Minister Robertson, however, is not alone in once arguing that the Government was forcing and keeping students in poverty. In mid-2001, then Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association president Chris Hipkins sent out a press release titled "Student Debt Sets to Cripple New Zealand". Figures had been released under the Official Information Act showing Government estimates for student loans had nearly doubled from a 1999 projection of hitting $11.6 billion in 2020 to $19.4 billion. In fact, in 2020, student debt landed between those projections, at $16.1 billion. That student advocate would go on to become our Minister of Education. But, at the time, he lamented—and I quote—"The current generation of politicians are mortgaging the future of our country. The burden of this will not only be felt by students who graduate with large debts, but also by the future taxpayers of New Zealand who will be left to clean up the mess … If we are to get this debt under control fees must come down and access to living allowances will have to increase". Yet in the final Budget of his first ministerial term, Labour would break their election promise of reinstating post-graduate student allowance and extending fees-free, citing the need to tighten the fiscal belt; the Government, at the same time, signing off an historic Budget, nearly 10 times larger and tens of billions of dollars more than they had anticipated pre - COVID-19.