Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am looking forward to the debate on the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill commencement clause and on when the bill should come into effect. I will raise three main points in favour of deferring the date upon which this bill comes into effect the first of which is about the fiscal risk posed to the Government by this bill. This bill does not just have an impact on students. The impact it will have on students will flow on to tertiary institutions and flow on to the Government. I will explain that impact. It is one of the reasons why I think this bill needs to be delayed. Dealing with the flow-on impact of the decisions that will be made as a result of this bill will take longer than the 9 to 10 months in which this bill effectively allows for decisions to be made. 
If students associations become completely voluntary and their ability to raise a compulsory levy—a universal levy—from students is removed then universities polytechnics and other tertiary institutions will want to continue to provide many of the services that they currently provide. They will have to pay for those somehow and they will have to pay for them either by increasing student fees or by finding the money from somewhere else. Should they choose the option of increasing student fees or levies the flow-on impact will be more student loan borrowing. It will have a flow-on impact on student loan borrowing which will flow into greater fiscal risk for the Crown which will ultimately increase the cost of the student loan scheme. 
I believe that this bill will increase the cost of the student loan scheme by more than the amount currently paid in the existing students association levies because—as I intend to argue later on in the debate—I do not believe that tertiary institutions can provide for the same cost the services that students associations currently provide. It will cost the institutions more. That is the first argument. The first argument for deferring the commencement date is that even if we go ahead and make students associations voluntary we need to make sure that all of the fiscal risks are adequately dealt with in implementing this law and that it has been sufficiently worked through. 
The second issue and I think it is quite a complex issue relates to the assets that are currently held by students associations. In some cases students associations actually hold a significant number of assets—many millions of dollars’ worth in the case of one or two associations. If we pass this bill which makes students association membership entirely voluntary then the question of who is accountable for those assets of who has the responsibility for and the ownership of those assets becomes a very vexed issue. For example the incumbent executives of an association may ultimately have total control of those assets without accountability back to the universal wider membership base that they had. 
I am talking about millions of dollars’ worth of assets. These issues will take some time to work through. I think we need to take some steps to protect those assets so that a small group of students do not end up capturing those shortly-to-become-voluntary membership organisations and basically asset-stripping them which is a very real possibility. We could see a small number of people stripping assets out of students associations and I think we need to avoid that. Once again I say I am opposed to the bill but if the bill is to be passed then we should take all the steps we need to to ensure that it is passed responsibly. I do not think we can do that in the period of time that this commencement clause will allow. 
The third point that I will raise concerns the matter of whether this bill is widely supported and the question of whether the commencement date allows time for democracy to take its course. There is a general election on 26 November. The overwhelming majority of submitters to this bill I am told by my colleagues on the Education and Science Committee were opposed to it. Those people may choose to exercise their rights at the general election and vote against this current National-ACT Government. They may choose to elect a new Government and that new Government should have the time should it wish to preserve the universal nature of students association membership. This bill as it is at the moment would require a new Government that wished to do that to push an amendment bill through all stages under urgency. That is not something that the National Government is unfamiliar with but it is something that an incoming Labour Government would be less likely to wish to do. We actually believe in the democratic process of Parliament and in doing things properly. 
Jo Goodhew 
: Oh so Labour has never operated under urgency? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: We do not intend to rush a bill like this through after the next election when we return to Government. The New Zealand public are getting fed up with this Government already. 
Those are the three main arguments that I have for deferring the commencement date of this legislation: we need to deal with the fiscal risks to the Government; we need to protect the many millions of dollars’ worth of assets that students associations currently hold; and we need to make sure that all New Zealanders are given the opportunity to have their voices heard.