Wong Pansy: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14762] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 When the original Education (Export Education Levy) Bill was introduced to the House members were told very positively by the Minister of Education that this was the bill that would fix everything in export education. He assured the public that the Labour Government cared for export education and that this export education levy would do the job. But hardly a year has gone by and we are here to fix up this— 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I did not want to interrupt my colleague but I intervene here only because I thought the comments made by the Minister were ones that the Parliament ought to take seriously. He said not quite in this order but certainly with the clear implication that a member of this Parliament was sabotaging that member’s country. I think he put it around the other way—“think of your country and stop sabotaging it” or something like that. Of course that is quite unparliamentary. There are not many worse or more offensive statements that can be made about a member of this Parliament. I ask that the Minister withdraw and apologise. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Yes I heard that. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I am happy to withdraw. 
PANSY WONG 
: When debating this bill one started to get used to taking personal insults from the Minister of Education which I always thought was using a very bullying tactic— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That matter has been dealt with. 
PANSY WONG 
: As I say it is less than 1 year since we had the original version of the Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill and we have just heard various debates on it. 
I think the title of the bill should be “Education (Export Education) to Fix the Failure Bill” because this bill intends to fix three types of failure. First of all it is meant to punish the private educational institutions that perform well for the failure of their competitors even though those successful institutions have no control over which providers can join the export education sector. That control is in the hand of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. The second type of failure was by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the related part of the Ministry of Education. The authority is the gatekeeper—the only one that can accredit an institution—and it is supposed to monitor and audit the behaviour of those institutions. In a previous debate I outlined two cases where problems were identified a year before the collapse of those high-profile institutions. Those collapses led in effect to New Zealand’s export education sector’s reputation suffering. The third failure we were told about was the one that goes to the heart of this version of the bill—the inability of the Government to get the first version right. We are now told that the first Education (Export Education Levy) Regulations were not quite in order so therefore part of the time spent on this bill has to be devoted to fixing the original regulations. 
The National Party’s Hon Bill English and Dr Wayne Mapp have today pointed out some serious problems but we still do not have the Minister reassuring us during the passage of this bill. We will not support it but unfortunately the very unprincipled Green Party will support the Labour Government in punishing the private sector. So we are still not reassured by the Minister through his officials as to whether this bill really will fix all those previous drafting errors.