“Student loan borrowers based overseas = 15% of borrowers, 60% of defaulters & 80% of default amount. Time to pay more”

he tweeted yesterday.

This official spin results in stories like this: “Budget 2013: Tardy student borrowers owe $427 million.”

The Government’s tough new student loan rules are an attempt to claw back more than $427 million of debt in default from overseas-based borrowers.

New figures from the Inland Revenue Department show that borrowers based overseas make up 15 per cent of those with student loans, but account for 60 per cent of 84,562 defaulting borrowers. The top 20 defaulters living in Australia collectively owe more than $1.6 million in default, with each borrower owing more than $47,000 in arrears.

Changes announced in the Budget will see passport information matched with information on student-loan debt, meaning that defaulters could be arrested as they try to leave the country.

Fixed repayment obligations and higher repayment thresholds will also be introduced from next year.

Minister of Tertiary Education Skills and Employment Steven Joyce said the crackdown was aimed at the worst offenders.

That’s all very well, but the changes aren’t only about cracking down at the border. They also include higher repayment requirements for borrowers living overseas, regardless of their income or circumstances.

One of my pet bug-bears about the annual “crackdown” on student loan repayments that we’ve been experiencing for the past five years since National has been in Government is the implication that it’s lazy students that are being targeted. Student loan borrowers who are eligible to repay their loans are graduates – grown ups! – with complex responsibilities and situations. Unilaterally raising their repayments, like Steven Joyce did for domestic borrowers last year, and overseas borrowers this year, has real, serious implications for their daily lives.

Take this example, emailed to our team yesterday, from a kiwi family living overseas who want to remain anonymous:

“Husband has a postdoctoral fellowship worth US $41,364. Wife is in the examination process for NZ PhD and is otherwise currently unemployed. We have one toddler, and a second baby on the way. Combined, our minimum compulsory repayment threshold has just been increased from NZ$6000 to NZ$9000 pa, with, as far as we can tell, no means testing or anything that takes into account our income or have dependents, only the fact that we’re now living overseas. At the current exchange rate this roughly calculates to 18.6% of our current household income. (On top of this we’re also paying the interest on our loans, and our normal outgoings which include expensive USA health insurance.) Husband chose to leave NZ to do a post-doctoral job because that is how he will establish international collaborations to further his research career, and also he had very little prospects of getting a similar job in NZ. We want to pay off our student loans and return to NZ, and fully intended, but not in a way that will stretch us so financially when we have children so young.”

It’s people like this who will be most affected by these unnecessarily punitive changes, not the archetypal lazy students deliberately evading their responsibilities imagined by Minister Joyce. It’s time some of the reporting about these changes reflected this.

It started when Labour MP Grant Robertson tweeted about the underwhelming funding for the arts in Budget 2013, including cuts to public broadcasting, regional museums, and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. Minister Finalyson tweeted back, calling Robertson “tragic” and making the “golden age” claim. Grant has blogged about the exchange here.

Twitter’s creative community leapt into action, resulting in a very amusing hashtag #goldenage highlighting just how far from the truth that claim really is. Finalyson responded by tweeting a long list of funding decisions and projects he has provided over which he said demonstrated the truth of his claim. True, there are some positive measures in there, but the twitter audience wasn’t buying it.

So is there a silver lining to the golden age debate? It got me thinking – with an eye to reviewing our Arts, Culture, and Heritage Policy – what would it take to create a real golden age for the arts in New Zealand? I asked for some ideas from tweeters, who had some great suggestions:

• developer-proof Artists’ Reserves for inner city urban decay areas
• support for NZ screen production, incl. documentaries. Talent development e.g. NZ scale version of nfb.ca
• review of Creative New Zealand’s goals and objectives
• art works commissioned or bought as a percentage of build cost for all public buildings
• return of the Pathways to Arts and Cultural Employment scheme, with extra mentoring
• arts apprenticeships
• prime time arts documentaries; and
• return of TVNZ7!

What do you think? What policies do you want to see to create a real golden age for the arts?

This week is also Budget week, which has historically brought some pretty bad news for students.

