Ogilvy Bernie: Budget Debate 
Ogilvy Bernie: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5868] 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 The Government has included some useful educational initiatives in the 2003 Budget. United Future recognises them and wishes to uphold them today but we are also aware that some budgeted moves could well be counter-productive and even harmful to New Zealand as they take their course. 
On the one hand there has been some real help for students and learners to achieve at the very early levels of education particularly among Maori and poorer households. For example one-third of the Maori students who left school last year had no qualifications. There is certainly a need for extra help in that realm and I believe this Budget is a good step forward. So is training for young people and the industry training investment programmes that the Government has announced. Yet on the other hand at the finishing level of education for many students—that is the tertiary sector—there lurks a recipe for trouble that I want to look at a little tonight. In particular I am referring to what may be called a “time bomb”: the triennial fee maxima of $3900 each year for arts students and above that for other students. Both the concept and the amount could shoot the Government in the foot. 
The fee maxima idea is hailed as the best deal to give certainty to students and their families to the taxpayer and to the institutions providing the tertiary learning. United Future asks whether it is. To me it looks like a bit of a return to the sad old days of Muldoonism when all prices were fixed. It is United Future’s belief that what is good for the gander is not necessarily good for the goose in that arena. The students—that is the learners—the taxpayer and certainly the providers of all tertiary learning are I believe on a collision course. Conflicting interests abound. I will show members what I mean by that. 
Fact No. 1 is that New Zealand University Students Association representatives desire a long-term goal they state of a well-funded tertiary sector with no fees and no debt. I along with thousands of other New Zealanders am flabbergasted at that type of economic logic having been taught by the higher institutions in New Zealand. I am not convinced that young students who have had most things free in life to date would deny that they have been supported at great cost by their parents—or even by themselves. The State students must remember is not Mum or Dad or the family. To condone such practices is to not prepare our youth to enter the real world where nothing is free. Everything costs someone something. 
Fact No. 2 is that last year New Zealand taxpayers paid around $10500 for every tertiary student who was being educated. It cost them a fortune in my terms. That was only 70 percent of the direct cost of educating those students who number over 500000. Do the ever-shrinking numbers of taxpayers want to pay more this year and as we can see every year hereafter? Of course every family would be excited if its son or daughter did not have to pay fees but that very same family would have to pay for that lack of fees through higher taxes. It is nothing other than a “smoke and mirrors” job; the taxpayer always picks up the tab. Will taxpayers want their already closed chequebook to be prised open for yet more taxation? 
What will the Government do when the heat becomes white hot this year? The first shots have already been fired by the student unions and the universities since the Budget was announced last Thursday afternoon. Will the Minister and the Tertiary Education Commission seriously consider some long-term implications of the fee maxima policy on students and their families on the cash-strapped providers and certainly on the overcharged taxpayer?