Only ACT supports a serious conversation with millennials

National’s defence of the failed interest-free student loan scheme leaves only ACT prepared to discuss the policy.

“Today’s New Zealand Initiative report confirms what ACT has believed all along," says ACT Leader David Seymour. "The 2005 decision to remove all interest from student loans was a cynical bribe that has not made access more equal or millennials better off.

“The loan scheme does nothing to assist students struggling to move up from poorly-performing secondary schools. The scheme instead gives a subsidy to those students who have already succeeded in gaining university entrance, and who are statistically going to be earning far more than average. We should instead be targeting spending towards areas of greatest need.

“The question for millennials is what sort of policy will our generation support: vote buying and deception, or asking hard questions about tertiary spending? Do you want to pay for your own education once, or pay for others’ bad decisions for the rest of your tax paying career?

“In 2005 National had the courage to call the policy a bribe. By 2008, under John Key, they’d changed their tune, saying it was too hard politically to scrap the policy. Now Stephen Joyce is flat-out defending the scheme, showing National has come full-circle from a party of principle to a party of expediency.”

ENDS

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