Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16691. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):It is a great pleasure to follow on from “Mr Fix-it” Steven Joyce who told us he would solve the Novopay problems in 3 months. That is what he told us—that he would solve the Novopay problems in 3 months. It was not so much a case of “Can we fix it? Yes we can.”; it was a case of “Can we fix it? No we can’t.” because the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment Steven Joyce is responsible for the Novopay debacle. We learnt today that Novopay has cost another $43 million to New Zealanders and it is why teachers continue not to be paid. What kind of Government can claim success in education but is not paying the teachers is not paying the staff in our schools and is seeing support staff in our schools resign because of the stress of it? Good old “Mr Fix-it” is behind that making sure that Novopay continues to fail.On this side of the House we will be opposing this legislation the Education Amendment Bill. We will be opposing it strongly. The reforms to university governance that are being proposed by Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata to quote New Zealand’s largest university “strike at the very essence of autonomous but accountable universities in this country.” That is a quote from the University of Auckland’s submission on these proposals. These proposals undermine everything that universities and tertiary education are about: being the critic and conscience of society. Steven Joyce does not want to hear from critics. Steven Joyce wants to silence the voices of critics of his policies and that is what lies behind these changes.There is no evidence that lies behind these changes. There is no great call for the terrible governance of universities that has driven them into the ground financially. It has not happened. New Zealand universities are generally performing very well. They are adapting very well to the so-called modern world that Steven Joyce talks about. There is no problem here. This policy is a solution in search of a problem. It is Steven Joyce’s ideological response to people who disagree with him. It typifies a National Government that does not want to hear about criticism. Be it protest at sea or protest at a university this Government does not want to hear from critics. It works to silence critics by shutting them out and we on this side of the House utterly oppose that.There has been no evidence provided for this. We looked and what we saw in the regulatory impact statement were a whole lot of “could be’s” “maybe’s” and “might be’s”. “Current governance arrangements”—this is what the regulatory impact statement says—“may not be optimised.” They may not support efficient decision-making. They could result in people not making good decisions. There is no evidence; it is made up. Steven Joyce is simply putting forward his ideological solution to a problem that he has invented. Maybe as he said today large bodies in universities have difficulty making good decisions. Maybe around the world there will be examples where large councils are causing universities to have terrible performance.Let us look at a few of them. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology—one of the leading innovative research universities in the world—how many people are on its council? Seventy-two people are on its council. Before Steven Joyce gets too excited I am not proposing an increase to 72. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems to be doing all right but perhaps that is an outlier. I know why do we not look to the great universities to Oxford and Cambridge? That will give us a guide. They will have small councils because there is no way the Oxford and Cambridge universities could not be making good decisions. Well Oxford has 25 on its council.Iain Lees-Galloway: That’s a lot less than 72.GRANT ROBERTSON: It is. Cambridge has 23 on its council—not eight not 12 but 25 or 23—and Stanford has 33. If you look at the 50 top universities in the world most of them still have this kind of representative model. Many of them have far more than the number of councillors that are proposed in the current law in New Zealand.There is no relationship here between universities the size of their governing bodies and their success. It is just not there. There is no evidence. Steven Joyce has provided no evidence. There is no problem with the financial performance of universities in New Zealand and any problems will certainly not be dealt with by more of Steven Joyce’s mates being on the councils. There is no evidence that this actually supports better learning or teaching inside an institution. There is no evidence that universities are not responding to the modern world that they are not looking at new ways of providing courses and that they are not looking at new ways of attracting students. Steven Joyce has made up a problem and he has no real support for this.When they did the consultation process there were around 2000 submissions. Almost none of them supported any aspect of this—almost none. Of the universities themselves absolutely no one supported this whole proposal—absolutely nobody. Our two largest universities—Auckland and Otago—have outright rejected the proposal. They do not want it; they are happy with where they are. The excuse that the Minister has used for the University of Canterbury looking to reduce the number on its council down to 12 was that it could have done it under the current law. It does not even want the law changed. Nobody wants this apart from Steven Joyce and possibly his mate Phil O’Reilly who I expect will come along to the select committee and tell us what Steven Joyce wants him to tell us. There is nobody else out there. Staff students and community representatives—none of them want this.Actually the representative model of governance gives universities something very special. It gives them the ability to have at the table the communities that they serve. If you just want to look at it from an economic perspective students pay a whole lot of money to be there. Steven Joyce might understand that argument maybe. But beyond that universities have a special character. They play a special role in our society. They are the critic and conscience of our society. They represent something that is important about higher learning education and what we want for our society. The university councils we have show that they are part of their communities. It shows that by having the students there by having the staff there and by having people who come from worker groups employer groups and the community the university is both part of and there to serve. We think that actually makes for better decision-making.I was on a university council myself. I know that when student voices are there it makes a difference. I know that when staff voices are there it makes a difference. I actually also know that when employer and union representatives are there it makes a difference. Better decisions are made because there is a wider representative model. It is actually about inclusion rather than exclusion but this Government is all about who it can exclude not who it can include in the kinds of decisions that get made. Actually modern governance theory says that more people should be involved in decision making in businesses. This is a tired old policy from the 1980s. Mr Joyce might want to throw insults around about dinosaurs and Jurassic Park. Well he is the one bringing something back from the 1980s some sort of Chicago school of economics model that says that small by definition must be good.As others have said and as I asked Mr Joyce in the House a while back presumably there will be some kind of policy coming from National to reduce the size of Cabinet from 20 to eight or 12. Clearly Cabinet as a body of 20 is not capable of making good decisions because large bodies of 20 could not be capable of making a good decision. Presumably Steven Joyce will practise what he preaches in that regard—I think not.This bill is ill-thought-out. It will cause problems. It will cause trouble. The answer in the regulatory impact statement was to say let us manage it by saying things that will placate people. The reality is that this will reduce the representation of key stakeholders in a university it will limit the range of views that are at the table and it will lead to poorer governance not better governance. The Labour Party strongly opposes this legislation.