Last year’s Budget gifts from the Government included: removing access to student allowances for postgraduate students, increasing the student loan repayment rate from 10% to 12%, restricting all allowances to 200 weeks and freezing the parental income threshold for student allowances until 2016.

These changes have had a big impact on a lot of people.

Some of those graduating in Auckland on Friday are planning a visual protest against the burden of student debt. Students will be placing a sticker on their graduation gown showing how much student debt they have, which they describe as “a visual reminder of the number that the Government reduces them to”.

While it’d be nice to think that this years’ Budget could have some better news for students and graduates, it’s not looking good. The Government have already indicated that they’ll be putting even more pressure on overseas borrowers, and I’m sure there’s more to come.

As a part of Youth Week, Youth Affairs Minister Nikki Kaye has today made an announcement on this year’s Youth Parliament, including releasing the issues that the Youth MPs will be considering at their select committees, as well as the topic of the bill that will be debated in the House.

I’m particularly excited about the bill that they’ll be considering – the Electoral Reform bill, which seeks to modernise the electoral system through steps like lowering the voting age to 17, introducing electronic voting options, making voting compulsory, and extending the Term of Parliament from 3-4 years.

These are all really important and interesting issues, especially in light of the growing problem we have in New Zealand with declining voter turnout and political disengagement amongst young people.

The Youth MPs will get an opportunity to debate this bill in the House, and will each vote individually through a conscience vote.

From now until July the Youth MPs will have the chance to consult their communities on the Electoral Reform bill, and I’m sure there will be lots of thought-provoking discussion on the topic.

You can meet our wonderful bunch of Green Youth MPs here.

As a result, it was predicted many students would either drop out of postgraduate study midway through their qualifications, or simply not enrol in the first place.

Those predictions seem to be coming true now that the first enrolment figures for the 2013 academic year are becoming available from universities. I requested figures from all eight universities under the Official Information Act and the results of these were reported by TV3 over the weekend. Across the board, they show a decline in postgraduate enrolments against a general trend for these to increase each year before this policy was introduced.

For example, Otago University has experienced a decline of 8.5% and Auckland University postgraduate enrolment numbers are down by 7.1%.

Removing postgraduate allowances shows the Government’s disregard for higher education. National is wasting the potential of some of the best and brightest people in New Zealand by limiting higher education to just those who can afford it. It’s clear how strongly people feel about this – when we launched an online submission to Steven Joyce asking him to reinstate postgraduate allowances, it was signed by over a thousand people in just a few days.

It’s shortsighted, and wrong, and for that reason I’ve drafted a member’s bill that would reinstate eligibility for student allowances to postgraduate students. It’s called the Education (Student Allowances Eligibility) Amendment Bill and it will be in my name in the next Parliamentary ballot.

I hope it gets pulled so that Parliament has the chance to debate this policy in full now that that evidence of the effect that it is having on postgraduate numbers is confirming just how harmful it will be.

I visited the site on 25 March, and this is what it looked like:

Me in front of former state houses in the process of being demolished on Haverstock Road

The properties recently sold on Haverstock Road

Haverstock Raod properties in the process of demolition

The latest, tragic, development is the news today that the land has sold for a total of $8.76 million.

I think this is a terrible waste. Housing New Zealand already owned the land, and could have invested in an affordable, efficient, accessible housing development, containing a mixture of social housing along with homes for private sale, and homes that could be used for a “rent to buy” scheme such as that advocated in our Home for Life proposal. It would have allowed the community to flourish, not forced those on low incomes out into other areas of the city.

Housing New Zealand says it will use the money from the sale to build 40 new houses, but not in the same area. And remember, this is the agency that is supposed to be building 2000 new state houses in the next two years, but only managed to build 68 last year. I remain highly sceptical about its ability to deliver on this promise, and even if it does, the Minister has admitted that it won’t result in a net increase in the number of state houses – they are too busy demolishing and selling them all around the country.

Damian Christie, better known as host of Backbenches (which will be back on TV screens next Wednesday, by the way), has today launched his project – ‘URS’.

URS is a website where young people, aged between 13-25 years old, can submit content they’ve created. The scope is pretty broad, but includes things like photos, music videos, short stories, documentaries, etc., and can be from school projects or produced in their own time.

