Shearer David: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Shearer David: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20294] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
:  
I would not say that it gives me pleasure to speak tonight because I think this Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill is a crock frankly. It is a piece of ideology that is looking for a cause. I want to speak on clause 6A which involves private training establishments. This clause pertains to the entire bill but this particular part looks at private training establishments themselves. 
I think there is a real issue here about the whole focus of what we are trying to do within this bill—that is the conceptualisation of the legislation is about a compulsory union. I want to refer to a submission made by David Caygill and his son which I believe contests that whole point of view. It effectively says that the student union is a union such as we would think of as being in a workplace. They said that this is the wrong conceptualisation altogether and that the student union is actually not that sort of a union. 
The submission states: “… students are not employees. They are not being compelled to belong to a students’ association in order to be allowed to take part in tertiary study. Rather they are being compelled to contribute towards a necessary and relevant cost of that study. In other words we would argue that the better analogy is not with membership of a trade union or professional association but with the payment of a tax.” 
I want to look at that in relation to the provision in clause 6A(1) to substitute “229CA” in the heading of section 229D. The point is that under section 229CA(3)(b) a students association can be “contracted by an institution or any other person to provide services to students of an institution.” This particular point is rather interesting because what we are looking at here is effectively the students association being contracted by the university which is normally the case. But the problem with that is that as we know the students associations will be paying for the services in order for the students association to continue by the university itself levying the students in order to be able to do that. 
This is not a free service. The role various responsibilities services and advocacy that the students associations provide are provided not free of charge but by the students association and the students themselves. But what happens as we know in just about every case when the students association is made voluntary is that students neglect to pay those fees and the association effectively winds up as an effective body for students. Then what happens is that the university or the institution itself—or in this case relating to clause 6A the private training establishments—takes over those responsibilities and again contracts students back to provide them because those very services are essential to the life and experience of students in a university or private training establishment. What happens is that the institution has to contract students as we see in section 229CA(3)(b) and students in turn have to pay through their levies in order for those services to continue. 
There is a problem with that at the moment. In the Education Amendment Bill (No 4) restrictions and limits will be placed on tertiary institutions being able to levy students in order to provide those services. We are in the middle of what I call a perfect storm. If this voluntary student membership bill goes through as it is students associations will effectively have no money to provide the services and advocacy they have been providing. The university or the private training establishments in this case will have to step in. The private training establishments will have to levy students in order to provide services but they will be restricted from doing that by the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). So as a result of that in a way both avenues for providing those services will be cut off. Both avenues will be cut off. The universities polytechs and private training establishments will become desolate places not the vibrant supportive places they are at the moment. 
That is particularly so in the case of the more than 300 private training establishments that exist in New Zealand that clause 6A relates to. In those places students often need to have stronger representation than they do in universities because many of the private training establishments as we have seen are perhaps not as professional as many other institutions. 
This bill could have been completely avoided. This bill was put up by Roger Douglas. It was passed on to Heather Roy when Rodney Hide sacked her as deputy leader of the ACT Party. Rodney Hide has since been rolled over himself. There is a certain pyramid of people being toppled in the ACT Party. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: No one’s safe. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Certainly no one is safe in the ACT Party. We will now have Don Brash coming in and John Banks and we will see whether John Banks rolls Don Brash as a result. I cannot see the status quo continuing. 
As Moana Mackey says 2 percent of this Parliament is pushing through this piece of ideology. There is absolutely no way that ACT on Campus was ever going to be able to get this sort of bill through. There was no way that ACT on Campus was going to get 10 percent of the student body to vote on whether they want students associations. 
The absolute travesty of this legislation is that the choice of students in institutions has been taken away by us here in Parliament—not by us by the ACT Party supported by National—simply because those people who are peddling this particular piece of odious ideology have to do this because there is no way that they can get popular support in the institutions themselves. Not only that but the 2 percent the ACT Party holds is split between I do not know how many other people within the party sitting in Parliament. 
As I said before this bill is a piece of ideology looking for a cause and a purpose. Absolutely in no way will it do anything of value to our tertiary institutions throughout the country. It will gut them. It will make them mean soulless places like the leader of the ACT Party and like the ACT Party itself. It is going to make them soulless places where students will not be able to get support and will not be able to exert the influence and the advocacy they have been able to simply because we are looking at a piece of ideology trumped up as a cause. 
This is an absolute travesty. This could have been reconciled. This could have been solved by a compromise. We have put up a number of amendments. We have had a number of discussions about this. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: What a sorry sight. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Rather than Tau Henare for example coming—