Ogilvy Bernie: Urgent Debates — Te Wananga o Aotearoa—Dissolution of Council 
Ogilvy Bernie: Urgent Debates — Te Wananga o Aotearoa—Dissolution of Council 
[Volume:625;Page:20382] 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 Yesterday the Minister of Education the Hon Trevor Mallard gave us a message that I do not think any of us are pleased about and that is why we are here today debating this wananga. This particular institution is on the brink of insolvency. There is no great joy in talking about this. Some of us in talking about it today have indicated some of the concerns that exist. Those concerns are not being swept undercover as they have been over the last couple of years. 
I want to talk about just two or three things that have struck me. I was on a visit to the institution in Te Awamutu with the Education and Science Committee some months ago and what impressed me—and had already impressed me over the years that I have understood this institution in its short existence—was that it has played a huge and significant role in encouraging Maori in particular and those who are at the wrong end of the socio-economic club as it were to get back into education and to learn to read and write. That is so fundamental to all of us sitting in this institution called Parliament that we take it for granted but as has been pointed out those people need a second chance because the education system as it was in their time failed to deliver educational outcomes for them. This institution—this wananga—has proved beyond peer and beyond doubt in my mind and in the mind of United Future that it has done amazing things. We will not forget that. 
However the cost of quality assurance and accountability procedures is the nub of the matter. As a policy United Future has no problem whatsoever with funding being focused on students but it does have an issue about funding being for a particular provider. That of course has allowed a variety of options to exist. That is why this wananga has existed and has done such a wonderful job in terms of providing education and in making available what we call second-chance education for those who missed out through failure or from not being interested in the mechanisms of education when they were going through either primary or secondary schooling many years ago. 
Yesterday the Minister announced that he will dissolve the council and appoint a commissioner. That is a very unusual step and as a result I think that this debate has great significance. 
I want to touch on something that others have alluded to but did not emphasise—that is the spectacular growth in any organisation requires scrutiny and other things to be put into place no matter what the institution. I think that that is why we are in this predicament today. Quality assurance and accountability over a wide range of issues has not been managed correctly. We have been very much alerted to the fact that financial management problems exist. Originally there were governance problems as was previously discussed by the select committee. Low-quality courses have been produced and the quality of education has not been assessed correctly. All those things add up to there having been a lack of scrutiny while the organisation grew out of all proportion to anything else with so many tens of thousands of students coming on board for the first time to learn and to contribute to our society. And they are contributing—they can now read write and do the things they want to do. They are studying as well as being in the workplace and I think that they are part of the success story of this country. I would like that never to be forgotten. 
But I want to address the associated issue of who is really to blame for all this. Is it the institution which we have heard one or two people berate? It is partly the institution. Is it the Minister and those around him? Or is it the system that has been inherited as others have indicated? Those issues are all part of the problem and I would like to focus on one or two of them. 
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority and certainly the Tertiary Education Commission have really failed. In the last few weeks in this House there has been no end of concern about the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. It has failed to come up to scratch in respect of the exam system that replaced School Certificate university entrance and scholarship exams. We have heard time after time that the National Certificate of Educational Achievement has not come up to scratch. Who is to blame? It is the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. The Tertiary Education Commission was put in place by an Act of Parliament in my time. It was set aside purely and simply to monitor and bring quality assurance to all tertiary education institutions in New Zealand including this sort of organisation and it has not done so. 
I put on record today that we in United Future and many of us sitting in Parliament have concluded that the real blame goes beyond the noise of what has been printed in the media. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Tertiary Education Commission have not performed correctly. They should have brought their signals to the Minister. Some people have said that the Minister was informed but that he did not take on the advice. I am not sure about that; I do not have that evidence. But I do know that as an auditing body the Tertiary Education Commission has been ineffective. That charge is writ large all over this case. 
The commission and the authority failed to identify problems that emerged with some private training establishments—I note that those problems came as a result of very very quick expansion. A lot of private training establishments have gone under because of the same issues. All we have here is a State sector mirror image of the whole thing. United Future is not happy that we have to debate this in the House when the lesson should have been learnt by the Tertiary Education Commission and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority when they dealt with the private training establishments and the growth they underwent in this country. 
It is a shame that this is before us but at the same time if we as a Parliament and as a country learn from this we will be ever so much stronger and more able to go forward to help the education of all students—young and old—in this nation.