Rich Katherine: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13215] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I will follow on from some of the comments made by my colleague Bill English. Here we are some 8 years after Labour campaigned on the issue of tertiary education reform. All through 1998 and 1999 Labour talked about tertiary education reforms and what they would do for universities polytechnics and the wider tertiary education sector. Now 8 years down the track this is the bill that will fix everything. This is the bill that somehow will make a miraculous difference out there in tertiary land and ensure that the investment we make as a country will go to the right places and meet the needs of students. Well for all those students out there listening to the debate and thinking about this bill we can say one thing and that is that this bill will not deliver utopia out in the tertiary education sector. This bill is so full of jargon bumph and statements that nobody can understand that it will not have any chance of engaging students or the wider public. 
The phrase of the moment is “stakeholder engagement”. It is a very interesting phrase. It gets used around Wellington a lot but when we ask anybody what exactly it means in terms of the day-to-day workings of an organisation we find that it can mean everything and nothing depending on who uses it. We asked the Tertiary Education Commission what these stakeholder engagement managers will actually do. We were told that they will go up and down the country meet with community members and seek out the needs of local communities. We kept saying: “Yes but how will that be done?” and they said: “Well they are going to have cups of tea with local people and they’re going to hold meetings and hui and talk about tertiary education.” I go back to the 19-year-old students Bill English mentioned. Will they turn up and want to take part in these meetings? Will they want to get publicly involved? 
Moana Mackey 
: Some will. 
KATHERINE RICH 
: Get real! They are more interested in other aspects. They will not be involved in this kind of consultation process. 
What will the investment managers do? Some little upstart who might have a tertiary qualification and be quite bright is currently travelling up and down the country at huge expense ringing up vice-chancellors and saying to them things like: “I’m going to visit you every Tuesday to talk about what’s going on in the university.” and of course vice-chancellors are saying: “What? I’m busy running a university. Why do I want to talk to some little upstart about what’s going on every single week?”. It is just added bureaucracy. It is bureaucracy that is symbolised by this bill. 
It has taken $420 million to get to this point. The sum of $420 million has been spent on an organisation that went from a handful of staff to well over 300 and now it has an extended network of offices up and down the country. We had one in Dunedin. It opened its doors and got involved in engagement worked with universities and polytechs to develop charters and plans at huge expense to the community only for the Tertiary Education Commission to turn round and tell communities and the Education and Science Committee that what it had set up was not quite “fit for purpose”. So they shut it all down shut down the leases—and who knows what that cost?—and did an about-face. I feel sorry for the tertiary education sector. It has got involved in this process in good faith. It got involved in writing all its charters and plans and it spent huge amounts of money to get this far only for the Government to change its strategy and say: “No guys and girls this is not what we’re going to do. We are going to go in a totally different direction.” 
The upshot here though is that a bill that says it will reduce bureaucracy and make it easier for tertiary providers now introduces more planning than we have seen in the tertiary education sector before. Tertiary education providers will have to do more planning—medium-term plans short-term plans and long-term plans—and if they want to keep their charters they can do that as well. This bill does not deliver something that will be less bureaucratic or have less red tape. It will mean more and more planning and it will mean that the focus is taken off the teaching and education of our students and put more on the management and planning. 
This bill would be better off being referred to as the “Let’s Put as Much Jargon into One Bill as We Possibly Can Bill”. It could be the “Let’s Spend a Lot of Money and Get Nowhere Bill”. I think those members over there should be ashamed that after $420 million worth of thinking and 8 years into this Government this is as far as this Government has got. It has taken 8 years to get this far and at huge expense. There are glossy documents but nothing else.