Tanczos Nandor: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:16201] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I begin my contribution by thanking the Hon Brian Donnelly for his contribution. I think it was informative and thoughtful as is his habit. It was a useful exposition of the context of the current bill and there it included an interesting idea about universities of technology that is worth exploring further. I thank him for that. 
I make the point that the Greens support taking a strategic approach to tertiary education. We supported the tertiary reforms for that reason and we supported the development of the Tertiary Education Commission. It seems to us that the legislation is back to front now and that this bill is an attempt to create a more sensible approach towards how we go about establishing new universities. It seems to us that institutions that intend to become universities now go through the hoops. They go through the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and all the different hoops that are put in front of them and then they face a political or a national-interest test. 
Stephen Franks 
: A political test. You got it right the first time. 
NANDOR TANCZOS 
: Well it is a political test. The question of what is in the national interest is always a political decision so it is a political test. [ 
Interruption 
] I suggest to Mr Franks that his idea of what is in the national interest is not always the same as that of National Labour or the Greens. It is affected by his political position. That is obvious. I am surprised that the member needs that to be pointed out to him. 
We think it is sensible to make the strategic decision at the beginning of the process and to begin with an evaluation of whether a new university is in the national interest. I think it really comes down to a philosophical position as to whether one supports a strategic approach to tertiary education or one does not support that and the Greens clearly do support it. It seems to me that some parties support a rudderless approach both to tertiary education and to the nation in general—a rudderless approach that says that we need to have no direction and no management. That kind of approach does not work for any business and I am not sure how members think it will work for a country. 
The Greens do have concerns with regard to this bill however—in particular concerns around retrospectivity. Of course that part of the bill is designed to address Unitec; that is obvious and has been said before. We think that there are questions of natural justice that need to be addressed. Unitec has put a monumental effort and resources into proving its case to become a university. It has been stymied by a change in policy as Mr Donnelly said. We think that Unitec is in a unique position. We are not aware of any other institution that is in a position now to become a university. The position of Unitec is unique so the retrospectivity in this bill is clearly an attempt to simply address its particular case. We think that Unitec can advance good arguments about why it should get university status and of course there are arguments against that as well. We look forward to addressing that question in the select committee and to nutting out the details of the pros and cons of that matter. We will be interested to see what comes out of that. 
The Greens will support the referral of this bill to a select committee because we support taking a strategic approach to tertiary education. But we have an open mind on retrospectivity and Unitec’s case and we make no further commitment beyond that stage.