The only rule – “as long as it’s creative, as long as it’s yours” (oh, and age appropriate).

As well as having prizes up for grabs, the site aims to offer a supportive environment and guidance for young creatives. There will be Masterclasses from experts across the industry and academia, and information on pathways to careers.

It sounds like a really great opportunity for young people to get their voices heard and their talent out there.

Another thing happening in the world of youth is Youth Week, which is coming up in May. Although it’s not until next month, there are some events, like the short-film competition in Wellington, which have looming deadlines. Check out the Youth Week website for more info.

This means that everyone with a student loan who earns more than the $19,084 threshold will now have to pay 12 cents of every dollar they earn over that threshold towards their student debt.

This is a significant change, and will have a real effect on many graduates. It’s important to remember that a large proportion of those paying off a student loan are also parents – nearly half of all young couples with children have student loan debt.

We think there’s a better way to change student loan repayments. If the repayment rate was progressive based on your income, rather than set at a rate of 12% across the board, then graduates who could afford to pay their loans off faster would, without putting the squeeze on those who couldn’t afford an increase in repayments.

This would achieve faster repayment rates without placing an unnecessary burden on low-income graduates and young families. Forcing them to pay 12% of their income on their student loans when they may be struggling to make ends meet is unfair.

It’s also unfair that the repayment threshold is only $19,084, which means that students and graduates have to start paying off their student loans when they earn less than someone working full-time for the minimum wage.

In Australia, graduates do not have to start repaying their student loans until they earn over $48,000, and they have progressive repayment rates. This system is clearly fairer and makes a lot of sense. Our Government should really take note.

Another change that took effect yesterday is the scrapping of the voluntary repayment bonus, which was the one incentive for students and graduates to pay off their loans quicker.

According to the Government at the time of the announcement last year, there was little uptake, so there was no need for it. The Government is now also arguing that it needed to be scrapped because students were ‘gaming the system’ by apparently borrowing more than they needed to in anticipation of a bonus, or by taking out a loan and then repaying it straight away – in effect making 10%.

In advice from before the decision was made, officials recommended restricting the bonus to graduates only, rather than those still studying, in order to stop this ‘gaming’. Instead, the Government decided to get rid of it all together. This has prompted some commentators to suggest students and graduates should pay their loans off as slowly as possible – have a look at today’s article in Business Day to find out why.

This is yet another example of this Government’s short-sighted approach to students and graduates in this country.

This came after the Ombudsman’s investigation into the Ministry of Education’s handling of OIA requests on the school closures in Canterbury, which highlighted some real issues in how these were being dealt with.

Rather than being a problem specific to the Ministry of Education, the Ombudsman has suggested this could be a broader issue across the public service. Their investigation will examine:

Whether the policies and practices of agencies under review are fit for purpose, in that they ensure timely and appropriate responses to all information requests, and that they are not circumvented in some instances.

As I’ve written before, the Office of the Ombudsman is chronically underfunded. They are drowning in complaints from people who are unhappy with the responses they’ve received from Minister’s offices and government departments.

In fact, there are so many complaints (2,800) that they are now writing to those who have complained to explain the delays they are likely to expect. Our office has received one of these letters – a complaint that was sent in October last year is now one of approximately 450 that haven’t even been allocated to a staff member.

This is a real threat to transparency. If Ministers know that there is little point in anyone complaining to the Ombudsmen, where is the incentive for them to actually disclose what they should?

I hope that this investigation by the Ombudsman into wider public agencies will help to remind Ministers of their obligations under the Act and improve the way OIA requests are handled. This would hopefully reduce the need for complaints to the Ombudsman and in turn reduce their workload, clearing the way for their office to do the work they should be focusing on.

Crowdfunding is a collaborative way to fund something, and Pledgeme have set up a really successful website where creative projects, in areas including dance, film, photography, music, journalism and theatre, are able to raise the funds they need through online contributions from supporters.

Another crowdfunding platform for the arts sector was formally welcomed today by Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Chris Finlayson. ‘Boosted’ , established by the Arts Foundation, is a philanthropic crowdfunding website for arts projects in New Zealand.

