Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20922. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). It is an omnibus bill and being the deputy chair of the Education and Science Committee which heard the deliberations I am pleased to say that Labour supports it. The bill’s primary amendment is to provide greater transparency and accountability in the setting of student levies. Student levies increased hugely in 2010—just last year. We saw an average—yes an average—increase of 102 percent in student levies right across the country. Of course we know that when we talk about averages it hides the variances. What we do know is that at its extreme 600 percent was the rate of increase in the student levy at Canterbury University last year.  
Although this bill is an admirable attempt to do something about that problem and to do it in a transparent way that gives students a voice and a role in seeing how their compulsory levies are being spent it does not address the root causes. So I urge the Government to understand that this bill although useful does not fix the problem. The problem that was clearly identified by the submitters when they came to see us was the funding squeeze for tertiary institutions with Government funding not covering the cost of providing education to tertiary students in New Zealand. Of course they are not the only part of the education sector that is feeling this squeeze but with regard to this bill it is incredibly important that the Government understands the funding squeeze for tertiary institutions. That is why they sought to find other funding sources and actually ended up with what looks like a user-pays model. Their natural inclination when they were not getting the Government support they needed to provide the services they want to provide was to look to the students themselves. That is why we saw increases in the order of 600 percent at Canterbury University and increases across the board of 102 percent on average in our tertiary institutions.  
This is a very timely bill. It also establishes a new Crown agency in charge of export education as well as providing stricter requirements around the registration of private training establishments and we welcome that also. The registration of private training establishments is designed to stamp out growing qualification fraud in the sector and we certainly hope that it does meet that goal which is set out in the bill.  
However I will come back to an issue that was debated earlier today with regard to this bill because it is an important one for the Government to understand. Not only does the Government need to understand what caused the significant increase in student levies last year right around the country—and it was not just at one or two institutions but pretty much right across the board—it also needs to understand the implications of other legislation that the Government wants to push through before the election. I am referring to the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill. That bill in tandem with the Education Amendment Bill (No 4) will let student services fall through the gaps. The effect of the voluntary student membership bill is to gut students associations—those students associations that provide the very services such as the advocacy services and the hardship grants that keep students afloat in very difficult times. Students associations also help students to get through their studies.  
If the Government is successful in pushing through that bill—or more accurately I should say that if the ACT Party is successful in garnering the support of the National Government—then that will lead to a reduction in student services; we know it will. Why do we know this? We know this because this is exactly what has happened overseas where exactly the same measure has been brought to bear. If ACT gets its way with the Government and that happens then student services will suffer. Institutions will want to pick up those student services because they will not want to see students going without. They will want to make sure that students are well supported throughout the course of their education. They will then find that they are restricted by this very bill we are debating here today. That is tragic because by itself this bill is actually a very good bill. It is a very good bill because it aims to contain spiralling costs for students. That is a good thing particularly when the cost of living is out of control in New Zealand as it is. Students are facing increases to their transport costs because of the rising cost of petrol. They have faced increases to the cost of everything they buy because the Government increased GST. They also face increased childcare costs. I know of a number of students who have had to pull out of their studies because they can no longer afford to have their children in early childhood education while they are studying and that is because of that Government’s cuts to that sector.  
These are the sorts of cost of living increases that students face anyway. The last thing they needed last year was for their levies to go up by an average of 102 percent. So I commend the Government for even in some small way understanding that cost of living increases are out of control and for moving with this bill in order to contain a particular part of the problem. But unless the Government also moves to address the underlying concerns and the underlying funding pressures within the tertiary institutions and unless the Government also wakes up and stops the bill that will gut students associations so that they cannot provide those services then I am afraid they will be doing students a disservice. I do however want to lend Labour’s support to this bill because this is the good twin. I urge the Government to vote down the evil twin.