Hutchison Paul: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13213] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am grateful for the opportunity to speak once again on the title of this tertiary education bill. The Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill has been called a reform bill and undoubtedly in many respects that is an enormous misnomer. I suggested that perhaps a far more appropriate title would be “The Labour Government (Let Us Reform the Tertiary System Again) Bill” because the last reforms were so bad. 
The whole essence of the Labour Government’s bringing in this bill came about through the enormous excesses of waste we have seen under Labour in tertiary education over the last 7 years. National has calculated that in the order of $419 million has been spent just on paper-shuffling for no purpose whatsoever. The OECD pointed out that on average there has been a change or a reform every 2 years. So here we are after Minister Maharey brought in the first reforms back in 2001 and we have had reform after reform and after this amazing $419 million being spent who else would bring in a reform? It was none other than Dr Cullen. 
During 2003-04 the real excesses occurred. Those were the years when a course on homeopathy for pets was broadcast over the radios and TV sets of the nation and when “pendulism” for beginners and other such vitally important and extraordinary courses were perpetrated by this Labour Government amounting to probably a massive half a billion dollars of extra expense. Something like $1 billion of good education money has been wasted over this last 7 years. 
Here is the absolute irony: now that we have had Dr Cullen as the Minister for Tertiary Education suddenly Helen Clark has come along and decided to rearrange the deckchairs. And who should come in as the new Minister for Tertiary Education but none other than the former Minister of Health whom Tony Ryall described the other day as having joined the graveyard of Ministers of Health. His task is a considerably difficult one in that he is going to have to face a bureaucracy that has mounted from 16 bureaucrats at the beginning of this millennium to 340 and is rapidly increasing by another 28 or so as 13 or 14 investment managers and 13 stakeholder engagement managers are brought in. 
One of the other possible names for this bill would be the “Let’s Add More Bureaucracy to the Tertiary Education System Bill”. That is because the Minister when he first brought in the legislation said it was going to be a high trust - low compliance bill. We know that it happens to be the very opposite. Right around the country we are getting complaints from tertiary institutions that are saying they are literally being threatened by these investment managers. They are being told that if they do not play ball with the managers their investment plans will not be sorted out. We are finding that some of the universities are in deep difficulties because the Government has even before the legislation has been put in place demanded that the investment plans must be in. Therefore though the universities have not been able to know the details of the plans they have had to go ahead. So we have places like Victoria University being millions of dollars out of pocket. We have places like Auckland University estimating that it is something like $8 million out of pocket. This bill is indeed a travesty.