Street Maryan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Street Maryan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2446] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak about tertiary education in particular because it is an area that I feel really strongly about. I am concerned at the lack of grip the Minister of Education seems to have on this part of the education portfolio. Tertiary education will be the vehicle by which we recover rapidly from a recession. More than any other single component in the New Zealand economy this will be the vehicle by which we upskill the labour market existing and future and prepare the labour force of the future to participate in order to assist the economy to recover from recession. 
I want to raise a couple of points of concern about tertiary education. Given that it is part of my professional background along with others in this Chamber I have a particular attachment to the tertiary education provided through the universities as well as that provided through polytechs private training establishments independent tertiary institutions and the industry training organisations in their capacity as a link between skills in the workplace and the training that is required to provide those skills into the economy. As part of that concern I have a concern for the students who participate in tertiary education and who are represented by a nationwide students association. Those students have been trying for many weeks—in fact for 4 months—to get an appointment with the Minister to talk about issues that relate to tertiary students and their prospects as well as the current hardships that they are experiencing largely because of a decline in the number of jobs in the labour market. 
In an article that has gone far and wide across a number of student newspapers students said on Monday 16 March: “Tertiary Education Minister Anne Tolley last week wasted $400 of student money when she failed to keep an appointment with national tertiary student representatives.” The article further stated: “NZUSA had sought a meeting with Tolley since she was appointed and even invited her to address their January conference but ‘it’s taken her four months to get back to us’.” Students then embarked in this article on what they called “The Great Tolley Hunt II: The Sound of Silence”. It has been very difficult for the students to connect with the Minister for Tertiary Education but finally they did. Students have made that information available in subsequent university student publications notably  
Salient 
 on Monday 30 March where students said “Success in the Great Tolley Hunt”. The article stated: “The Great Tolley Hunt has finally achieved some success thanks to Jackson Wood editor of  
Salient 
.  
Salient 
 managed to do what all of us in student media thought impossible and get Tertiary Education Minister Anne Tolley to respond—sorta—to some questions.” 
The article then goes on to say that “National’s policies concerning tertiary education have done little to prove that Tolley understands the complexities of the university system.” Certainly it is a complex system. I do not dispute that for a moment but axing jobs from the Tertiary Education Commission is not the way to get a handle on the tertiary education portfolio. It is not the way to get a handle on the complexities of what is a very complex portfolio. It is very clear that money is of no consequence to this Minister. Obviously $400 means a lot to the New Zealand University Students Association. I wonder whether $1800 to run a helicopter from Auckland International Airport across the expanding empire of the Auckland University of Technology or whatever it was that she was viewing with the helicopter going into the central business district and down to Mechanics Bay was also a worthwhile use of public money.