Hughes Gareth: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1429. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call to oppose this bill the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). The Green Party is opposed to this incredibly flawed piece of legislation because we stand for students. We want to see their voices along with staff reflected around those university councils. Catherine Delahunty talked about all the reforms crammed into the bill which deals with the likes of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ). She spoke very well there. In my contribution I want to focus on the need for student and staff voices on our councils.The honourable member David Cunliffe is incredibly right. We have seen a host of incredibly negative changes gutting the student experience—from the voluntary student membership legislation through to this legislation. The sector should not be surprised by this. What we have seen over the last 6 years is a raft of negative changes that have affected students and that have made tertiary education less affordable less accessible and in some cases downright impossible as they have locked the doors with capped enrolments to students who want to get ahead who want to benefit the country and who want to do what is right. Yet National has shut the door to them and made it all the more hard or all the more expensive. And what we see with this enormous bill which is also enormously unpopular is another negative change to go on the list with reducing student loan access to people over 55 who want to retrain and get another course or the postgraduate students who want to get an allowance to get ahead in our modern economy which in many cases demands a postgraduate qualification through to the host of other negative changes.I just wish the Government would actually listen to the people the experts and the submitters but it is clear it did not. Because what we saw when it came to the EDUCANZ part of the bill was that there were 1032 submissions and only five supported it. When you look at the submissions when it comes to the university councils only 1 percent supported the Government’s proposed changes. If the Government will not listen to the submitters maybe at this last late point it will listen to the officials. On the first page of the regulatory impact assessment the officials advise: “This regulatory impact statement identifies significant risks with proceeding with the recommended changes.” Even the officials were criticising the bill and warning against it.Why is the Green Party opposed to reducing the size of university councils and giving the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment more powers? Firstly we do not want to see more meddling by Minister Joyce when it comes to our tertiary education sector. This bill further expands his influence and powers. We are seeing the removal of representation of the most significant stakeholders at the councils who are the staff and students. I do not believe that tertiary education is a corporation that should be run only for a cost but let us just say the National Party does. If that was the case any smart business would listen to its customers. It wants to hear from them and get feedback so it can provide a top-notch product or service. In this case we are eliminating that student and staff voice from the all-important council. What we are going to see is more confusion in management and governance. I acknowledge it may be best practice when you look at some of the business case studies to have small efficient groups for management. But what the Government is confusing is the difference between management and governance. In fact when you look at governance and you look around the world at top-notch institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology it does not have eight people on its board as the Minister is implying with a smaller group; it has got 70. How many does Oxford University have—again a world-class institution? It has got 30.In fact we have never heard anyone from the Government explain what the need is that this bill addresses. Where is the mischief in that term? When you look across the Ditch at Australia—and New Zealand—with the corporate boards in fact larger boards have been associated with better financial performance. So we have got fears that the Government is confusing management and governance. We have got fears it is just a further example of a weakening of the students’ voice. We have got fears it is further invasive meddling by Minister Steven Joyce. We have got fears the ministerial appointments on these boards will look exactly like Minister Joyce. In his previous appointments five out of 30—five out of 30—have been women. One out of 30 has been Māori. Zero out of 30 has been Pasifika. Twenty percent have been lawyers. We have seen chief executive officers company directors and accountants. What we are not going to see are students and staff.The Green Party believes in an affordable and accessible world-class education yet what we have seen under this Government is fees going up and up—in fact triple the CPI. We have seen the average student loan up to $24000 under National and just lastly what we have seen is Government direct funding decline by 4 percent. It is time for affordable accessible world-class tertiary education under the Greens.