Given how successful Pledgeme has proven, I’m wondering whether we even need a new arts-only crowdfunding platform. Ultimately all arts funding is great and I commend the Arts Foundation for thinking creatively about generating new funds, but I’m concerned about the Minister’s enthusiastic response. Having a greater percentage of arts funding generated from philanthropy has been a priority of this Minister, but the Government shouldn’t just rely on everyone else to fund these projects. Philanthropy can never replace sufficient government support for the arts.

This chance doesn’t come around very often – the Option is only held after a Census, so this year is the first opportunity since 2006. It opens on Monday 25th March.

If you indicated you are of Māori descent when you enrolled to vote, the Electoral Commission should be sending you an ‘Option pack’ in the mail, to give you all of the information you need to make your choice. If you haven’t received a pack, or would like more information, have a look at their website or call 0800 36 76 56. The Option is open until Wednesday 24 July.

There is also a series of videos from the Electoral Commission to help explain the process and answer some questions.

The Māori roll plays an important part in determining how many Māori electorates there are. Since 1993, the number of Māori electorates has incrementally increased from four to seven, because of more Māori registering on the Māori roll when the Option comes up.

Māori representation is also part of the current constitutional review, so everyone in New Zealand has the chance to feed-in to the conversation about the future of areas relating to Māori representation, as well as the role of the Treaty of  Waitangi in our constitution and electoral matters, such as the size of Parliament.

It’s a tragedy, not only for those who have now lost their homes in the area, but also a tragic missed opportunity to invest in more of the affordable, medium-density housing so badly needed in Auckland.

Instead of threatening to override Auckland Council’s plan for a compact city by legislating to open up more land outside the city limits for more urban sprawl and McMansions, Housing Minister Nick Smith should focus on his core business.

Instead of selling it off to the highest bidder, he could direct Housing New Zealand to use the now bare land in Sandringham to rebuild affordable, medium-density homes. It wouldn’t all have to be social housing – we know this Government doesn’t like social housing in suburbs it has decided are “too good” for that; after all Prime Minister John Key set the tone when he said that building state houses at Hobsonville Point would be “economic vandalism” – a mix of social housing, affordable houses for private sale, and Government-built “rent-to-buy” homes as proposed in our Home for Life policy paper would be ideal. That’s what we were supposed to get at Hobsonville before this Government gutted that promising development.

Meanwhile, the same story is being played out all over the country as Housing New Zealand empties its homes on the flimsy pretext of earthquake code compliance, leaves them vacant for months, and then demolishes or sells them without replacing them with social housing. Last year, for the first time in recent memory, Housing New Zealand sold or demolished more houses than it built or bought. And while they have promised to build 2000 new homes in the next two years, at the rate they are getting rid of their old stock, this won’t even result in an increase in total state housing numbers.

Auckland – and increasingly the rest of New Zealand – has a housing affordability crisis, and this Government’s answer is to sell off valuable land to private developers and leave the most vulnerable to fend for themselves in the private rental market. It’s simply not good enough.

Cutting student allowances to all postgraduates is short-sighted policy that pulls the rug out from under thousands of students. Many cannot work part-time due to course requirements to fill the deficit, meaning they will have to walk out of their courses.

It will also add millions to student debt as students who relied on allowances look to take out loans instead – where the maximum is less than a student allowance.

This week we set up an easy way for people to email Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce asking him to reinstate student allowances.

We’re nearly at one thousand submissions already, which is a fantastic response! Please add your voice if you haven’t already. It’s important that the Government hears how these changes will affect people in different ways: http://bit.ly/givepostgradsachance

We’re also working on a Member’s bill to reverse this policy change.

If you agree that the Government needs to give postgrads a chance, share this campaign!

Every time I would stop in the foyer and look up at Ralph Hotere’s glorious triptych paiting depicting Hone Tuwhare’s famous poem, Rain.

It brought me a great sense of peace and put my petty academic worries into perspective every time. It now hangs in the Hocken Library in Dunedin and is available for public viewing – I’d highly recommend it.

Since then I’ve always been a huge admirer of Hotere’s work, and I agree with many of the commentators who’ve remarked since his death yesterday that he was a truly unique New Zealand artist, and we will not see his like again.

