last week revealed it would be scrapped in the Budget this month<\/a>.<\/p>\nChristopher Luxon on Monday told Morning Report economic growth was key to making sure young people were successful in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
He said the harsh reality was the scheme had been “quite a failure” and it was better to stop it and redirect some of that funding to trades training.<\/p>\n
The government needed to make sure it was actually growing the economy.<\/p>\n
“The fees programme is not working… it would be absolute insanity to support something that isn’t meeting its objectives,” he said.<\/p>\n
Luxon said he wanted to put more support behind trades in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Several things were being done to make sure young people were work ready, Luxon said, and there were some programmes which were getting good outcomes.<\/p>\n
“But again. what we have to do is get this economy growing.”<\/p>\n
According to Stats NZ, the NEET (not in employment, education or training) rate for young people was 14.4 percent in the March 2026 quarter.<\/p>\n
Luxon would not say things were tough for young people in New Zealand specifically, but did say it was “tough for New Zealand”.<\/p>\n
“What I say to those young people is we’re building and rebuilding a country… you should have a great education for your kids and great healthcare for your parents and that’s the proposition that we are rebuilding in our government.”<\/p>\n
The President of the Victoria University Students Association Aidan Donaghue, told Morning Report, scrapping the fee-free scheme was “disheartening” for all students.<\/p>\n
“It’s disheartening to see… as usual students are the first on the chopping block if changes are made to the Budget. For us it’s just really, really gutting.”<\/p>\n
In his own experience, Donaghue said the scheme had helped him make the decision to go to university.<\/p>\n
He began studying in 2022, with his first year free and said he was the first in his family to go to university.<\/p>\n
“Yeah it was a factor. I had to make the big move from Kirikiriroa (Hamilton) to P\u014dneke, so it’s helped, yeah.”<\/p>\n
He said it was also hard for students or those who had just graduated to find jobs, resulting in many choosing to o to Australia.<\/p>\n
“I love this country, been brought up here my whole life, I want to give back, but if I don’t have the opportunity to it’s only rational for me to go overseas and I doubt you’ll get many students back.”<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Nicola Willis last week confirmed Peters’ comments.<\/p>\n
“Ongoing coalition negotiations have led to good Budget policy decisions that further the immediate and long-term interests of New Zealanders,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We will have more to say about this in due course”.<\/p>\n
Willis also confirmed that students completing their tertiary studies this year remained eligible for fees-free.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. (File photo) Photo: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone The fees-free university scheme did not achieve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-421418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4JPTP14_Image_28_jfif.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n