amendment in the middle of Part 1?

Mr Chairman, I guess that brings the Committee back to matters that were the subject of debate before your colleague Mr Roy departed the Chair, which was that this bill is a tinkering bill. Although on the face of it, in general, the Labour Opposition supports it because it does act toward the principle of fairness in a very small way, it is mainly a bill of missed opportunities.

We are tinkering with a student loan scheme that is bedevilled by two fundamental flaws. One is that it is building up a mountain of billions of dollars of debt, much of which will not be repaid, because the students concerned have become exiles overseas in what is the second-highest diaspora after Ireland of any country in the developed world.

The second problem is that it is perpetuating by its inaction an intergenerational unfairness or inequity that has seen people of the Minister’s generation benefit from a free, subsidised State education all the way to postgraduate level without having to take out huge student loans, and getting paid a bursary, just like I did, whereas today’s students, if they have the courage to take on the debt to get their way through tertiary education, finish with a mortgage and no house—a mortgage and no house.

We all know that New Zealand’s earning rates for graduates vis-à-vis, say, Australia are around one-third lower. They were 30 percent lower when the current Government came into office, but the current Government promised New Zealanders it would close the gap with Australia and so, of course, inevitably it got wider. My latest understanding is that it is now about 37 percent different on a GDP per capita purchasing power parity basis. In other words, in common English, it is getting worse. The gap is getting wider, and the implication is that more and more of our graduate students are leaving in order to be able to repay the student loans that are the millstones round their necks. That is a perverse consequence that this House is going to have to spend a whole lot more time on in the term of the next Government, working together, because the Minister in the chair is not prepared to do step change. He does only small change, and all the Committee has today is small change.

Let me draw the attention of the Committee to clause 53, which replaces section 119. It replaces the former meaning of “excess repayment”. It contains a number of subsections and paragraphs—(1)(a), (b), and (c) and (2)(a) through to (d)—which cover in some detail the penalties and obligations apportioned to excess repayment. There is a certain irony in this clause. How many of today’s recent graduates or current students are capable of so-called excess repayment? Excess repayment would be a fine thing, when they can barely feed themselves or pay for the rent while they get their first jobs straight out of university with the millstone of a huge debt round their necks. And it is because of their inability to repay, because of forces beyond their control, like the fact that we are 270,000 jobs short in this country and we have a Government that is doing precisely nothing to fix it—those are factors beyond their control—that there will not be much excess repayment under this clause in Part 2.

Clause 56A amends section 145, which is about the application of different types of relief for borrowers. Well, that sounds interesting. Perhaps it is a neck and shoulder massage. But, no, we see in the proposed new section 146 that the commissioner may grant relief from late-payment interest. That, in our view, is a very sensible provision to include in this bill, because it gives the commissioner discretion to look at individual life situations on a case by case basis. Why is discretion important in the law? Because no two lives are the same, and it would take volumes to try to write prescriptively all the criteria that a sensible and worthy commissioner should take into account if trying to decide every case off some fantasy rule book. Better to have a well-trained commissioner subject to proper principles and oversight and to delegate appropriate discretion. The same does not apply to “Henry VIII” clauses, as have been vested by the Minister by amendment in Part 1.

Summing up, all in all the transitional provisions currently contained in Part 2 of this bill are somewhat underwhelming. They are, for the most part, sensible. They do not, for the most part—in fact, I do not think, at all—offend the principles of Standing Orders, such as that clause now vested in Part 1, which delegates a regulation-making power because the Government could not think its way properly through legislating. That is the problem. The problem is that as with the rest of the bill, worthy though most of it is, it is a bill of small changes, whereas what we need is a step change. It does not address the yawning chasm of billions of dollars of student debt by any more than $7.5 million over 5 years—barely enough, it might be said, to cover the cost of Parliament’s time, the implementing officers’ time, and the compliance costs associated with the measure. It certainly does not solve a billion-dollar problem. Secondly, it does nothing to resolve the intergenerational equity issues that have bedevilled today’s students.