Our thoughts are with his loved ones at this hard time. Rest in peace.

On average, these postgraduate students will have to borrow an additional $4610.89 this year, in addition to what they have to borrow for fees.

Many of these students will be unable to survive on the amount that they can borrow alone, because this is lower than is available through allowances. Some students will be able to pick-up part-time work to help, but for many, the time commitments of their study means this isn’t an option and they’ll be left will little choice but to drop out.

Cutting student allowances to postgraduates was announced in Budget 2012 and came into effect this year. It means that all students studying towards a postgraduate diploma, Masters or PhD will not be able to receive a student allowance.

This is a short-sighted policy that flies in the face of Government plans to rein in student debt. The Ministry’s figures show that the changes to student allowances will add an extra $23.7 million on to the national student debt this year.

It will also act as a huge disincentive to students to undertake postgraduate-level study in New Zealand – driving many talented graduates overseas and worsening skill shortages in key areas.

Just in time for o-week, we’ve set up an online submission form to get people to email Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce, as a way to share how this policy change is effecting them and calling on him to reinstate student allowances for postgraduates.

We’re also working on a Member’s bill to reverse this policy change and reinstate student allowances for postgraduate students.Take a minute to have your say and tell Steven Joyce what you think about this policy – submission form here.

This decision came as a result of an investigation by the Chief Ombudsman after the Cabinet Office refused a series of OIA requests for this type of information.

Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverly Wakem argued that:

the degree of transparency necessary to maintain public trust and confidence can only be achieved by regular and proactive publication of a summary of actions taken when Ministerial conflicts of interest are identified. 

New Zealanders have the right to information about how decisions are made and who is making those decisions. The OIA plays a fundamental part in upholding openness and democracy in New Zealand.

But, things shouldn’t always be left to the OIA, which requires people to actively seek out information – knowing what to ask for and how to do it. Proactive disclosure, on the part of decision-makers, is an important step towards true transparency.

Variety is not the first charity to offer a “sponsor a child” scheme in New Zealand – KidsCan have offered a $15/month sponsorship scheme for several years now, which provides food at school for a year, a waterproof raincoat, a pair of shoes, two pairs of socks, and basic hygiene items for each sponsored child.

In addition, private companies like Fonterra have also seen the need for action on child poverty and stepped in to provide Milk For Schools, starting with a pilot in Northland that will soon be extended around the country. While there are issues with this scheme (with reports that kids don’t like the taste of the UHT milk, and not all the waste is recyclable), there is no doubt that it is filling a very real need.

What does it say about our values as a country that we have allowed things to get this bad? Why should charities and even big corporates have to step in to provide the most basic necessities for our children?

There’s no doubt that these schemes will be a welcome relief to many families struggling to make ends meet and give their kids what they need. But it will probably also feel pretty rubbish for those parents knowing that they need private sponsorship just to ensure their kids get to go on school trips and visit the doctor. And, if not managed carefully, there could be significant stigma attached to being a “sponsored” child which would only compound the challenges these children face.

I would much prefer to live in a New Zealand where there was a social and political consensus that the state guarantees that every child has the essentials for a good start in life. When we can do that, we guarantee them the opportunity to grow up to make a great contribution, even from the most challenging circumstances.

That means ensuring a living wage for working parents and adequate support for those not in paid work, ensuring there are affordable, healthy homes for families to live in, whether they are renting or buying (on that score, check out our new housing proposals!), and working to close the widening gap between rich and poor. The investment in these policies would be recouped a thousand times over in the savings we would make in the health, education, and justice budgets from having healthy, happy children grow up into constructive, productive adults. It’s a no-brainer.

So yes, it’s good that Variety, KidsCan, and others have stepped in to fill the yawning chasm of child poverty that too many of our kids are falling into. But let’s take this as a challenge and demand governments that will eradicate the need for such schemes by guaranteeing the essentials for all our kids – not just those lucky enough to get a sponsor.

Though I’d never admit it, as a staunch Wellingtonian, on days like yesterday in the beautiful Tahaki Reserve at the base of Mt Eden, I can see why people love living in Auckland.

Massive thanks to the organisers, stall-holders, bands, my fellow MPs Russel, Julie and Dave, and everyone else who attended.

