Moroney Sue: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:669;Page:15982] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 That was a very interesting contribution from Heather Roy who said she would prove to us that a president of a students association had a different view from ours but who then would not name the students association that the person was from. She read out an email which I would suggest was possibly typewritten by herself. She got out a bit of paper she read out a bunch of statements and she said the email was from a students association but she would not tell us which one. Well that was big and brave from that member but look that really does not cut it. 
I will speak on the title of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill. Even though I know that the member in charge of the bill strayed quite significantly from the title she did remind me of why the title is pretty important to the debate. The title talks about “freedom of association”. But she reminded me of the last time that such a glib phrase was used. Do members remember Bill Birch talking about freedom of choice and the Employment Contracts Act? That is where it all comes from. What freedom did the women workers in rest homes have under the Employment Contracts Act? They had the freedom to lose their penal rate against their will to work 24/7 and not to be paid one dollar different on Saturdays and Sundays from what they were on Mondays Tuesdays Wednesdays Thursdays and Fridays. That is what people need to understand about bills that use the word “freedom” in their title. It is always a code for more restrictions and more restrictions on those at the bottom of the heap—it is always a code for that. 
In particular in this bill it is the code for taking away freedom. We know that currently the situation as my colleague Grant Robertson said is that students collectively can decide whether to have compulsory student union membership or voluntary student union membership. They can decide that now. This bill makes it compulsory to become voluntary. It takes that out of the students’ hands; it makes it compulsory to become voluntary. The example that I think is really important here is one from my town in Hamilton at Waikato University. Its students association actually did under the current legislation—the Act that the member is seeking to amend—decide to go voluntary. In the space of 18 months it nearly bankrupted itself. Not only did it nearly bankrupt itself but it lost assets that it will never ever get back. It lost its student radio station. The union sold the radio station off to try to keep itself going and it will never ever get that back. But because of the current legislation that union had the right to decide that it had made a mistake and needed to go back to compulsory union membership. It voluntarily went back to compulsory union membership because it realised that it had made a mistake. It had made a mistake and it had freedom of association. What has been taken away from that union is all of its assets by going down the wrong path. But it realised it had made that mistake and it came back and said it wanted membership to be compulsory. Yes that union was able to make that decision. It has freedom of association already. 
So we do not need an amendment bill that has a title with “freedom of association” in it because that is already available to students. But it is not available in a way that makes it compulsory for them to have voluntary student union membership so that they can go down the tubes like the Waikato students union almost did and decades later still not recover their position. But perhaps that is what the Government wants. Perhaps exactly the type of freedom of association—the words in the title of this bill—that the Government wants is actually to get rid of student advocacy: to get rid of the student voice on those campuses. Once the Government gets rid of the student voice on those campuses can members guess who is next? The Government has already had a go at early childhood education; tertiary education will be the next one if it can get rid of the student voice. 
That is why I think the title of this bill should be the “Education (Get Rid of the Student Voice So We Can Do Whatever We Want to in Government) Amendment Bill”. I think that would be a much more suitable title for this bill because that is what is behind it. It could also be called the “Education (The Tail Starting to Wag the Dog Again) Amendment Bill”. Was it not interesting that National the minute that the ACT Party got into trouble changed its mind on this bill?