I will begin in Part 2 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) where the previous speaker, David Cunliffe, left off, looking at clause 57, which replaces section 146, and looking at the discretion given to the commissioner to grant relief from late payment interest. We agree that it is very sensible that the commissioner has that kind of discretion to grant relief to borrowers who are charged late-payment interest and penalties on their student loans. As we have heard, those can be significant, and it is sensible that the commissioner has that kind of discretion. It would be good if the commissioner still had the same discretion through the 3-year repayment holiday provision, which is being repealed and shortened to 1 year, to grant relief from late-payment interest and penalties to borrowers living overseas who are there for more than 1 year, as most New Zealand graduates are. It is an example of the inconsistency between some of the sensible provisions of this bill and the series of very damaging changes to the student loan scheme that have been made over a number of years by this Government.

Indeed, I think the kind of discretion described in replacement section 146 in Part 2 is the kind of discretion that my colleague Tracey Martin was talking about earlier in the debate when she talked about the discretion for individual circumstances, including borrowers living in New Zealand who may become learners at different stages throughout their lives, to have the ability to take a repayment holiday, for example, from their student loan. Those are sensible provisions similar to what is proposed here, and yet not supported by this Committee.

While I am on the subject of the contribution from my colleague Tracey Martin earlier, I think it is important to correct the record. She questioned the commitment of both the Green and Labour parties to free tertiary education. I was very pleased to hear my Labour colleagues reiterate the Labour Party’s commitment to free tertiary education. Of course, the Green and New Zealand First parties are quite aligned on this matter. Like New Zealand First, we stand for a universal student allowance, we stand for the reduction of tertiary fees, and we stand for exploring a debt write-off and bonding options under the student loan scheme, so we have a lot in common. Of course, our concern about the financial burden that students and graduates such as myself are dragging around does not detract from our commitment to that principled stance on tertiary education.

I want to briefly turn my attention to the contribution from the Minister of Revenue earlier. I was pleased to hear him say that it would be wrong to see this bill in isolation from the suite of measures introduced over the last 4 to 5 years.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the member. That was in Part 1. We are now on Part 2, so just confine your comments now to Part 2.

HOLLY WALKER: Thank you, Mr Chair. Indeed, the changes in Part 2 should not be seen in isolation either from the suite of changes that have been made to the student loan scheme over the last 4 to 5 years.

I would like to review for the Committee what some of these changes are, because they are very concerning. We have also heard in the debate on Part 2 mention of the lifetime limit of 7 years of equivalent full-time study, so you cannot borrow under the student loan scheme if you have been studying for more than 7 years. That was a change introduced in the last 4 to 5 years by this Government, and it is a very punitive change. It means that a student who has completed a 4-year Bachelor’s degree with honours and then starts a Master’s degree and then moves on to a PhD would lose access to their student loan part-way through their doctoral study. Similarly, students who are medical students who have been studying for 7 years but are doing an 8-year course would lose access to their student loan before they have completed their medical degree. Similarly, students who undertake bridging courses to prepare themselves for tertiary study then find that that has contributed to their lifetime equivalent full-time study limit and are unable to borrow later on in their degree. Those kinds of changes are very detrimental to those students, and they are part of that suite of changes that we have heard about, which is very concerning.

As I began this contribution on Part 2 with the observation that the commissioner under this part has the discretion to grant relief against financial penalties and late payments, similarly, as I have mentioned, we have seen a similar discretion be removed—the ability to grant a repayment holiday for 3 years and for that repayment holiday to be reduced to only 1 year. Under Part 2 that kind of discretion is given to the commissioner, and yet it is removed by some of those other changes we have seen in the last few years. We have also seen a reduction of the academic requirement that a borrower must have passed at least half of the previous 2 years of study in order to continue qualifying for a student loan—a manifestly unfair measure that was abolished in 1993. We have seen the restriction of access to students over 55 so that they can no longer borrow under the student loan scheme. That nonsensically makes it more difficult for older people to upskill and retrain during a period of global economic recession. We have seen the Government make it more difficult for new immigrants to qualify for the student loan scheme. We have seen the Government restrict part-time students from being able to borrow for course-related costs. We have seen an increase in the administration fee of the scheme from $50 to $60 per year, and we have seen the introduction of an annual $40 Inland Revenue Department administration fee for graduates who are paying off their loans. As I have mentioned, we have seen the 3-year repayment holiday reduced, we have seen the 10 percent voluntary repayment bonus abolished, which is also referred to in Part 2 of this bill, and we have seen the student loan repayment rate increase from 10c to 12c in the dollar.

