New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters has announced a reduction in student loan interest rates as part of New Zealand First’s policy.

Speaking yesterday to 672 delegates at the New Zealand First convention in Auckland, Mr Peters said that today’s interest rates were crippling students and causing many of them to flee overseas.

“New Zealand First is going to help young people. We believe that education spending is an investment –not an expense.

“We are going to reduce the interest rates on student loans. We are going to peg their interest rates to the CPI plus two per cent.

“At present they pay over seven per cent. We need our young people here, in New Zealand if we are to get New Zealand back on the path of economic recovery”, he said.

“The best immigrant is the son or daughter of a New Zealand citizen returning home”.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>