Cameron Bagrie’s call for the government to bring back interest on student loans and cancel the fees free scheme is simply attempt to boost the already obscene profits of his former buddies in the banking industry, says Social Credit leader Chris Leitch.

Instead of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and taking money away from university students to use for children, Mr Bagrie should be targeting the six billion dollars each year that government pays to financial institutions on its borrowing.

A big chunk of that six billion dollars is a direct transfer out of the pockets of kiwi taxpayers and into the coffers of banks like his former employer ANZ, and then into the pockets of rich overseas shareholders.

I challenge Mr Bagrie to confirm whether he agrees with the Bank of England and the New Zealand Reserve Bank that money lent by banks to the public and the government is conjured up out of thin air by those commercial banks and is not saver’s funds.

If he does agree that banks create money out of thin air when they make loans then he should be targeting that six billion dollars of government expenditure and advocating a chunk of that be poured into the education of younger children.

There's more than enough in that six billion dollars to invest in both better education for younger children and in university students and still have several billion left over to put into hospitals and build houses for the homeless.

Mr Bagrie should stop protecting his former bank employers and be pressuring the government to borrow from its own to Central Bank, the Reserve Bank, which it owns, and which it could access funds from without the need to pay any interest at all.

The six billion dollars saved could provide the funding for the transformational choice he thinks should be made.

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