Ogilvy Bernie: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Ogilvy Bernie: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to say that we are opposed to this bill. When I look back over all the readings and speeches as well as the select committee proceedings on this bill I see one thing that stands out and it is one of the reasons United Future certainly opposes the bill—the Government has got offside with a major and important slice of the export education industry. 
This is a bill that puts the Government on one side and everybody else on the other side so that private language schools and private training establishments have been antagonised. In fact when I looked at the bill again this evening I wondered whether it could have been renamed the “How to Upset and Infuriate Export Education Providers in the Private Sector Bill”. That would have been a nice name for it. 
It is one of those bills that set out to divide and conquer. It is an aggressive bill. We were told as others have illustrated already that this bill was put into place to address the issue of accountability. Yet we understand the word “accountability” to mean for instance that if I make a mistake then I am responsible. But if someone else makes a mistake how can I be responsible for that person’s mistake if there is no connection between the two of us? 
That is one of the outstanding problems this bill fails to address. It actually states that if a private provider fails then those good providers who have nothing to do with that failure are penalised. For whatever reasons the provider fails everyone is penalised. 
All the way through the passage of this bill we had submissions. Every submitter who came to the Education and Science Committee said they were opposed to it. Accountability means that a method needs to be chosen to help everybody through the dilemma this industry faces or has faced but the method the Government has chosen is really that of putting a tax on everybody. We all know that when a tax or levy is imposed people become suspicious. In fact trust is broken in any sort of relationship when taxes are levied on people groups or companies that were never consulted before those taxes were imposed upon them. 
When submitters came and met the select committee they offered a number of cooperative suggestions and ideas which if they had been taken up would have provided a simple answer to the issues rather than put an antagonistic levy or tax on the entire private sector. One of those ideas as I recall was a call for a better bonding system for the control of those who enter the industry in the way any profession holds the people within its group accountable—for instance the Institute of Chartered Accountants the Law Society or whatever else. Another suggestion—and a very cooperative one I felt—which could easily have got the buy-in of everybody in the industry was an insurance programme. 
Others suggested that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority should have more teeth and more ability to exercise its powers or should be given powers to close down private training establishments if they were trading while insolvent. In fact that suggestion was just ignored as were a number of other suggestions given to the select committee. 
We find it embarrassing that this particular bill is an impost upon the entire industry. It is a huge and exciting industry but every time the Government has interfered in it we have noticed that a hiccup has occurred. For instance when the Minister went on a visit to China there was a further hiccup or blip in the industry. 
This tax bill will penalise only the good institutions and has therefore already affected the industry negatively. I do not know why the Government did not take a more professional approach with this whole exercise. I am not sure whether the opportunity has been lost for a recovery. 
United Future would like to suggest that the bill should be tossed out even tonight and should not go through and that the Minister should apologise withdraw the whole thing and start again and get a more cooperative programme going. That is the support approach which by the way the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee suggested was a good way in which to handle the whole thing. Although that body is not even a private training enterprise it saw that the bill was an incredibly unbusinesslike and unfriendly approach to the whole exercise. 
The Government ought to have encouraged all providers to strive for excellence. So as a result of that not happening United Future does not feel any obligation to support this bill. It is bad legislation.