King Colin: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
King Colin: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:13049] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I think it would be fair to say that of the things that the Labour Government has failed in and failed to deliver the tertiary education sector would be one. It has made an absolute shambles of it. In fact using a word that is associated with “shambles” the Labour Government has totally butchered the sector. Effectively since 2000 we have had a process of restructuring which has worn out and fatigued the whole industry somewhat. Maharey was the Minister at that time and he was introducing things that were more to do with trying to connect with Labour’s policy intentions and its prospectus inside its stated policies of growing those numbers involved in tertiary education. So effectively over time from about the year 2000 we have seen a massive growth inside the tertiary education sector. 
I am talking about this because it is what concerns me about the bill we have in front of us tonight. We have seen the Tertiary Education Commission grow to having some 400 employees. That on the other side means that every institution that has done business with the commission has had to grow likewise. So we have seen a tremendous growth in the bureaucracy. In my own situation when we were delivering shearer training we actually had to employ twice as many people to deliver the same amount of training. We did not get another trainee out of it at the other end but we had to employ people to tick boxes to interface with this massive bureaucracy and try to interpret what was coming at us. 
The intention I am led to believe is that the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill is meant to unravel all of that. I do not think so. On that basis that is one of the reasons National will not be supporting this bill. We had in 2004 the charters and profiles. The interesting thing about the charters and profiles is that if they are not sorted out before this bill becomes law we can actually carry on with our charters and profiles and treat them as if they were plans. When I heard that it conjured up in my mind the image that the charters and profiles are just a plan combined. 
The message I am hearing from a number of institutions is that they are just trying to get a steer on what managers are looking for and that they are weaving those two things together. It is in that context and after the last 8 years that we have some strong reservations about the ability of the Labour Government to come anywhere near meeting the expectations of the taxpayer around tertiary education. 
When we consider that all this restructuring and reviewing has cost some $400 million we find it hugely concerning because that is massive wastage. When we consider those other courses that were being funded by the Labour Government wasting another $500 million - odd we find that $1 billion has gone up in smoke. However this is only one particular area—tertiary education. The Labour Government has also done it in health and in law and order. The public of New Zealand generally expect a Government to be able to deliver in a meaningful fashion. 
One thing I would really like to talk about as basically a good policy butchered by Labour is the Modern Apprenticeship scheme. It was something I was involved in. I was a Modern Apprenticeship coordinator. When we looked at it we saw that there was $2000 up for grabs. The Tertiary Education Commission was prepared to give that to the coordinators so we just took it and carried on training. Unfortunately after poor management and 7 years we found some shocking results of wastage. For instance we have the situation where Masterlink Ltd has had one Modern Apprentice complete training and it has been paid $165000. That is $165000 for one Modern Apprentice completion. 
Now that is only half the equation because there is the student standard training measurement funding that also goes on top of that which is some $3200 a year. We are talking about one completion and it has cost the taxpayer over $200000. That is a good policy butchered by Labour. Labour picked up on the Modern Apprenticeship scheme in 1998 off the British. A scheme was started in Britain and Labour picked up on it and ran with it. It has not been anywhere near as effective in New Zealand as it was in the UK. We are particularly suspicious of any of the rhetoric around Labour getting the tertiary education sector up and being productive. 
On that basis it really worries us. We look at the way the private training establishments have been treated under Labour—they have been really booted around. Then we look at the institutes of technology which have had money poured into them to keep them afloat and we see that excellence in education has been punished. We have seen cases like the Southern Institute of Technology—a high-performing polytech—losing $8 million of equivalent full-time students funding because it is actually too competitive against the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. Now you cannot tell me that in that particular environment some legislation—be it the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill—will change all that. 
Let us have a look at the bill. In the commentary there is the subheading “Minor amendments”. It was good to see the chairman of the committee Brian Donnelly allude to the fact that there were actually some major amendments. There was a lot of work. We had to draw heavily on the submissions. The submitters made some very very fine points. On that basis when it states in the commentary to the bill that the majority of us recommended a number of minor amendments to clarify the intent of the bill I think that is a total understatement. 
At the end of it all it was up to National to put in a minority report. The reason we did so was that we were not comfortable with the purpose set out in clause 3 which states that the purpose is to “simplify and streamline the processes supporting the operation of the tertiary education system in New Zealand” because we do not believe that this bill achieves that. In actual fact we believe that the bill creates a further complexity. So it was very important that we pointed that out. I am quite sure this bill will come in front of this House again for further tweaking and modification. 
The bill in itself gives the Minister enormous power and that is what pre-empted this concern by the universities and the polytechnics that there had to be a restatement without affecting the academic freedom and autonomy of institutions. That was necessary because inside the body of this bill an enormous amount of power and authority is given to the Minister. Dianne Yates mentioned what the bill meant to academic freedom as defined in section 161 of the Education Act. We know that it is about the freedom for people to express themselves inside an institution and inside their qualifications. 
However when we look at the bill from the point of view of new section 159AC entitled “Revocation and replacement or amendment of tertiary education strategy” we see that it says that the Minister needs to consult only with whomever he or she “considers” is appropriate or “ought to be consulted”. That scares the horses somewhat in the sense that we give the Minister that sort of authority. It challenges the ability for that Minister to be able to rewrite the tertiary education strategy. 
When we look at the bill in balance we see that it is not hard for National to vote against it. We find that the complexities costs and the increases in bureaucracy are over the top. It is a huge threat to academic freedom and we know that academic freedom is something valuable. As stated by the vice-chancellors it is over the top in the sense that no other Western democracy has this level of control. 
 Commercial sensitivities are something that have not really been dealt with by other speakers. My colleague Paul Hutchison touched on it. He is very interested in science and aware that there is a lot of risk around anything to do with breach of confidentiality. Yet inside this bill that spectre is raised. From the perspective of somebody looking in that person could be completely turned off by the fact that the bill mentions that he or she has to declare this information. That is another reason. Something else that is not in this bill—and that is the reason it really does concern me; it is all rhetoric—is that it does not deal with such things as the overlapping provision it does not talk about repatriation of equivalent full-time students and it does not guarantee quality of education. Section 195 of the Education Act points out that we must work hard at delivering quality if we want to improve our productivity. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.