I didn’t do any study after I left school —no university, no polytech— so I’ve never had a student loan. I know about debt though, thanks to the mortgage.

And I reckon it would be very easy for me, as someone who has never had to pay off a student loan but who knows what it’s like to have the responsibilities of a mortgage, to dismiss what a former IRD prosecutor is saying today.

A former IRD prosecutor who says we need to go a bit easy on New Zealanders living overseas who are way behind in their student loan payments and are too scared to set foot here because they think they’ll be arrested at the border.

Dave Ananth is a tax barrister who has done work for IRD in the past. He says it’s crazy that, at a time when we want and need skilled people working here, we are so hardcore with these people that they’re just not coming back.

Because they’re too scared to come back.

And I agree with him. Which kind of surprises me because I’m normally big on people not shying away from responsibilities and all that.

But when you consider some real-life examples, I reckon it’s very easy to appreciate the argument for change.

Dave Ananth is saying it’s all very well going overseas, but that doesn’t mean people walk into well-paying jobs. The grass doesn’t always turn out to be greener.

So what he’s calling for IRD to be lenient enough so that these Kiwis aren’t scared of coming back. He says a bit of leeway would go a long way.

One approach he thinks could work is IRD talking to these people and seeing if they could apply for some grace on the basis of hardship. Or agree to letting them come back, pay a few hundred dollars for a start and see how it goes.

And I don’t see anything wrong with that. Because what would you rather have? These people stuck overseas owing all this money? Or would you rather they were here making a genuine contribution to the country?

It’s a no-brainer. As this tax lawyer says, if nothing changes, it probably means some of these people never setting foot in New Zealand because they could potentially be arrested.

Kiwis who have expertise in the likes of engineering and technology. There are medical people he says would be here if they didn’t have the threat of arrest hanging over them.

And he’s giving some real-life examples to back up his argument. Such as a New Zealander living in Australia whose loan has blown-out to $170,000, mostly because of interest.

Back in 2014, this guy completed his pilot training but couldn’t find any flying work here, so he went over to Australia and worked as a commercial pilot for six years.

Things got tricky for him when Covid hit, there was no more flying for him, and he had to take a low-paying job in a storage warehouse. Which meant he got way behind in his loan payments.

Then there’s the case of a woman living in the United States. Her debt has blown-out to $70,000 —$55,000 of that from interest— and she isn’t coming home to see her sick mother because she’s terrified she’s going to be arrested at the border.

As she says: "I've been petrified something's going to happen to my mum and she's going to pass away and I'm not even going to be able to go there."

I was talking to someone this morning who said they went overseas for just a year, and it cost them $1,000.

So there is no shortage of stories that show how this system just isn’t doing anyone any favours. It’s not doing the people with the student loans living overseas any favours and it’s not doing the rest of us any favours.

Because these people have the skills and expertise we are crying out for.

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Today on Politics Friday, John MacDonald was joined by National’s Vanessa Weenink and Labour’s Reuben Davidson to break down the biggest issues of the week.

They discussed student loan repayments – is there something that can be done to bring overseas loan holders back to New Zealand?

Global companies like Uber are paying minimal tax over here – are we being ripped off?

And ACC is planning to be more scrupulous when paying claims due to pressure from the Government to run a tighter ship. How will this play out?

LISTEN ABOVE

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When there’s an election campaign happening, how much do you care about the cost of the policies the political parties are pushing?

Or, more to the point, how willing are you to trust the politicians when they say they've done the numbers, and they all stack up?

My willingness to trust them is very low. Which is why I think we will be all the poorer for ACT and NZ First voting down the plan for a publicly-funded outfit that would have done the numbers and worked out the actual cost of election policies.

Because until now, all we’ve been able to do is take the politicians on their word. And it’s going to stay that way.

Not that the concept of a separate costing agency is an overnight thing or a new thing. The idea has been around since 2016, when Green MP Metiria Turei first raised it.

In fact, what she wanted —and what the Labour Party wanted too— was broader than what Finance Minister Nicola Willis eventually proposed to Cabinet. But which is now history thanks to the two minor coalition parties.

Nicola Willis’ version would have made the government of the day’s financial information available to political parties when they were putting their policies together.

But even that watered-down version was too much for ACT and NZ First, with David Seymour saying that it isn’t warranted, because he doesn't think it would stop messy election-year debates about how party policies might be paid for.

But it raises the question about election promises and whether us voters are still sucked in by the political promises on their own, or whether we are more discerning and whether we think it would be good to have more transparency. More scrutiny.

I want more scrutiny. Because without it, all we have to go on is gut instinct. Or the believability of politicians. All politicians of all stripes and colours I’m talking about here – all we can do is take them on their word.

Before I hold up National’s tax cuts as an example of why we need a publicly-funded agency to go through political policies with a fine-tooth comb, let me remind of you of that daft idea Labour had before the last election of taking GST off fruit and vegetables.

At first blush, it might have sounded like a good idea. But I wasn’t sold. I don’t think many of us were, because we had no idea how effective it would be.

Not just from the perspective of whether it would actually make fruit and veggies more affordable, but also what it could mean for government coffers. Grant Robertson always poo-pooed the idea but then, somehow magically, came around to the idea just before the election.

And there he was, telling us that he’d done the numbers and he’d realised that, actually, it would have all stacked up financially and we’d all have kiwifruit and broccoli coming out of our ears.

But without the proof, it was all hot air.

Same thing with National’s tax cuts. We were told it was going to mean more money in our pockets, but not a lot was said about how out-of-pocket the Government might be because of it, and what that would mean down the track.

And what happened? The tax cuts went ahead, and government revenue dropped.

That foreign buyers tax was another one. The only expert analysis we had to rely on was what all the so-called “independent experts” roped-in by all the parties had to say about the policies they were roped-in to comment on.

And all that did was create all the usual noise and confusion and we were back to voting on gut instinct because who knew what the hell to make of what was being said left, right and centre?

How different things would be if all of these brilliant vote-catching ideas were put through the wringer by an independent, publicly-funded agency.

How better informed we would all be. And how careful the politicians would be about selling us snakeoil policies that we only end up regretting falling for.

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