King Colin: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to MembersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Colin: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15837. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]8.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) to theMinister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment: What steps is the Government taking to strengthen the governance of New Zealand universities and wānanga?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment): Yesterday I announced that the Government will reform the composition of university and wānanga governance councils to create smaller skills-based councils that can respond more quickly and strategically to the challenges of modern-day tertiary education. New Zealand universities face a number of critical challenges such as rapidly changing skills needs in the employment market an increasingly competitive international university environment and rapidly changing technologies in teaching and learning. Although our universities and wānanga have been performing well these reforms will allow them to respond to these and other challenges more quickly and strategically. Similar reforms to our polytechnic sector in 2009 have been very successful and I expect these will be too.Colin King: What are the main components of the reforms?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The main changes are to decrease the size of councils from the current 12 to 20 members down to 8 to 12 members to allow council membership to be more flexible and also requiring council members to have governance capability. One university has already indicated its desire to reduce the size of its council to 12 but has been unable to do so due to the legislative requirements which we are now changing. The changes for wānanga are particularly important. The governance settings for wānanga were not written with them in mind. The changes will allow wānanga much more flexibility to reflect their unique stakeholders on their councils.Andrew Little: It’s a top-down boss-driven politicisation.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: These reforms will not—as some members opposite have asserted and seem to be repeating their assertions now—compromise academic freedom or eliminate the input of students and staff into decision making.Colin King: What other steps is the Government taking to strengthen our tertiary sector?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This Government has a very good record in terms of the progress it has made with the tertiary sector. Since 2009 it has made a series of incremental reforms to improve performance including the introduction of performance-linked funding educational performance indicators and reducing low-value spending. These reforms have been bearing very good fruit. In 2012 a total of 162000 qualifications were completed in the New Zealand tertiary education system. That is up 23 percent from just 4 years previously. More young people are now moving from school to degree-level study from 13500 students in 2007 to 16500 in 2012 including many more young Māori and Pasifika.Grant Robertson: In light of his view that governing bodies of 20 cannot act quickly or strategically has he approached the Prime Minister to reduce the size of Cabinet to perhaps eight or 12 people?Mr SPEAKER: In so far as there is ministerial responsibility the Hon Steven Joyce.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am sorry but that is a little shallow—in fact shallow as a bird bath as is usual from Mr Robertson. In fact it may have escaped the member in his many years of moving back and forth between university and Parliament but fundamentally a university council governs a university which is a single organisation—it can be quite large—while a Cabinet governs an entire country. It is a subtle difference and maybe one day Mr Robertson—in the dim distant future—may get to see it for himself.