I think what is really important to keep in mind when we are looking at the amendments in this part of the bill and the bill as a whole is the question of who are the people affected. I think this House has a habit of thinking that bills that make amendments to the student loan scheme are about students alone. Actually, most of the time bills that amend the student loan scheme, including the parts in Part 2, are actually about graduates who are paying off their loans. These are people who have finished studying and who may not have studied now for several years. These are people who are grown-ups; graduates are grown-ups. They are employees. They are taxpayers. Many of them are aspiring homeowners. They are parents. In fact, most of the people affected by this bill are your typical “mum and dad” New Zealanders—and I put quote marks around that, because I hate that phrase. But, actually, that is who we are talking about. I know that many members of this Parliament like to think of students as being free-loading slackers and that this bill tightening up provisions around the student loan scheme just makes a very generous scheme fairer for students. It is actually not about current students; it is about graduates, and they are your “mum and dad” New Zealanders.

I think the Government, in its continued slow erosion of the scheme and in making things harder for those graduates—making them pay their loans back at a higher rate, for example—is actually putting a lot of pressure on everyday “mum and dad” New Zealanders. You know, they are the people, like the journalists whom the Minister spoke to, who say they are angry with overseas borrowers. They are also angry about their increased repayment rates. I think the Government ignores that at its peril.

I call Dr David Clark. Part 2.

Part 2. I am delighted to speak directly to Part 2 of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2) and, in particular, the broadening of the definition of “revenue”, which is so crucial to the actual measurable impacts of this bill. I mentioned earlier the excellent work done by officials in servicing the Finance and Expenditure Committee. One of the pieces of work that they did was bringing back to us some figures that I have mentioned earlier around what might be collected from overseas borrowers if obligations were met.

The definition of “revenue” is touched upon in many of the clauses in Part 2. I note, for example, in clause 51 there are a number of additional definitions inserted that describe the meaning of an unpaid amount: “an amount that must be paid by a borrower in accordance with a written notification under section 52;” is new paragraph (f), “a late filing penalty:” is new paragraph (g), “a student loan shortfall penalty:” is new paragraph (h), and “an underestimation penalty,” is new paragraph (i). These are all broadening the definition of “revenue”, presumably in response to some tricky situations or some technical situations that have been faced, where a borrower has disputed whether indeed the revenue was appropriate to be collected.

The officials gave us an estimate of the additional revenue that would be collected through the broadening of the definition of “revenue”, and that estimate was $1 million a year from 2015-16. We know that putting legislation through this Parliament costs more than that, so some of us in the committee were quite concerned, and those of us who were concerned raised concerns that we did not have clear estimates of how much additional revenue would be collected as a result of this bill. I raised earlier my concern that some of the substantive parts of the bill might not be able to be implemented because of challenges with the computer system. So we are left with the definition of “revenue” being the substantive and substantial amount that can be quantified, and it has to be said, in tax terms and in terms of the time of this House and in terms of the priority of the Government, that a $1 million tax grab is actually a little on the small side.

The Minister in recent days canned a car-park tax that was aimed at gathering $17 million, which is 17 times the amount that we know for sure will be collected by this tax. We have had the paper boy tax, and there is talk of an iPad tax, although that looks like it will be hit on the head as well. We have a Government that is trying to, through small measures, broaden the tax base. The general effort to broaden the tax base we of course support, because we believe that everyone should pay their fair share. But it does seem that a lot of these measures could be brought together in one bill rather than being debated over a lengthy period of time, when we know that these are small measures, and, also, the ones that look more substantial are not yet certainties for implementation and, certainly on past record, may not be possible.

The broadening of the definition of “revenue” goes into much detail in this provision, and I will not debate all of that, simply to say that a lot of it is around small matters of wording. We also have some discussion around late payment interest and the ability of the commissioner to grant relief. Look, we support those kinds of things because, as my colleague David Cunliffe has previously pointed out, the intent to specify every single case where relief may be granted goes a step too far, and, indeed, in some cases it is appropriate that there is discretion for the commissioner.

