Williamson Maurice: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:16207] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 The first thing I would like to say about this bill is that I am very saddened that all the west Auckland members in the House like Chris Carter John Tamihere David Cunliffe Lynne Pillay and Helen Clark even have chosen to sit there like stuffed dummies and say not a word. 
Jill Pettis 
: They’re not here. They’re in their offices. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Did members hear what the senior Labour whip said about her own members? She said that they were not here and that they were in their offices. She is not allowed to say that. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Please continue. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I think Madam Speaker should have taken her up on that but I shall take her up on it. Those members are all lions back in the west of Auckland saying to Unitec: “Look we think you’ve got a good case and certainly we’ll give it some consideration.” but where are they today? Guess who spoke on the bill? The member for Rotorua who has a very strong knowledge of west Auckland and the member for Whanganui who is now dealing with having Michael Laws as mayor! I have to say that that is a big enough issue that she should concentrate on rather than worrying about this one. 
I want to deal with this subject in two distinct categories. I shall deal with the specific Unitec example but first I shall deal with the bigger picture of whether there needs to be any limit—whatever it is—on the number of universities. I advocate that that is just a nonsense. If we go back a few years there were only two or three then there was four then five then six. We are up to eight now and I do not think anybody would suggest that eight is a magical mythical number. But guess what! Five of those are represented in Auckland at different locations. Massey University has a facility on the North Shore. I know that the University of Otago is in Queen Street where it has a campus and a lecturing facility. We have Auckland University and Auckland University of Technology. And that is how it should be. The actual number of physical locations and the name tag on the front of them is pretty irrelevant. 
 Let me explain this to the Government: if the Auckland University of Technology were to merge with Unitec tomorrow then the day after that merger there would still be a campus at Carrington where Unitec is there would still be the same number of lecturers there and there would still be the same number of students attending classes there but it would qualify for university status. There would still be the same courses the same programmes and the same funding. The Government would not be up for more or less funding. In fact the world would not change at all. So what the Government is saying is that if the institutions do some sort of dirty little deal whereby they merge that will be OK and the new institution will be a university but it will not let there be any more. 
Well let us go through the argument. Maybe there needs to be critical mass—maybe the institution needs to be very big. There will be some members in this House who think that a university needs to be very big to be successful. Let me take Auckland University which I think has about 30000 equivalent full-time students. I think Massey University has a similar number. People will say that unless a university has 30000 equivalent full-time students unless it is a really big institution it cannot be successful. Well I ask those members to go to the north-east of the United States to have a look at some of the Ivy League universities. A number of some of the most successful and prestigious universities in the world have only 3000 enrolments. They are quite small. 
Jill Pettis 
: But it costs them. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Jill Pettis is going on about the cost. We should close down Princeton and Harvard because they are hopeless according to Jill Pettis. She knows best. All those world-class Ivy League north-east United States universities are hopeless. Jill Pettis from Whanganui has ruled that they are hopeless. They are too small and they cost too much. That is what she has just said and I am pleased she said it because I am happy to double-dare her on any one of those stunning universities. I have been to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge on the river at Boston where I worked on a transportation theory paper. It is a stunning university. It is the most stunning place I have been to. I had a look at Oxford University and I felt it was mouldy and old compared with the focus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
So here is my next challenge to Government members. What if the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered to come down to New Zealand and partner Unitec out in west Auckland? What if it offered to put some of its most stunning programmes into action there under its guise? Would it be allowed to? No no because in Steve Maharey’s head a light bulb has gone on that says: “Eight is the number; eight is it.” There are not eight members of a soccer team or a rugby team but Steve Maharey says the number of universities shall be eight for some reason. There are eight furlongs in a mile. Maybe that is where it came from. I am trying to work out where the number eight came from. 
But it would make no difference to this country if we had 35 universities as long as the quality of the education that they provided was fine as long as the standard that they provided was fine. I know of a proposal at one stage—it did not go through but it may still—whereby some foreign universities were talking about setting up a university of information technology on the banks of Lake Taupo. They were looking at a site on which to create a very small high-tech information technology - centric university. But Steve Maharey said: “No you can’t do that. New Zealand can have only eight universities.” 
The reason we have heard from those two very interested members the member for Whanganui and the member for Rotorua who have probably never even visited Unitec in their lives and the reason they do not want to let new universities go ahead is that the Vice-Chancellors Committee said: “We don’t think it’s right and we don’t want any.” Well let me deal with the Vice-Chancellors Committee. When John Hinchcliff now a Labour councillor for Auckland was the chief executive of the Auckland Institute of Technology he came along and pleaded with us to make the institute a university. I was the Associate Minister for Tertiary Education at the time. I have a lot of respect for John Hinchcliff. He put up a terribly good case. As soon as he became a vice-chancellor and was off to the Vice-Chancellors Committee he said: “Oh no I don’t think there should be any more of this sort of nonsense. We don’t need any more universities.” How bad is that? His attitude was: “Once I am in the club and you have closed the door I don’t want any more in there competing with me—no matter what quality of education they provide and no matter what standard their service is.” 
Stephen Franks 
: Pull up the drawbridge. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: That is right; “Pull up the drawbridge drain out the moat and get the crocodiles to circle because now that I am in the castle I don’t want anybody else let in.” 
I want to go on record as saying that I think it is a disgrace that Steve Maharey has had this idea. It goes right back to the individual person. No policy of any Government should go back to that. Steve Maharey hates the idea of more universities. He has said so. He brought in a bill to limit the number of universities. The first bill that he brought in would have limited the number of universities to eight. We managed to persuade him not to proceed with that stupid bill. Now he realises that he had better be a bit more opaque about it so rather than having a bill that limits the number of universities to eight he has introduced this Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill which puts an enormously convoluted process in place but still gives the Minister the killer punch. If a new university does get through he can stop it; in that way he will still be able to keep the number of universities at eight. 
Let us go back to this process. Let us go back to what are successful universities overseas. Let us go back to those nations whose universities are well respected. I think the United States is very well respected for its tertiary sector especially at the upper end. There are some stunning quality universities. Some of them are really small. A university that I saw up in the north-west of Maine had only 1000 students. It was turning out biotech graduates beyond one’s wildest dreams. That sort of thing can work well around the rest of the world competing for the quality brains for the quality students and for endowment funds and making things happen but back here in little old New Zealand we have adopted the Mao Tse-Tung approach. We will decide here in this room what is good for people. We will forget the public test forget whether it is right or wrong and forget even whether the local Labour members in west Auckland tell the Unitec chairman and Dr John Webster the chief executive that they think their case probably has got a lot of merit and they really want their votes and their students’ votes but they could not convince the Minister to agree to do it. 
That is not good enough. I want one of the west Auckland members—Chris Carter or John Tamihere—to stand up and tell us what he says back in his electorate. David Cunliffe can tell us. He should tell us now what he thinks. He should stand take a call and tell us what he thinks. Let us hear from Lynne Pillay. Sometimes we cannot tell whether Lynne Pillay is standing up. No she is not going to. Not one of the west Auckland members sitting in the House today is prepared to get up and defend this appalling legislation. The Labour senior whip Jill Pettis is on the phone. She is trying to get a few of those members to come to the House. “Get down here!” she is saying. 
We are totally opposed to this bill and we will vote against it.