Heather du Plessis-Allan: National has found their excuse to ditch fees-free uni

If National is looking for an excuse to get out of paying for Labour’s dumb free year of university, they may have just got it.

The Tertiary Education Commission has admitted that the first year free of tertiary study has led to no discernible evidence that it increased the number of students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Which basically means it hasn’t worked, because that was the point of doing it.

Clive Bibby: Back to work for some - surfboards for those we pay for.

Yesterday, l made one of my increasingly irregular trips to the big smoke.

Gisborne is 45 minutes away from our humble dwelling which is slowly emerging from the devastation left in the wake of Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle.

Our house is on a hill overlooking the moonscape of silt and debris that has, until recently, been a common sight on adjacent properties here in this river valley. However the signs of recovery evident from the front veranda gives one reason for hope that we are gradually returning to normal - whatever that might look like.

Roger Partridge: Where to wield the knife for spending cuts

Retirement spending and the size of the public service as two obvious areas for expenditure cuts. Significant savings are available from the reform of retirement income policy.

Reforms should include: (a) Abolishing subsidies to KiwiSaver; (b) Amending indexation of NZ Superannuation and raising the age of eligibility by two years, linking further changes to health-adjusted life expectancy; (c) Suspending NZ Super Fund contributions (and ideally winding up the fund and using the proceeds to repay government debt).

Heather du Plessis-Allan: National announces about-face on tertiary fees scheme

See what National’s doing with the fees-free policy?

This is exactly what I was warning you about a couple of days ago. National chickened out and it has now decided it’s going to keep Labour’s expensive policy of paying for university for students who were probably going to go anyway. 

This is a massive about-face from National, because they’ve spent six years bashing it and promising to cut it.

Michael Johnston: Tertiary education who should pay?

Our young adults are having a rough time of it at the moment.

They have, perhaps more than any other age demographic, been impacted by COVID lockdowns. Instead of establishing their independence, travelling the world and meeting people, they’ve been grounded.

Ministry of Health data show a sharp uptick in depression for 15–24-year-olds in 2020 and 2021, greater than for any other age group. It’s not only COVID though – the trend has been upward for a decade.

Young people are doing it tough financially too. A decade of monetary and fiscal policy has fuelled asset inflation, making millionaires of homeowners. Meanwhile, young people have largely been locked out.