In closing this short contribution, I want to say that Labour supports the bill as a whole. We have already outlined our concerns with the “Henry VIII” clauses. We are concerned that there really is not a clear picture about how much revenue this will collect, and it is not even clear to us, and became increasingly worrisome in the committee, that this could not already be accurately collected through the Customs Service compulsorily requiring some details to be provided. Thank you.

I just want to build on what some of my colleagues have said in relation to Part 2 of this Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 2). In particular, I will speak to clauses 50 through to 62A in terms of the transitional arrangements that are going to occur in here. I think that what we see is the complexity of the phasing in of these changes. The transitional arrangements that we are going to have to have in order to implement the changes that are embedded in this legislation really speak very much to the tinkering that is going on in this legislation, and to how it really is fiddling around the edges and not addressing some of the bigger issues around access to tertiary education in this country through loans and allowances.

I just want to reiterate what my colleagues who have spoken before me have alluded to in terms of the shifting of the “Henry VIII” clause into Part 1 of the legislation. What we are seeing is that a lot of the concerns that were there really do need to still be there in Part 2. If we have a look at these transitional arrangements—and to pick up on the point that Holly Walker made—when we are thinking about this we do need to think that this is not just about students who are currently studying but also about graduates. I was saying in my last contribution—before I was cut off in my last contribution on Part 1 of this bill—that I am one of the growing number of parliamentarians in this place for whom student loans are not a theoretical issue. I have a student loan and I list it on my pecuniary interests, as a growing number of parliamentarians here do.

These are not just small, little changes that you fiddle around with. I know that for many members of my peer group, people who are my friends and who are my age, these kinds of changes about how things like this are phased in—how it is done, and the fairness and equity in terms of how these changes are made—are really some of the do or die factors of whether or not they stay in New Zealand; whether they stay here and contribute to our country and use their skills, their training, and their education, which could be for the betterment of all New Zealand if they do choose to stay here and do that. I think this is something that we do have to bear in mind all the time when we are looking at how we bring in these measures.

My colleague David Cunliffe went through some of these transitional arrangements in quite a lot of detail. If we have a look, for example, at clause 57 of the bill, it states when it is that the commissioner may grant relief from late payment interest, and how it is that that is going to be used. What we are trying to achieve in this legislation is a fairer student loan system by saying that everybody who borrows should be paying back their student loan, and Labour supports that element of the bill. But what we do not want is any provisions in this bill to be an impediment to people coming back to New Zealand, or to their being able to face up to their loan and to make the payments that are needed. So we do need to make sure that we have fairness and that we have equity in how we are implementing these transitional arrangements, because they do make a difference. These are not theoretical situations. These are the very kinds of rules on which, every day, young New Zealanders who have left to live in other countries make their decisions about whether they stay or go.

The other point I would like to know about, in terms of the complexities of the transitional arrangements, and in terms of the implementation of this, is the infrastructure that is going to be needed to implement it. What we are going to have is a whole lot of different rates and offsets that are going to operate for a period of time while we phase in these changes. That is inevitable with any piece of legislation, and we are supporting this legislation. But the point that Labour would like to make is that we do have some questions around the technology that is going to be needed to implement this legislation—about whether it will be in place, and about whether we will be able to phase in these changes in the way in which this legislation sets out in these transitional arrangements in Part 2 of this bill.

I think what everybody in this Committee is after is a way in which to make this scheme fairer, and that is why Labour is happy to support this legislation. But what we would like to see is a scheme that did actually go to more fundamentally addressing these issues of access to tertiary education in New Zealand, and that we do have a way in which New Zealanders can access our polytechnics, can access our universities, and can access training and education at all levels. We do not want to see this limited, and we want to see all New Zealanders given this opportunity. We would not like to see any impediments in terms of how this legislation is going to be implemented put in there.

My colleague Holly Walker spoke in relation to Part 2 of this bill. She spoke about how it is that we have seen an attack on student access by this Government throughout this term and the previous term. She said that there really has been an agenda to dampen down demand in terms of transferring people from student allowance, in terms of borrowing it, and being saddled with that debt in terms of student loans. This is something that we do need to bear in mind. We need to be creating systems whereby more New Zealanders want to be part of our future—to stay here and to have the skills and the education and the training to stay here and to be part of it. We just want to make sure that that can be implemented in a transparent, robust, fair, and equitable way. Thank you very much.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to Part 2 be agreed to.