Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:21082] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 What a load of puffery and nonsense from Heather Roy who has demonstrated once again that she has absolutely no idea about what students associations actually do and how they actually operate. In fact a lot of the assertions she made in her speech are just blatantly untrue. The University of Auckland students voted for voluntary membership and the seven other universities when given the choice to vote on whether it should be voluntary or compulsory membership voted for compulsory membership. Overwhelmingly at the polytechs and institutes of technology when students were given the choice about whether they wanted a students association that everyone was a member of or a voluntary membership regime they voted for it to be universal—for every student to be a member. They did not vote just in small numbers. More than half the students at Victoria University voted the last time they were given a referendum and something like 80 percent of them voted in favour of a universal system of compulsory membership for their students association. So what Heather Roy has just claimed is absolutely untrue. 
If the ACT members did believe in democratic process then they would not be afraid of campaigning for voluntary membership but they are afraid to campaign for voluntary membership. They are afraid to give students that choice because they know that they would lose. They know that if the students were given a choice ACT would lose because that is what has happened in the past. In fact in Waikato—where the ACT Party got organised; it campaigned and it won a referendum to make membership of the association voluntary—it was a disaster. The students voted to put it back the other way because it simply did not work. The ACT Party knows that if democracy were allowed to serve as it should then ACT would lose. What does it do if it loses democratically? It wants to just legislate over the top of it which is what it is doing. 
I come back to the point I made about Heather Roy having no idea about how students associations operate and I will talk about that in the light of one of the amendments put forward by Grant Robertson which would require institutions to provide the associations with names addresses and contact information of students enrolled at the institutions. In the instance where an association moves from a universal system of membership in which all students are members—as will happen with all of them if this bill is passed—to one that is voluntary the association may wish to communicate with those students who have previously been members and invite them to join. I am sure Government members would be in favour of that. They claim that the association should be allowed to sell itself to its current members but they will deny its getting the contact details for its current membership because the institutions hold that information. 
I used to be the president of a university students association. If we wanted to communicate with our members we would get the contact information for them from the institutions. We did not hold a separate database of that information. There was no need to; they were our members. Actually the most up-to-date and accurate information about our members was held by the university because its staff dealt with the enrolment. They collected the membership fee and they passed it on to us. If we wanted to communicate with our members we would go to the institutions and get that contact information. 
If the National-ACT Government votes against this amendment put forward by Grant Robertson students associations will be prohibited from communicating with their existing members and from trying to recruit and retain them as members. It is loading the dice against the students associations even keeping their existing membership and against them going to their existing members and giving them the opportunity to stay members. It is a relatively simple amendment that would require the institutions to provide students associations with contact information for their current members who are the students who study at the institution. The ACT Party through Heather Roy is saying that it will not do that. That is absolutely ridiculous. 
If Heather Roy actually believed in all of the rhetoric that she has been espousing about choice she would not be afraid to give associations the membership contact details that they should currently be able to get because then they could communicate and they could give students that choice. Heather Roy does not want to do that. She wants to load the dice in favour of students not being members. 
Of course that comes back to the wider agenda. National and ACT know that the students associations have campaigned against some of the policies that they are promoting and will promote and they want to silence them. Those members want to take as much influence away from the students associations as possible. Those members know that after the next election they will break all of the promises that they previously made on things like interest-free student loans capping student tuition fees and so on. They will break all of those promises. They want to get rid of those pesky students associations before they do that so that the major voice that would be arguing against them is taken away.