Metiria used her speech to launch a new movement – a new way of doing political campaigning that involves people on the ground in whatever ways they’re able. Called I’m in – for the future, it’s about creating simple opportunities for ordinary people to get involved in political campaigns without necessarily having to attend endless meetings -  or even join a political party.

With a coalition of like-minded New Zealanders who are passionate about creating a better future, we can first stop this Government’s dangerous policies, like selling state assets, in their tracks. Next, we’ll work to elect the leaders we need to make that better future a reality.

I’m in! Are you?

Along with Beacon architectural intern Libby, Nick and I spent the day touring various Auckland suburbs, looking at some great – and some not so great – examples of affordable, efficient housing and discussing potential solutions to the exploding crisis in housing cost and quality.

Auckland needs between 10,000 and 13,000 new homes a year in the next decade to keep up with demand. That’s daunting enough, and even more so when you consider that at the moment we’re only building around a quarter of that, about 3,000 homes a year.

While the Government is using the crisis as an excuse to put pressure on Auckland Council to extend the urban boundaries and open up rich agricultural land for cheap suburban housing developments, organisations like Beacon advocate for the more efficient and less environmentally damaging option of intensifying development within the existing city limits, with more medium density housing.

Not only is medium density housing potentially more affordable (especially when you factor in all the hidden costs of living on the urban fringe, like increased transport and infrastructure costs), if done right, it can also be more sustainable, and produce more liveable neighbourhoods and communities that give the people who live in them a real enhanced quality of life.

As Nick pointed out at the start of our tour, which began in Ponsonby, we’ve been living in medium density housing in these kinds of neighbourhoods (think of the houses on the hill in Oriental Bay in Wellington for another example) for over a hundred years, in small villas and even terraced housing built very close together. Far from the slums that are feared, these dense neighbourhoods are some of our most desirable! What makes them so great? They are compact, close to the city, easy to get around by walking, cycling or public transport, leafy and green with trees and parks, and well served by local amenities such as schools, shops, and cafes. We created these neighbourhoods from scratch 100 years ago; there’s no reason why we can’t do the same now.

Terraced housing in Ponsonby

Unfortunately, New Zealand’s first experiments with medium-density housing have been a bit of a disaster, since much of this housing stock, erected in the 1990s and 2000s, has fallen victim to the leaky buildings crisis. We saw countless examples of apartments and terraced flats with severe weather-tightness issues, including many that had been repaired or were in the process of being re-clad.

Poor quality, leaky homes like these have put people off medium-density housing developments.

Leaky homes in West Auckland being re-clad.

The leaky homes disaster, which left so many families and home-owners disillusioned and out of pocket, and which we still haven’t seen the full extent of, has put many people off the idea of pursuing new medium-density, affordable housing developments. Say “intensification” and people tend to think either of leaky houses, or of soulless high rise apartment buildings, neither of which appeal to our national psyche, with the dream of the free-standing house on the ¼ acre section still so firmly ingrained for many of us. That’s a real shame, because there are some really exciting concepts and opportunities for medium-density housing development in New Zealand if we can get political buy-in from national and local governments, and work with developers and designers to start thinking creatively about our housing needs.

Eager to prove that it’s possible to create affordable, sustainable housing with a small footprint (both geographically and ecologically), Beacon started building demonstration homes to show how easy it could be. The first of these was the Waitakere NOW home, completed in 2005 for just $220,000. It’s just a basic, three bedroom house, but with the right orientation, solar and rainwater collection, insulation and clever use of the sun’s warmth, it requires no heating of any kind, even in winter. The family who lived in the house after it was first built noticed considerable improvements in their children’s health and said it was the best house they had ever lived in. It’s a great example of the kind of affordable, sustainable home we could all be living in with a better commitment to improving the housing stock in New Zealand.

Libby and me outside the Waitakere NOW home (now the Trusts Eco House)

Information panel about the Trusts Eco House

From Waitakere, we visited a New Zealand Housing Foundation development in West Auckland. The NZHF is a charitable trust which aims to deliver affordable home ownership to low-income households. The trust builds affordable, high performing homes, and helps low-income families to own them through two schemes, affordable equity, where families purchase a shared interest in their home in partnership with the foundation, and affordable rental, where families pay a fair market rent for their home, and after 5 years can receive up to 75 percent of any increase in the value of the property over that time to use as a deposit.

