Robertson Grant: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Robertson Grant: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Labour opposes the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill on the grounds that it will destroy students associations. It will destroy the representation advocacy and services that tertiary students have received from students associations for many years and as a result it will undermine the educational success and campus experience of many students. It is interesting to me that in her opening remarks Heather Roy decided to congratulate and thank various members of ACT on Campus and the Young Nats. That really indicates where ACT is coming from on this bill. It is ideological. It is a straight-out ideological decision that they are making. It is actually a tribute to the success of students associations over the years on issues like fees loans and allowances that those on the far right of the political spectrum are so threatened that they will come back to this Parliament time and again to try to ruin those students associations. 
But it is to the National members of this House that I will address my remarks now. Although perhaps many of the National members of this House share some of those ideological views many of them do not and I know that many of the National members who sat through the submissions were looking at this bill from a practical point of view. They were looking at this bill for what it will actually mean for the experience of students on campus. Anyone who sat through the submission process cannot have failed to realise the impact that this bill will have on the practical experience of students. We can take it from the individual case of the student from Hamilton who lived in a flat that burnt down. His insurance company was going to do nothing to help him when the insurance company of the person who owned the flat was taking him to the cleaners. It was the intervention of the Waikato Student Union that enabled that student and his flatmate to continue being students at university. The student who showed up and spoke to us via video conference at the select committee made it clear that he was not a particularly ideological person. He was just a normal student—I think he was a science student actually—and he said that most of his friends had very little idea about the value of the student union until that day. But after that day they knew the value of the student union because the student union at Waikato University made sure they could carry on studying. That is the kind of advocacy and representation that this bill will kill off. 
But we can take that advice from a much higher level. Of the tertiary institutions that came to the select committee all bar one I think said “Please do not pass this bill.” Those were the vice-chancellors and chief executives of the polytechnics and wananga and they said they valued what students associations did on their campuses. They valued the services the representative function and the advocacy that students associations provided. If Parliament passes this bill those tertiary institutions told us it would fundamentally undermine the campus experience and the students associations’ role on campus. Those representatives of tertiary institutions were not great ideological radicals. They were people who were thinking about what worked practically on their campus. 
If we must talk about dollars and cents to convince National we heard about that too. The tertiary institutions know there is no way they can provide the services representation or advocacy as cost-effectively as students associations do. An excellent submission from the New Zealand University Students Association drawing from work by PricewaterhouseCoopers was able to show the dollar value of free student labour via students associations and the cost-effectiveness of students association work and what that meant. The tertiary institutions under a funding squeeze from this Government are looking at this legislation and saying that they will not be able to provide those services. Those tertiary institutions that know the value of students associations are saying to National “Do not pass this bill.” 
But those practical implications seem to sail right over the heads of National members—except that they have not. National members know that people came to the select committee with ideas to improve the current law. Let us remember that we are not standing here tonight to debate a bill that will amend a Labour law. We are debating a bill that will amend a National law. The existing law is one that National passed and it put in place a very good accountability mechanism which stated that if students wanted to they could have a referendum if they could get 10 percent of students to agree about whether an association would be compulsory or voluntary. That choice for students is already in the law that National passed yet tonight we have come here and National is supporting taking away that choice overriding its own law because of the ACT Party’s ideological commitments not because of the practicalities of what is good for students or because of what tertiary institutions are saying to this Parliament that they want but because National will support the ideological views of the ACT Party. 
Students associations have been part of some of the main innovations on campuses in recent years and going back 20 30 and 40 years through innovations such as Student Job Search and the New Zealand Uni Games. When we watch the Commonwealth Games we see people cycling around the tracks who owe the fact that they have got there to their involvement in university sport supported by students associations. Student newspapers student radio and student health and counselling services are on campuses only because students associations have been there. Hardship funds subsidised bus transport and bookshops—you name it students associations have been at the core of creating those services on campus and tertiary institutions know they cannot do it. 
At universities it may well be that students associations will survive and obviously we have seen at Auckland University that they can survive but what form do they survive in? They survive in the form that the tertiary institution is prepared to put up with. They do not survive in the form where students control student affairs. That is what happens now but soon it will be up to the tertiary institutions. I remind Heather Roy that in 1994 I think Michael Laws brought a bill to this Parliament to make student association voluntary. [ 
Interruption 
] Earlier on Ms Roy said that it was the year 2000 when she first noticed that legislation. One of the reasons Michael Laws’ bill did not pass was a strong campaign that said things such as “Do you want the vice-chancellor to choose the music for orientation?” That is the choice. It is about whether students want to hand over all of the student services to those tertiary institutions—and that is at the universities where they might survive. It is at the polytechnics that do not have the infrastructure and do not have the funding at an institutional level to keep those services going that students will suffer. Those polytechnic students associations will not be able to keep themselves going. 
It is a bizarre belief that with the passing of this bill suddenly students associations will simply be able to carry on as they were recruiting members and everything will be fine. Students will be facing high fees at the start of a year—and under this bill we do not even know whether they will be able to use the student loan scheme to pay for their student association fees—and those students will be put off from enrolling and once they are put off in that first year it will be very hard to get them in the future. When we look across the Tasman 72 percent of students associations had near-total or total cuts to services once the equivalent of this bill went through. We know what will happen to students associations if this bill passes. 
What really disturbs me is that there was an opportunity in this process for change to be made. There were good submissions that suggested for instance tidying up the questions surrounding conscientious objection and looking at a better accountability mechanism. They are the issues that Heather Roy raised in her speech. Why did National members not pick up those ideas? They were on the table. We heard at the select committee some excellent submissions from people who said they wanted students associations to survive not for an ideological reason but for the practical benefits that they provide but National members decided not to pick those up. That is a great shame because it means National has simply bought into the ideologies of the ACT Party. 
Labour has already stated in the minority report that if we are returned to Government we will repeal this legislation. We still have a chance in the remaining debates to stop this bill and even to stop the worst effects of the bill. We have a Committee of the whole House stage when there will be amendments. The National members who sat through the select committee process and who heard about the value of students associations to individual students and to tertiary institutions have the opportunity in the Committee of the whole House process to adopt some of those changes so that students associations can continue to provide the support the advocacy the representation and the services that have made a fundamental difference to the lives of students for well over 100 years in many cases. This is not just about universities. It is about polytechnics and people who come into tertiary education without the awareness of everything that will happen to them. Those people become part of a community and it is that community that students associations hold together.