Salesa Jenny; Mallard TrevorJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this opportunity to debate the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand has a world-class education system. That is something we celebrate and are really proud of. Given this fact why should we stuff it up by agreeing to what is proposed in this new bill? While there are some provisions in this bill before the House that Labour may have supported what we have in front of us as proposed continues down the track of developing a privatised model of competition in tertiary education in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is the main reason why Labour opposes this bill.This bill according to what we read will amend the Education Act of 1989 and it will increase funding flexibility in the tertiary education system" and it will "ensure consistent treatment of public and private tertiary education providers". This is simply code for supporting private commercial interests over the rights of New Zealand students to a well-resourced well-rounded tertiary education by robbing needy Peter to pay for-profit Paul. So as I said earlier on this is the main reason why the Labour Party absolutely opposes this bill. It will further privatise tertiary education.Part 1 of this bill covers the amendment to the principal Act as it relates to international students. Clause 34 amends section 238I so that the funds of the expert education levy can be used to reimburse students if a private school or a partnership school fails mid-course and is unable to reimburse the students. This will allow international students to be reimbursed for their fees but they will still be able to continue their studies here in New Zealand in the event that either of these two schools fails. However we know because this has been covered very well in the media over the last few months and over the last couple of years that there are a number of fraudulent agents that are currently operating in New Zealand. The Government needs to step up in this area because students and their families—their lives are being ruined. Ultimately the tertiary education sector as a whole may pay the price of this fraud. It is New Zealand's international reputation our reputation for excellence in education that may be irreparably damaged if this current Government does not step up and sort this out.We also know that right now there are certain sectors in our society that are currently using skilled migrant labour. They utilise short-term visas including working holiday and student visas to fill the skill gaps that we are currently experiencing right across New Zealand but especially in Auckland.But we also know that this current National Government is not actually transitioning a lot of our young people—thousands of our young people—successfully from secondary school either on to further education in the tertiary sector or into employment. We also know that this current Government has not actually addressed the fact that we now have over 90000 of our young people under the age of 24 who are not in education employment or training. We know that this number has increased from just over 70000 12 months ago.This is an issue that I would have thought would be strongly addressed in this bill—that we should see more of what this current Government would be doing to address those who are not in education employment or training and to address the fact that we have so many that we are needing to be skilled and in training. But we do not see that strongly covered.Part 2 of this bill actually panders to private providers in education in a number of ways. First it proposes that private training establishments—PTEs—should get the same rate of funding as universities polytechnics and wānanga. But we must ask: why should shareholders of those private companies get what are essentially massive corporate subsidies from all of us as taxpayers? That public money would be much better invested in New Zealand students and indeed should be so invested at this time when public institutions our staff and our students at those public institutions are under-resourced and are enormously stressed. We know this from recent studies. Over a thousand of our staff in those institutions have been surveyed and they have told us they are enormously stressed and under a lot of pressure.Private companies should not be given the same status as those of our independent universities and our polytechnics. Our public institutions have legal obligations to teach New Zealanders from all backgrounds from all walks of life and from each area in Aotearoa New Zealand. They maintain and they protect our academic freedom and they support New Zealand with robust unbiased research. By contrast private for-profit providers' main obligation is to make a profit for their shareholders and for their owners.According to Statistics New Zealand just last year tertiary fees have gone up by more than 43 percent since the National Government took office. Our institutions are not coping with the funding freeze under this National Government. The enrolments at many of our public institutions continue to decline. The recent contestable funding process has seen a significant transfer of funding from public institutions to private ones. Regional polytechnics and institutes of technology—they are suffering. They are struggling for survival as we speak. Public institutions should continue to receive a differentiated level of funding because amongst other things their capital investments remain in our public ownership. Private establishments are under no obligation whatsoever to continue to use their accumulated publicly funded capital for educational purposes. Public funding for education should go towards education not just towards capital accumulation and profit dividends for shareholders.We have mixed feelings on some of what is proposed by this bill. One of the things that we have mixed feelings about is that we think we should have an open debate about whether or not wānanga should be able to use the term "university". We think that we should have an open debate about this but there is merit in having a debate before wānanga are allowed to use this term. We do know that universities already use the term "wānanga" in their Māori translations right now. But as we say we are open to a debate on this.As I conclude I would like to acknowledge those on the opposite benches because they have had a really good consultation process in preparation for this bill. Sadly however significant measures within this bill remain tinkering around the edges by the National Government—just tutu-ing around with the system—and we do not support this bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am just going to warn the member about her language. I am not going to formally do anything about it but the member should take care."