Roy Heather: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Roy Heather: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:667;Page:14695] 
Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. I am very proud to be the sponsor of this bill. Since I became a member of Parliament in 2002 compulsory membership of students associations has been an issue. In fact the issue goes back much further than that. When I did a quick search on the Internet I found media releases as far back as 2000 calling for voluntary student membership. I hope those who campaigned so hard then are listening today because their efforts their lobbying and their campaigning have not been in vain. 
This is the fourth bill on voluntary student membership to come before the House. It is not an issue that will go away and only full voluntary membership of students associations will solve the principled human rights issues and practical accountability and responsibility issues that compulsory membership violate. These issues were all traversed in detail at the select committee hearings. I thank the Education and Science Committee for its hard work and especially the leadership of chair Allan Peachey. I thank the officials to the committee and especially those who took the time to make submissions both written and oral and from both sides of the debate. Prebble’s Rebels ACT on Campus and Young Nats past and present deserve a huge thank you for keeping this issue alive over a large number of years. Their efforts and dedication to the cause are rewarded in this bill. 
I also thank Sir Roger Douglas for his Midas touch in the drawing of members’ bills. Although this bill was originally drafted by me and put into the ballot in 2006 it was drawn out of the ballot in his name last year. He shepherded the bill through its first reading and the select committee hearings and handed it back to me when I was no longer a Minister. An issue this important should not be left to the luck of the draw but fortunately we got there in the end. 
By the beginning of 2012 it will be illegal to compel students to join a students association in order for them to be allowed to study at a tertiary institution. That is called freedom of association and is the principle my bill is based on. As a society we prize freedom. Freedom means choice and choice is the most fundamental principle of a free and democratic society. That is why the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 protects the rights of individuals to determine whom they associate with and which political ideas they associate with and to do so without compulsion or undue influence. 
Section 17 of the Act guarantees the right to freedom of association. Compulsory membership of students associations is simply not commensurate with that section. Over time attempts to soften compulsory membership by introducing conscientious objection and referenda provisions have failed to resolve the major conflicts of compulsory membership with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the financial interests of students. It is extraordinary too that many years after trade union membership was made voluntary for workers without the sky falling in universities and polytechnics seemingly bastions of freedom of thought speech and inquiry have maintained compulsory membership of students associations. Now this relic of a bygone era is finally to be bid farewell. 
A high level of accountability is essential with any form of public funds. However students associations have consistently shown that they lack the accountability necessary to manage the sort and scale of funds that compulsory membership gives them. Lack of democratic accountability in the form of low election turn-outs means that democratic processes have failed to ensure that mainstream interests are represented. Likewise poor financial accountability has been the norm rather than the exception. Often the only tangible checks and balances on an association’s expenditure is a treasurer’s report at executive meetings and a yearly audit. Too many of these audits show deeply worrying trends of financial mismanagement and fraud and we do not have to look very far for the evidence. In 2003 the office manager of the Massey University Students Association was jailed for stealing $203000 of students’ money. In 2005 the Victoria University of Wellington Maori Students’ Association treasurer was jailed for stealing $161000. In 2007 the president of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association spent $22000 on upgrading the association’s van without authority. In 2009 the manager of the Christchurch Polytechnic Students’ Association was jailed for the theft of $175000 of students’ money. Whitireia Polytechnic Students’ Association has allegedly lost $750000 of students’ funds over several years.  
These are just a few examples. Students who provided the funds for all of that did not get value for money and they certainly did not when a Victoria University of Wellington Students Association official spent $6000 of their money on calling a psychic hot line in 2007. I suspect that she did not get much value for it either. For compulsory bodies with large-scale incomes the current law represents a completely insufficient level of financial accountability. We will hear no doubt from Labour and the Greens today that my bill will be the death of student unions. They will cite the conscientious objection provision as a substitute for choice. But they will not say that it is virtually impossible to invoke it because union officials have the power of yea or nay; mostly they opt for nay. They will tell us that referenda provisions mean that students determine their own destiny but ignore the fact that a consistently low voter turn out at students association elections further emphasises the lack of representation of students’ views.  
The thing that I find quite pathetically sad is the talk by the bill’s opponents of impending doom: the death of students associations. It is sad because they have such little faith in what they themselves offer. This bill is not about killing off students associations; it is about empowering students and providing the incentives to deliver to students the services and facilities that they—not just a select few—want. One submitter summed it up this way: “A move to genuine voluntary membership (where you have to pay a fee to belong and the student association is disadvantaged if it does not persuade you to join) will eventually result in student associations that are more accountable and responsive to their members rather than treat them as ATM machines. They would focus on making sure the association provides benefits to members who join that the advocacy is focused on issues of importance to their members and that members are regularly engaged and communicated with.” 
I fully support the free rights of students who choose to join a students association and for that body to campaign and lobby and to charge a membership fee. The rights of that association however should not extend to compelling others to join charging them a levy or actively misrepresenting them. The Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill will allow students to decide for themselves whether an association is a club that they want to belong to. It will align the rights of students with all other sectors of our society. Freedom of association means real choice. It means students will also have the freedom to dissociate. I thank those parties—National and United Future—that are supporting my bill tonight and I commend this bill to the House.