Robertson Grant: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Robertson Grant: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20315] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Clause 9 is a curious clause. It is a clause that I did not think the ACT Party would ever promote because this clause could be called the “Two Classes of Citizenship (Two Classes of Membership)” clause. This clause will mean that on 1 January 2012—if the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill passes before 1 January 2012—there will be two types of students. One type of student will be those who are about to enrol for the first time at an institution. Those students will effectively come under the voluntary membership regime. Other students—for instance those students enrolled in a summer school who perhaps began their study before 1 January 2012—will continue to be members of a students association. That is what this clause does. It actually creates the confusion of two types of students being at an institution at the same time on 1 January 2012. 
Clause 9 seems to be a curious clause but then again it fits with the overall issue we have with this bill—that the bill seems to be not so much about creating the illusion of choice that members opposite would have us believe it creates but about making sure that students associations are weakened and then eventually destroyed. The effect of this bill will be that when students come to enrol after 1 January 2012 as is noted in the first part of clause 9 they will not be enrolled in their students association. So those students who show up and who are having to pay thousands of dollars in fees trying to get together the money for their bond for their accommodation trying to pay for their textbooks and trying to pay for all the other things associated with their course costs will now be told if somebody is there promoting what it means to be a member of the students association—although under an earlier clause passed tonight who knows whether even saying “Would you like to join the students association?” is undue influence now—that all of those costs will fall on students who arrive on 1 January 2012. 
Members on the other side of the Chamber tell us that people will just pay the money for the students association fee. That is the problem. Because there is no informed choice and students are not being given information about what it means to be in the students association—what services they get by being in the students association and what benefits there are for them from being part of that organisation—we know that membership will decline quickly. The evidence from Australia tells us this. Then we will get into the self-fulfilling prophecy that students associations are not able to offer the services to attract members and the associations will begin to wither away and die. That is the effect for those members of bringing in this measure on 1 January 2012. 
For those people who have already been enrolled in summer school and therefore their membership under clause 9 continues goodness only knows what kinds of services they are going to get. If the students association does not get the new income from the students who would have been coming in on 1 January 2012 goodness knows what kinds of services will be available. That is the problem with this bill. Although the rhetoric from members opposite is about choice the result will be the destruction of students associations and the services they provide. 
We have not heard a lot from Mr Peachey who was the chair of the Education and Science Committee. He spoke at the very beginning of this debate and I would like to hear from him again. I would like to hear him give us an honest assessment of what he heard as the chair of the select committee about the value of students associations. 
I sat through a number of the submissions as he did and we heard about the value of students associations. We heard about the students who were enabled to continue to study because of the advocacy and input of students associations. We had a fantastic videoconference from Waikato University where about the most apolitical student one could ever find—not in the category that Mr Henare likes to tell us about of activists in Young Labour and Young Greens; this was a completely apolitical student—came along off his own bat to say that if it had not been for the Waikato Student Union he would not have been able to carry on studying because of an incident involving an insurance company and a fire in a flat. The students’ union had acted as the advocate for that student. 
I would love to hear Allan Peachey get up because I know he is actually a—