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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Tell me what you think of this. There seems to

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Speaker 2: be a bit of an effort underway at the moment

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Speaker 2: to portray ID as bad guys because they're chasing Kiwi's

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Speaker 2: oversees who owe money on their student loans. Now, tell

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Speaker 2: me if you think that we should let either of

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Speaker 2: these two off the hook on the money that they owe.

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Speaker 2: The first is a pilot who moved to Australia ten

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Speaker 2: years ago. He now owes ID one hundred and seventy

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars. That is his original loan, plus basically mostly interest.

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Speaker 2: He says he moved there for a pilot job in

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Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. Then he lost the pilot, did it for

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Speaker 2: six years, lost it during COVID, had to take a

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Speaker 2: low paying job in a storage warehouse. He's a pilot

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Speaker 2: pilot again, but this loan is so big he doesn't

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Speaker 2: know if he's ever going to be able to pay

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Speaker 2: it back. Should we let him off his debt or

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Speaker 2: do you like me? Look at what a regional commercial

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Speaker 2: pilot in Australia can earn, which is over one hundred

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars and possibly even closer to two hundred thousand.

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Speaker 2: Australian dollars and think he can probably afford to start

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Speaker 2: paying back that debt. This second is a woman who

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Speaker 2: has a debt of seventy thousand dollars now. She moved

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Speaker 2: to the United States twenty years ago. She wants to

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Speaker 2: come back now to see her sick mum, but she

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Speaker 2: can't because she's worried that she's going to be arrested

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Speaker 2: at the border. Should we wipe her debt so she

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Speaker 2: can come home and see her sick mum, or do you,

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Speaker 2: like me think that's entirely her decision. She can come

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Speaker 2: back and see her sick mum. Ain't nobody stopping her

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Speaker 2: doing that, And maybe when she gets here we'll have

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Speaker 2: a little chat about how she can start to make

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Speaker 2: some repayments on that debt, or she can carry on

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Speaker 2: like she is, which is clearly valuing her money over

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Speaker 2: her mum not coming back. And by the way, arrests

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Speaker 2: over the border only happen to the worst defenders, who've

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Speaker 2: ignored all attempts by IID to sort out the debt. Now,

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Speaker 2: don't think me callous, right, I do feel sorry for

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Speaker 2: both of these people and everybody else like them, because

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Speaker 2: I imagine it's a horrible situation to be in to

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Speaker 2: allow your debt to get that out of hand, but

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Speaker 2: that is not an excuse not to pay it back.

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Speaker 2: ID is, from what I can tell, pretty reasonable here,

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Speaker 2: so much so that that woman's seventy thousand debt has

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Speaker 2: now been reduced to only fifteen thousand dollars, so it

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Speaker 2: just covers the original debt and the interest. The penalties

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Speaker 2: have been white. This is then coming to the party

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Speaker 2: to try to help. Sorry, the free riders over the

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Speaker 2: repayments need to start. New Zealand has broke. We actually

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Speaker 2: need this money back. I applaud IID for going hard

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Speaker 2: on this, and so far I'm completely unmoved by any

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Speaker 2: attempts to paint them as bad guys. I am yet

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Speaker 2: to come across a single case where I think that

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Speaker 2: IID is being unfair asking for the student loan to

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Speaker 2: be repaid.

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Speaker 1: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen live to

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