* Jeremy Wapp, a 22-year-old car parts salesman from Manurewa, is a first time voter. Undecided and fairly apolitical, he is the face of the voting public our politicians need to woo. This week he is annoyed with Labour's policy to abolish interest on student loans.
"I tend to agree
with [National's] Bill English and what Westpac came out with, in that it's not going to help stop anyone incur more debt. If you take off the interest, some students may be tempted to borrow even more. It's like shops offering interest-free repayments, you'd just be tempted to buy more.
"Would you get a house loan if there were no interest? I feel like it'd be nice if I had a student loan. Maybe I'll go out and get one.
"If you've got a loan, that's great. But if you don't, you get nothing, and I'm sure the majority don't have a student loan. Even for me to save $5 a week off my taxes would be nicer than my taxes paying someone else's student loan interest.
"My sister completely disagrees with me because she has one.
"But I don't think it's going to encourage anyone to get through university quicker. They'll just think, 'oh, there's no interest, so it doesn't matter how much I borrow'. It's not going to accumulate, so to speak. The living allowance is what buffs up the actual loan. If you've done a BA and taken five years to do it, $150 a week adds up pretty quickly.
"What about some of the past people who've had student loans with interest, and they'd paid it off, they'd be a bit annoyed, wouldn't they?
"If the Government had the spare money, why didn't they do it a couple of years ago? That $6.7 billion surplus in the bank, some small part of that is mine. The Government must be gaining a fair little whack of interest on that and I don't see any interest from that.
"It makes me wonder. Someone was saying if you divvied up the surplus, it only works out to be about $10 a week, but at least, that's $10 in my pocket. And it does add up over the year.
"I'm not unreasonable. Something would be nice. Even if it's $5 a week, that's something.
