Why has it taken us so long to get serious about forcing people to pay back their student loans?

Last month, IRD had someone arrested at the border. They have now paid back their loan.

Isn't that amazing?

They had been chased and chased and chased and chased - and you know that they had, because the IRD only arrest you at the border as an absolute last resort, but suddenly they were arrested at the border and despite presumably years of not paying back their loan - they pay it back.

Isn't it incredible what a little bit of pressure can do?

We've got more on this, by the way. The IRD has got in contact with more than 12,000 people who are living overseas who owe money on their student loans.

960 of them have paid back everything that was overdue, 1300 of them have started repayment plans, and 89 people have been warned they will also be arrested at the border if they don't start paying up.

11 of them, as a result of that warning, have started dealing with their debt - either by paying it back or by applying for hardship provisions.

Now, why I'm telling you this is because it's nearly a year since the Government threw extra money at the IRD to chase down these bludgers.

And the IRD has put out a press release with the latest figures to show that actually, yeah, putting that extra money in for the enforcement is bearing fruit.

The only question we now have is - why didn't we do this earlier?

I mean, it is not like this is a new problem, is it? We have complained about this for years, about these people freeloading on the ever-generous New Zealand taxpayer and then getting a free education over here, going off overseas to live their best lives, paying taxes somewhere else, helping out some other country, and then leaving us holding the baby in their debt.

Now, I suspect our lack of action in the past - but I probably can't answer the question on this - comes down to a general attitude towards taxpayers, which is a lack of respect for our money.

It's been treated like it's never-ending for too long. We've simply handed out to all without actually really requiring them to pay it back.

We say you've got to pay it back, but we don't actually mean it.

And this is not a historic problem - it's a current problem. A recent case in point is the small business COVID loans that were handed out by Grant Robertson in 2020. Unsecured, right?

They are now due to be repaid. At least $800 million is outstanding and a lot of that will never be repaid. We have to get used to that idea. We handed it out and we're not gonna get it back.

It is probably too much to wish for - but wouldn't it be great if we could carry on getting money back like the IRD are with student loans at the moment?

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