Donnelly Brian: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Donnelly Brian: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:16199] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 In Whangarei we have a couple of secondary schools that I will call School A and School B. A decade ago each set out a vision for its building programme. One of those secondary schools has met its vision absolutely stunningly which is just fantastic. The other one has struggled to achieve its vision for no reason associated with the school or the school management. It has not got bad buildings but it has not been able fully to achieve its vision. The reason it has not done so is that it has been caught up with policy shifts. That is what happens with education—there are policy shifts. Whereas School A had roll growth at the same time that the Government poured money into schools to accommodate roll growth School B did not. Therefore when it came to bulk funding School A was able to make maximum use of it but School B was still trying to catch up. 
Basically this bill creates very much the same situation of a policy shift. We have two very similar institutions one that has been accorded university status and one that has been trapped by a policy shift that is the creation of a Labour Government. Believe it or not a Labour Government said we should limit the number of universities we have and create a degree of elitism within them. That in itself is not bad; I am not saying it is bad but I am just trying to explain the circumstances. 
The source of this bill goes back to the decisions made—I think the Hon Lockwood Smith was involved in them—about a decade ago or more that enabled tertiary institutions other than universities to teach and award degrees. That was the source of it. That was very much a positive move but unfortunately the ramifications of that particular decision were not thought through at the time. Of course the knowledge and skills required across a whole array of endeavours within our society have increased so much that the highest qualifications no longer justify certificate or diploma status; they actually justify degree status. In the same way a college of agriculture increased the knowledge that was required in that particular area to the point that it needed to award bachelor degrees masters degrees and doctors degrees. Tertiary institutions grew significantly and the number of degrees awarded within them also grew significantly. 
It was natural that some of those institutions would wish that the status of their degrees had “university” attached to them. That was particularly true of institutions that were trying to move into the international market. They wanted to be able to attract people and to do so the degrees that they offered had to have the word “university” on them. In practice two very similar institutions pursued the course of changing their status from technical institution or polytechnic to university. One of those was the Auckland Institute of Technology in Wellesley Street. It used to be the old Seddon High School which my father went to. The other was Unitec at Point Chevalier in the grounds of the old Carrington Hospital. The Auckland Institute of Technology headed the pack but not without some considerable effort. Some fairly arbitrary criteria were established around what a university was; they related to the proportion of sub-degree courses bachelor degree courses and so on. The Auckland Institute of Technology was awarded university status in 1999 by Max Bradford. 
New Zealand First would argue that that was going down the wrong line. We do not believe that it was the right way to go. It created some unfortunate incentives. For example to be a university an institution had to have fewer than a certain proportion of sub-degree courses. There was a very easy way to get that status—just cut sub-degree courses. In doing so those institutions had incentives to become something that they were not and something that they were not necessarily good at. They really needed to stick to what was their common ground and what they were good at and in fact that was in many cases scaffolding students into that part of the education market that is hard to penetrate—into a tertiary education programme through sub-degree courses degree courses etc. By establishing those arbitrary criteria about what a university was and was not all the incentives were wrong. So we believe that that was the wrong move. 
A Labour Government was elected that said it wanted to prevent the proliferation of universities and to create stronger universities rather than have a whole lot. Unitec was caught up by that even though its process was already well down the track. The Government responded with the Education (Limiting Number of Universities) Amendment Bill. Also at the same time the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission review was going on; it was just commencing its work. The outcome has certainly been that Unitec can justifiably claim it has been treated wrongly. However two wrongs do not make a right as far as New Zealand First is concerned. We believe that it is eminently sensible to have a public-good test at the beginning of the process of any application whether for a university a polytechnic or a wananga. It seems stupid to have an expensive process of proving that an institution has certain characteristics—a process that would be carried through at quite a considerable cost—when at the end of it the institution still has to go through a public-interest test which could wipe out the whole thing. It seems sensible to have that at the beginning of the process. In general that means this legislation makes sense but if we start applying it to the Unitec situation—its application was submitted in 1996 and it has gone a long way down the process—then we see that the situation does seem very unfair. There is no doubt this bill is aimed at Unitec. 
There is another worrying part of this bill—and Dr Lockwood Smith referred to it. The explanatory note states: “The Bill would have retrospective effect in relation to any Order in Council establishing a university that may be made after this Bill is introduced into the House of Representatives. Such orders would cease to have effect and expire unless the Minister can confirm that establishment would be in the interests of the tertiary education system and the nation as a whole and that the procedures set out in the Bill had been followed.” I want people to listen carefully to that statement because it states that even if Unitec has advanced its claim all the way to the point that an Order in Council is made it will be rendered null and void—even though Unitec has proved its case. To have proved its case a public process has to have been applied; Unitec has to have already proved that the country and the tertiary education system need another university. Despite Unitec having gone through that under this bill which is retrospective it would have to go back to the beginning. That is obviously a dilemma that will have to be resolved at the select committee. 
New Zealand First wants to make another point. We believe that both National and Labour have failed in terms of the dilemma that has been created in the system by degrees being allowed to be taught by a range of different institutions. National would have been happy to have 100 universities. We have just listened to Lockwood Smith. National would have been happy for Telford Rural Polytechnic to be a university. Any organisation could have been a university. Te Wananga o Aotearoa could have been a university if it had wanted—that would have been fine. That obviously is nuts. Labour however would probably reduce the number of universities to four if it had its way. 
New Zealand First believes that we need a new class of tertiary institution. We need a class called “university of technology” whose members would be different from a university in their parameters and criteria and would carry out the very actions that the Auckland University of Technology and Unitec do. They would be able to give their degrees the status of being university degrees. In fact the Auckland University of Technology which is what it calls itself is not a university of technology because there is no such thing in New Zealand; it is a university. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: What does it matter if it’s a university? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: It is because of the status that goes with degrees in terms of penetration of the foreign market and all those sorts of things. That is fairly obvious. Therefore let us have a class of institution that we can be honest about and that is different and in which pure research does not have to go along with teaching but currency in scholarship does. Another problem with the definition of a university is that it just does not fit comfortably with the institutions we are talking about—with either of them. If we look at them we see that they are idiosyncratic in terms of the other tertiary institutions that we call universities. 
New Zealand First will vote for this bill to go to the select committee. We will explore these issues. We give no guarantee of support beyond that point but we certainly will use the opportunity to advance what we think is the sensible solution to the dilemma that the system faces that neither National nor Labour has been able to resolve—that is the development of a new class of tertiary institution called a “university of technology”.