Hughes Darren: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:16883] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I ask whether you could please give us the  
Reader’s Digest 
 version of the clause 4A debate. I think there is a bit of confusion. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: No there is none at all. It is just a matter of form. Normally when the question comes up the Chairperson says: “The question is” and then we go on to debate it. There is no problem. We are debating clause 4A. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 I was hoping that the member in charge of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill the Hon Heather Roy might have taken a call on this particular question first of all to explain its meaning to the Committee of the whole House. It is not enormously clear why the Education and Science Committee has recommended that this clause be inserted. The commentary on the bill makes a reference to the need for new clause 4A to be inserted which would make a consequential amendment to the principal Act. But there is no rationale for why the Education and Science Committee chose to make the change at this time. It would be useful if the member in charge of the bill could let us know the rationale for that change. 
To put an uncharitable view on what that change might mean it is a continuation of what Labour considers to be the chilling effect on student government across our tertiary institutions in New Zealand which is being made to pursue an agenda that the political parties concerned have not been able to achieve in any other way. New clause 4A takes away the rights of student governments to use their own process to put in place their representatives on the councils of universities polytechnics or other tertiary institutes. Those are the institutions the bodies or the vehicles that govern how an institution will run. Critically from the point of view of most students they are the body that will determine the fees that are paid by students. Therefore it is very important that students are represented and well represented on those councils. But in this bill we have seen a change to the way those individual autonomous institutions are able to select their council representatives. That is how it looks. 
I ask the member in charge of the bill to speak to this issue and let us know what she intends by that change and just as critically why it is necessary. You see all these independent autonomous institutions already have their own processes in place for how they ensure students are represented at council level. Mostly it is through a very well-established relationship with the student government which this bill represents a direct attack on. 
National is now supporting this bill having promised at the previous general election that it would not support it. Here we are tonight debating clause 4A which National members are right behind in lock step with the ACT Party—both wings of the ACT Party. There is a unity in that sense on this issue. We need to know why they are trying to change the way autonomous institutions are able to make up their councils. Left unexplained it seems to be just another attempt to reinforce this Government’s opposition to student government. 
Students have the choice to shape student government now. Students can at any stage using the provisions of their constitutions make a decision to call a meeting to alter their election provisions for selecting their representatives. They can call a meeting to change the philosophy of their own student government and to change how they want it to run. They are also of course as other members have said in a position to change that arrangement if 10 percent of students sign a petition saying they want to have a referendum on the way their student government is made up. If that happened they would already in existing law be able to change the way their representation is selected. But here we see in addition to a bill that throws the baby out with the bathwater the Government introducing this clause in the select committee in order to determine how the councils are made up. 
This could easily be part of a wider agenda. The architect of the existing compromise Tau Henare has walked in to watch his finest work being destroyed by his own colleagues. Politics is a strange old thing. We need to know exactly why Government members have gone down this path. They say that the current arrangements of student government are anti-democratic because there is an element of compulsion to those arrangements yet they are not prepared to participate in the debate to discuss it. They want to ram the legislation through. They have had all of their hard workers moving closure motions because they are not interested in debating this issue. By their own actions in the Committee tonight they have shown exactly what their agenda is in pursuing this legislation. I am concerned that the councils which control huge amounts of taxpayer money are having their make-up changed by the member’s insertion of clause 4A and I think the Committee needs a thorough explanation from the Hon Heather Roy about why she has decided to do that.