Moroney Sue: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:659;Page:8541] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a little difficult to debate the title and commencement clauses of this bill given that we still have had very little information from the Minister in the chair Anne Tolley about the reasons why we are even debating this bill to start with. Certainly the short contribution she made—which was I presume in place of the second reading speech which she arrived in the House too late to deliver at the time—did not give us any clues and neither does the title. The title as my colleague Grant Robertson has said is the Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill. New Zealanders might see that title and think the bill was going to do something to improve skills development in our country. They might think it will do something for our young people who are in large numbers under this Government going on to the unemployment benefit. They might think it is something positive. Little would that title give away that the thing this bill does do is dumb down the voice of communities in the running of their polytechnics. It also dumbs down the voice of the people in local industries. 
If there is one criticism we sometimes hear in New Zealand about tertiary institutions and their responsiveness to communities it is that sometimes they are not close enough to what is going on in industry. It is said sometimes that they take more of an academic view than actually listening to what is happening in industry. Yet here we are debating a bill that takes away the industry voice around the polytechnic councils—the very voice that was able to directly say what the needs of the local community were and what the local labour market needs were and make sure that the training was absolutely responsive and relevant to young people and sometimes mature students in those communities of interest. Here we are with a title that gives us no clues about what is about to be carried out under this bill. 
It is Draconian legislation. It reminds me of what a National Government did back in the 1990s to the health system. Do members remember? National took away elected community representatives from our district boards and then called them Crown health enterprises. It took away elected community representatives and replaced them all with ministerial appointees. All of them were replaced with ministerial appointees and guess what? We saw user-pays come into the health system as quick as one could blink quite frankly. The community lost its ability to influence any decision-making about what was happening in our public hospitals or our broader public health system. I see exactly the same mistake being repeated here again by a National Government. We have a bill that sounds like it might be quite positive—the Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill—but it is in fact repeating the mistakes of the past. 
We have heard that the bill gives the Minister the ability to appoint the entire polytechnic council and we could end up—as we did in the 1990s in the health system—with the entire polytechnic council meeting behind closed doors not reporting to any community representatives and not having any accountability. They may not even live in the area because there is no requirement under this bill for that to happen. 
The date on which this legislation commences and that is another part of this debate is 1 March 2010. That is a very important date for the polytechnic councils to take note of as it is the date on which they really have to start making some firm decisions unless they want complete ministerial control of their council come 1 May. It is on 1 March that councils first get the window of opportunity to say that yes they do require a student representative on their council going forward that they will require a staff representative on their councils going forward and that they do think it is important that Maori are required to be around the council decision-making table. 
If the current councils do not start carefully considering those provisions on 1 March then they will lose that window of opportunity. If they have not constituted by 1 May four of the positions that they are allowed to constitute for the new council going forward then they will face the prospect of having their entire council appointed by the Minister. That is something we should be very concerned about. I do not know that the polytechnic councils understand how important that window of opportunity is. From 1 March the councils must make their statements because otherwise the Minister will do it for them.