Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Well that was not really commenting on the bill at all. It was just a vague homily about how wonderful foreign students are for the country. It would be good to actually have a debate on the legislation because this is tremendously important—right? I am going to talk about some of the technical reasonable things that we agree with but let us be clear: this is a major change to tertiary education funding and investment in New Zealand. This is a major ideological push by the National members who clearly see the clock ticking on their Government and they have got to quickly ram through as much pro-market pro-private pro - for-profit provider support legislation. So yes the National members can just give these vague homilies but let us talk about the real issues eh guys?Look I rise to oppose this bill. There is some pretty reasonable stuff in here that we can agree with—for example giving wānanga the chance to use the term university" allowing the Tertiary Education Commission the ability to charge tertiary education institutes (TEIs) for investigations transparency over how student levies are funded and providing an opportunity for TEIs to censure students for off-campus behaviour.I actually quite agree with the point made by the member Chris Hipkins with regard to the other change that allows private tertiary establishments (PTEs) to be now called independent tertiary establishments. It makes quite a juxtaposition that on one hand you have got the State-run institutes not "independent" because what we have at the moment are private tertiary establishments. The Government wants to change it because it is scared that everyone is going to view them as for-profit which we know the vast majority are—so it is changing them into independent tertiary establishments which has the problem that it implies that the current universities and polytechs are not independent which we know is absolutely not true when you look at the university Acts and you look at the roles of the university councils. So that is an interesting point that Chris Hipkins has raised which will be interesting to follow up in the select committee.What I want to focus on and why the Green Party is stridently opposed—we would like to make sure that this is repealed when we are in Government—is the private for-profit funding changes. You see I am opposed not just because of the negative technical changes—and there are some—but because of the significant changes these milestones which would see a fundamental change in our tertiary education sector. What we are seeing by the inclusion of the words "consistent funding" for private for-profit providers is that it absolutely changes the historical playing field in New Zealand. In fact this is explicit in the legislation that this is the point—to change the playing field.Essentially what we are going to see is private providers receiving as much as State-run universities and polytechs. Basically this is public money for private profit. It is going to have a huge impact on the tertiary education sector because what we know and what we have seen in level 1 and 2 courses is that they compete by lowering wages and they compete by lowering working conditions. What we have seen is the ability to cherry-pick specific courses. We are going to see the large offshore PTEs get a foothold in New Zealand and what this is going to mean is that funding is going to be much more precarious for tertiary institutions. But what it means on the ground for Southland which we heard the member Todd Barclay talk about just then is that we have already seen a massive decline in our polytech provision in regional New Zealand and this is going to eat into it further.So what is the agenda behind it? The Government throws out all of these slogans—"consistent funding" "funding flexibility" "level playing fields". These are just slogans based on ideology. I believe there is a difference and Governments for decades and decades in New Zealand have believed there is a difference when the State provides high-quality public tertiary education. Those members cry on about the need for flexibility but present no evidence on where the system is failing. We have seen considerable flexibility in the sector to change with new technology and new pedagogies—and you see that in fact in the Productivity Commission report.We look forward to engaging with this in select committee but we are stridently opposed to this massive change to tertiary education. We are going to fight it all the way. Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker."