Rich Katherine: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 It is an honour to speak to Part 1 of the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill. 
First of all I think it is worthwhile asking the Minister in the chair Maryan Street why after 8 years and over half a billion dollars of expenditure we are looking at tertiary reform only now. If one looks at Labour’s history back in the 1998-99 campaign one sees that it said it was going to make changes to the tertiary sector. Up until this point there has just been talk expenditure and change and many people do not agree that this measure is going to make a skerrick of difference to students up and down the country. 
My colleague Paul Hutchison and I went to a presentation put on by the Tertiary Education Commission. We said that our Education and Science Committee was looking at the tertiary reforms and we asked for a blow-by-blow account of exactly what this piece of law would do in terms of its impact on universities. We heard the presentation which tended to go along the lines of blah-blah stakeholder engagement blah-blah charters and profiles blah-blah investment reducing duplication. We have all heard the discussions that occur when we talk about tertiary reform. But in the end we said: “Well if you can give us an example what exactly will be the difference for Auckland University?”. There was a long pause before someone said: “Oh actually there’ll be very little change as a result of this reform. It’ll be business as usual.” So we thought that it was probably not a bad thing for universities because nobody has had much of an issue with them. 
But when we started to look at the nuts and bolts of this bill and the proposed changes we started to have deep concerns about some of the changes. The Minister for Tertiary Education at the time said that this bill was designed to reduce bureaucracy increase transparency and look at better investment in tertiary funding. A lot of the universities and a lot of other tertiary providers said it was good to reduce red tape reduce the amount of reporting and reduce the thousands of dollars they spend on useless red tape and bureaucracy. When we looked at this bill we found that the bill gets rid of charters and profiles but then it suddenly brings in a whole new layer of accountability and a whole new section on planning. The tertiary provider not only has to put in place planning in the short term which of course we all expect but also is asked to do a medium plan and perhaps a long-term plan as well. So rather than just preparing a charter and profile—which cost some universities hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce and will now be parked—the tertiary providers are going to have to start again and put out a long-term plan for up to 10 years. Well I challenge the Government—any Government—to have a plan for 10 years because things change so dramatically. We cannot expect our tertiary providers to have a crystal ball so that they can plan exactly what they will do vis-à-vis courses etc. in 10 years’ time. So the National Party has some concerns that this bill seeks to take away some bureaucracy only to bring back a whole new set of changes that will be equally burdensome if not more so. 
The other issue that I think is addressed in relation to Part 1 is academic freedom. Most of us were shocked at the second reading the other night to hear a member from Labour say that when universities receive 60 percent of their funding from the State it is a bit rich to expect full academic freedom. Well I think that will be a huge shock to many in academia and I think the Minister should explain some of the changes that have been made in relation to that. I would also like to hear how the changes make it easier for universities. How do they make universities and other tertiary providers’ jobs easier or are they just introducing another layer of bureaucracy which will be equally costly? 
I think there is a lot of discussion about plans. In fact “plan” is the most overused word in this bill. In an attempt to reduce the amount of resources attached to planning and strategising it actually introduces far more planning and strategising than anybody ever envisaged when the tertiary reforms began.