Donnelly Brian: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Donnelly Brian: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4157] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 I would like to open by commending the Government on the injection of funding it has put into the universities with a particular focus on increasing the salaries of university staff by an additional 3 percent over and above what it was able to do with the inflation-adjusted operational funding the universities were receiving. Certainly that injection was long overdue. For too long we have failed to recognise particularly for university staff how they are really part of an international labour market. We had very clearly started to fall behind the eight ball in terms of international competitiveness in the rates we were offering to our academics in particular so I have to give the Government a plus for providing that funding. 
However what it actually does—and this was demonstrated in a question I asked Dr Cullen in the House a couple of weeks ago—is to raise the question of why people who teach degree courses at Auckland University of Technology should be given additional funding for a 3 percent increase in their salaries when people who teach the same degree courses at Unitec for example will not receive it. What is the justification for that split between two institutions that are very close on the Performance-based Research Fund scale and also on things like the proportion of sub-degree programmes? 
That exposes a flaw in the structure of our tertiary institutions. We have a number of good-quality universities—up amongst the top 200 in the world or so and some up in the top 50—and we have another range of universities that are not quite so good as those in the research field some of which are somewhat smaller than the top universities. Then we have those two institutions which are very very similar in profile that happen to be in the middle and finally we have urban polytechs and provincial polytechs. So we can think of it as a spectrum of provision. We have made a division right down through the middle between two institutions that are in fact almost identical in profile. The Minister of Education Steve Maharey really needs to answer the question of why certain provisions that are being made for one of those institutions are not being made for the other. That is the first comment that New Zealand First would like to make with regard to the Budget. We think the increased funding for the universities was a fine gesture but the Government has to do some thinking-through on that matter. 
The select committees this year were invited to comment on the quality of intended expenditure. That was a particularly difficult task but one area that New Zealand First would like to comment on in terms of what we consider to be not very good expenditure is the issue of interest-free student loans. We think they are a give-away to students because there is no doubt that what is paid back will be less than what was given by the Government in the first place. We cannot see the justification for supporting students through that means. We see justification for supporting students but we think it should be premised on a universal student living allowance because that actually has some philosophical foundation in terms of the premises upon which we run our nation. But interest-free loans certainly do not have that foundation and we believe that they are an example of poor expenditure coming out of this Budget. 
We applaud the development of curriculum materials in the three Pasifika languages. The media release that came out with the Budget actually suggested that those three languages would be the languages of the nations that New Zealand is in free association with—in other words the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau—and therefore one could say it sounded like a pretty good idea that we have some responsibility for the maintenance of those languages. However from the select committee hearings it seems that in fact those are not the languages that are being supported and that there are a couple of languages other than the three that I mentioned. So time and time again I asked at the select committee level what the principles are upon which we decide which languages we support and which languages we do not. In fact the chief executive officer of the Ministry of Education said that there are no principles—that the ministry does not have any. I urge the Government to start to think through that issue because 167 languages are spoken in this country. Are we going to provide emergent education with materials and trained teachers for each one of those 167 languages? If for example some Latvian parents say they deserve the right to have their children taught in Latvian upon what basis would we make that decision? At this particular point we have no principles. I suggest that the nations that are in free association with New Zealand and whose peoples are New Zealand citizens should have their languages protected.