Wong Pansy: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14765] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I would like to continue the theme started by my colleague Dr Wayne Mapp. There is a problem in the export education sector. Actually the biggest problem is the Labour Government because 2 years ago— 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: What’s wrong with that? 
PANSY WONG 
: The member asks a good question. The Labour Minister has not even bothered to brief his own colleague on what the problem is. The problem is that a Labour Minister brought in some legislation 3 years ago and told all political parties that if they supported the Government in passing the Code of Practice for the Pastoral Care of International Students then export education would be fine. In the next minute we were told that if the Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill was also passed the export education sector would be an absolutely top performer. 
Actually the export education sector was performing without the Labour Government. In fact it was doing very well. In 2003 it was one of the top five export earners for New Zealand. 
Then successively we had two very high-profile collapses. The problems of those two institutions—the Modern Age Institute of Learning and Carich New Zealand—had in some cases been detected a year before they hit the media and before harm was done to New Zealand’s export education industry’s reputation. 
The Labour Government’s remedy was first of all to shift the blame. So instead of the Government admitting that it was the fault of the gatekeeper—the New Zealand Qualifications Authority; the organisation authorised to accredit institutions that could enrol international students—it shifted the blame and said: “Well if only good students came to New Zealand and if only good schools existed in New Zealand then none of those problems would exist.” But the truth is that if the gatekeeper the New Zealand Qualifications Authority had done its job a lot of the problems even if they had happened would have been minimised. 
In this case passing a bill to charge for an extra levy—to punish private education providers for the failure of their competitors—is not providing any solution to the problem. If the Labour Government is serious about trying to fix the problem in the export education sector it has to engage the sector in carrying out a proper inquiry into the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to see whether the authority has the expertise and the competence to carry out its monitoring role. 
In my previous speeches in respect of staff from institutions that had collapsed I provided examples of how staff had tried to alert the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to problems in those institutions. So either the authority was reluctant to implement or it was not capable of implementing quick actions to stop New Zealand’s export education sector from suffering those high-profile collapses. 
The passage of the export education levy legislation will certainly not solve the problem. I urge Labour members to rethink because this bill concerns a very important sector and its passage is not supported by members on the Opposition benches—that is almost all members apart from the Greens who have a problem philosophically with private institutions. The Greens are against anything that is private which is a shame in this case because I do not think they have the good of international students at heart. If we are really serious about wanting to enhance New Zealand’s reputation in international education we should not pass this bill.