New Zealand Housing Foundation homes

Again, these are simple, well-constructed houses, in a variety of sizes (in recognition of the fact that extended families are increasingly choosing to live together in one house), and they are built to last. This unassuming NZHF developed home, with its solar panels, insulation and orientation, is one of the highest performing houses in New Zealand in terms of energy efficiency, and it’s affordable for the family who lives in it.

The highest performing house in New Zealand?

Finally we visited the somewhat controversial Government-owned housing development on former New Zealand Defence Force land at Hobsonville Point. When it was initiated under the previous Labour Government, this development was to have been a mix of social, affordable, and private housing, with concurrent community development (including schools, social spaces and a farmers’ market); a real experiment in creating both affordable homes, and a liveable neighbourhood. The development seems to be progressing well, and all the homes meet high energy efficiency standards and come equipped with rainwater collection, but tragically, the current government has axed the social housing component (the local MP, who happens also to be Prime Minister John Key, said it would be “economic vandalism” to have state houses – and their riff raff tenants, presumably – in such a nice development) and axed the affordable Gateway loans scheme after only 17 families had used it to buy their first home. What’s left, the “affordable” houses will cost at least $400,000 and many more than $485,000. Lovely, I’m sure, but hardly affordable. It’s a shame, because in many ways the Hobsonville Point development is very exciting, with its sustainable goals and community building initiatives. Let’s hope a future Government sees sense and reinstates the social and affordable housing components.

Show homes at Hobsonville Point

Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time yesterday for my tour to continue into South Auckland, where some of the real housing challenges of the next decade will come, especially the challenge of accommodating larger extended families in affordable, safe homes. Fortunately I’ve been invited back soon for part two – I’ll keep you posted.

A week ago, two Victoria Uni students released the Keep Our Talent survey, which raised serious concerns about the future for postgraduate study in New Zealand. Their survey of 200 students found that up to 40% were considering turning their back on postgraduate studies – including 1 in 5 who were looking to go overseas – because of the Government’s decision to cut student allowances for postgraduates.

Their research also highlighted how poorly the Government has managed this policy change, with many of the students unaware that they would be affected.

On Monday last week, the Annual Report for the Student Loan Scheme was released, which details the costs of the scheme and information on repayments and uptake of loans in the last year. It includes interesting stats on the number of borrowers, median repayment rates, and the size of loans. It also showed that student debt has now reached $13 billion.

On Tuesday, we were finally provided the Budget documents we’d been waiting on since an OIA request was submitted in July. Over 60 documents have been made available via the education website, detailing the Budget-related advice the Minister received from officials prior to the Budget relating to Tertiary and Student Support decisions.

The Student Loans and Allowances: 2011 information was also released on Tuesday, which is a compilation of info from the Minister of Education, MSD and IRD that gives us information on the educational characteristics of student loan borrowers and student allowance recipients, as well as their loans, allowances, income, and repayment information. It shows that a greater proportion of students are taking out a student loan, more students are receiving a student allowance, and that the average amount borrowed is increasing.

In response to this report’s finding that student enrolments are at their lowest level since 2002, Minister Steven Joyce made a pretty revealing statement about this Government’s attitude towards study, by claiming that it was “good news” that 30,000 fewer people were studying in 2011 than the year before.

The Ministry of Education released another report on Thursday – Profile and Trends 2011: NZ’s Tertiary Education Sector – which is an annual survey on the tertiary education system. It looks at enrolment patterns and the outcomes of study, including post-study earnings.

Meanwhile, students are still contacting me as they discover from Studylink that they’re no longer eligible for student allowances next year and face tough decisions about whether they can continue their studies. With record numbers of graduates moving overseas this is the time for smart tertiary policy that invests in our future and lessens the burden of debt. Unfortunately Minister Joyce and his policies are taking us in the exact opposite direction – let’s hope that he and his Government sit up and take notice of these foreboding statistics before any more damage is done to the tertiary education sector and it’s students.