Kerre Woodham: Chasing overseas student loan debt is long overdue

In this spirit of taking the good news where we find it, I was absolutely delighted to see the results of Inland Revenue going after student loan defaulters. At the end of April, there were 113,733 people with student loans believed to be based overseas. If you're based overseas, you don't get the student loan automatically taken out of your pay packet. Overseas, it's up to you to make repayments, and more than 70% of those are in default on their loans – so it’s up to them to make the repayments. 

Despite the extraordinarily expensive tertiary education they receive, they don't seem to understand what a loan is. They owe $2.3 billion, of which more than $1 billion is penalties and interest. Even if you wiped the penalties that is still $1 billion, owing to the taxpayer. We paid for the lion's share of the education, around 70% of the true cost of the education, they took out a loan which was paid for by the taxpayer, and $1 billion is owing to us. For about 24,000 of these overseas based borrowers, the debt is more than 15 years old.  

Inland Revenue has collected more than $207 million in repayments since July last year from student loan borrowers living overseas, and that's 43% up on the same period the previous year. And the reason for the sudden flurry of productivity and getting the money back? Inland Revenue was given the money, student loan compliance funding, to go after the little thieves, so they finally had the resource to be able to do it.  

According to Inland Revenue, they've contacted more than 12,000 borrowers – 1,320 of them have entered repayment plans, 960 have fully repaid their overdue amounts. Inland Revenue has seen a collective repayment of $9 million once they took an interest. Thank God. The department is also looking at borrowers who own property in New Zealand – there are just over 300 of them. And ever since “hello, it's Inland Revenue on the phone. We understand you owe us money. We also understand you have property in New Zealand”, shockingly, these people are suddenly able to find the money to repay the New Zealand taxpayer. So they've paid up $1.7 million.  

Any defaulters within the group who have refused to engage and resolve their defaults, says Inland Revenue, will see further legal enforcement taken, which may include New Zealand based bankruptcy or charging orders over their properties. They're doing the same for student loan defaulters who have investments or bank accounts receiving interest income in this country. Just watch these people suddenly come up with the money they owe once they realise Inland Revenue will be able to go sniffing around in their accounts. And as a last resort there'll be arrests at the border.  

This is so overdue. In the past there seems to have been a reluctance to go after overseas based student loan defaulters. What about when they all flocked back to New Zealand during the Covid times? That was the perfect time to collect the money owed. It is a kindness to the borrowers to keep that student loan debt at the front of their minds. If you can forget about a big debt, if there are other people screaming at you for money who are up in your grills, you'll park it and put it to one side and think I'll do that when I get a bonus at work, or I'll do that one day, and then it gets so big that it becomes terrifying and you just don't think about it. You will remain in blissful and wilful ignorance of the monies owed, and then the penalties and interest that blow out that original loan. Keep it at the forefront of their minds.  

There are all sorts of arguments that have been put up by student loan thieves over the years. We're the best and the brightest. If you come after us, we won't come home. We'll keep our enormous intellects overseas. Well, you can't be that bloody bright if you don't understand what a loan is, can you? It's not a gift. It was a loan. You have to pay it back.

Another argument is, “it's all right for you, your generation got free university education we had to pay for it”. Well, it was really the generation before that received free education. But back then, they really did only take the best and the brightest, numpties need not apply. Total enrolments at all universities in New Zealand was 16,524 in 1960. Today there are 177,000 university students in New Zealand. I'm quite happy to have a discussion about making unit centres of academic excellence and restricting access once again to only the very best and the brightest and pay for that education, absolutely. If we reduce it down from 177,000 to 16,000, we can afford that. Happy to have a chat about means testing but not until you do what most of us manage to do, even the most lowly qualified of us ... pay your bills and pay what you owe.  

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