Rotornut took the words out of my mouth. There are 747 captains that came through the student loan scheme. It's not a new scheme, and it's not a bad scheme. I agree that it has been abused by some, and relied upon by others, but it's not fair to say it has wrecked the industry.
What's more, you simply can't retire the loan scheme until demand increases otherwise the day will come when you've got a helicopter on the pad with no pilot to fly it. And to say that you wouldn't consider a loan funded pilot, well that's your choice, but it's pretty ignorant to assume that a loan funded pilot is of lower caliber than a privately funded pilot.
As for the statement that there are no jobs in NZ, then once again I agree with rotornut. Of course there are jobs. Maybe they are a little tricky to find at times, but they always have been. You can't compare a regional cross section of vacancies with a Nation-wide of the same. It's not just Italian pilots that don't look further than their back-yard for jobs.