Shearer David: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Shearer David: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:667;Page:14700] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I personally find the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill an odious piece of legislation and I say that for two reasons. One is because I think it risks ripping the life soul and vitality out of many of our tertiary institutions. I am talking not about the great big ones such as Auckland University which has enough funding with which to continue providing services by itself but about the smaller ones that depend so much on the student services that are provided by student unions. 
The other aspect I find odious is that we could have got legislation that worked. We and National could have worked together to develop legislation that protected the student unions but also in a sense given a nod to the freedom of choice that members opposite are so absolutely keen to bang on about tonight. That possibility was sunk by the actions of ACT at that time and I will get to that in a minute. 
I benefited from the students union when I was at university not only because of the fees that I paid but also because of the fees that were paid by those students who had gone before me. So I enjoyed the university gym I enjoyed the student newspaper I enjoyed the health services and I enjoyed the ability to have really good advocacy on campus—all of those things that go into making up a university life. This is about the richness of university life. It is ironic that some of those very people supporting this bill were involved in student politics; Hekia Parata for example was involved in senior student politics and Steven Joyce cut his teeth on student radio before going on to make millions out of radio stations elsewhere. Those members began in the students union. 
The argument that making students unions and students associations voluntary will not affect those unions is absolutely false. One needs only to look at Australia’s experience and I will read from the very good report that the Australian National Union of Students put out. They appeared before us in the Education and Science Committee as well. I quote: “the idea that voluntary membership legislation will lead to self-funded voluntary student organisations that can maintain a comprehensive range of campus life student support and representative functions has proven to be fallacious. Even the strongest organisations such as the Western Australian Guilds still require university funding and are drawing on historic reserves. The actual outcomes since the passage of the Australian VSU legislation fall into three broad categories: General collapse of student campus life support structures and representative functions University takeover of major service providers and subsidised from university revenue …  [and] University funding to maintain comprehensive student service and representative bodies through a service level contract …”. In other words the legislation took away student ownership of these services and pushed the ownership of the services to the university itself. It did not save any more money because the university itself now has to subsidise the very services that— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It costs more! 
DAVID SHEARER 
: —exactly—students were providing themselves. As Mr Mallard said it does cost more because it does not have the benefit of all that voluntary student participation that happens in a students union. 
This bill is a major step backwards and it has nothing I repeat nothing to do with freedom of choice. This huge issue of freedom of choice is not supported by the evidence. I will look at some of the evidence. The Law Society for example appeared before the select committee and although it did not make any definitive comment on compulsory membership of students unions it did recognise that there are grounds for limitation of the right of freedom if it fits the purpose and the criteria that can be met. The general impression from that submission was that this issue would fit those criteria. 
Let us look at the whole idea of choice. This bill is not about choice for students; the reality is that the current law gives students the choice to have voluntary or universal membership through referenda of students. If 10 percent of students sign a petition then the referendum needs to take place. This bill ironically will take away that right and students will no longer have the ability to vote whether they want a students union—it will be legislated for them. So this bill takes away their very freedom to decide whether they want to be a member of a students union. 
Proponents of the bill say that students are being compelled against their will to belong to a students association. They make some sort of analogy with a trade union or a professional organisation but I think this logic is not correct. Students are not employees. They are not compelled to belong to a students association to be allowed to take part in tertiary study. They are compelled to contribute to a necessary and relevant cost of that study. I thought the submission from David and James Caygill was very compelling. They believe that a better analogy is not a trade union or a professional organisation but a tax payment. I quote from their submission: “Taxpayers cannot escape their liability to pay taxes by arguing that they do not benefit (or do not wish to benefit) from particular areas of public expenditure. Likewise students should not be able to escape making a fair contribution to services and facilities from which most benefit by arguing that they themselves do not.” 
We are talking here about students’ ability to benefit because they all benefit from making a contribution. What happened when Australia made student unionism voluntary? There was a 72 percent decline in services; either whole services disappeared or there was a massive decline and the return on revenue dropped to about 7 percent of what it was before. The same thing happened at Waikato University. In 1996 the students union at Waikato University was made voluntary and there was a collapse in the money that the students association was able to collect. It went from $730000 down to $3400. It basically killed the students union. It killed the students association’s ability to perform the type of thing that it was supposed to. 
I will finish with a point that I began with. This legislation is really about ideology; it is not really about a good outcome for students and for universities. It is the politics of keeping a coalition together not the politics of a good piece of legislation. I know that many National members wanted to make this legislation durable. They know that when Labour comes back into power we will overturn this legislation but there was an opportunity to improve it and to make it much more durable. Instead the leadership coup in the ACT Party happened at that time and Heather Roy was suddenly given this legislation to coax through the House. She had to put it through because otherwise she would have had no credibility and the ACT Party would have had no credibility at all. So she went on  
Close Up 
 to say that her primary purpose in political life was to put this legislation through. That was the reason that National got behind the wagging tail—that is what happened. It was not about good legislation and it was not about the benefit for students; it was about ideology.