David Farrar: National does carrot and stick with student loans

Nicola Willis has announced some changes to the student loans scheme to reward those who stay in NZ and repay the loans, and targets those who go overseas and don’t. The changes are:

• The repayment rate for NZ borrowers drops from 12% to 10%, boosting take home pay by $58 a fortnight for someone on $100k a year

• Increasing the interest rate on borrowers who move overseas from 5.6% to 6.6%

• Restricting KiwiSaver withdrawals for overseas borrowers so they can’t access it until they have paid back their student loans

A good mixture of carrot and stick.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders