Mapp Wayne: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14759] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 National is very concerned about Part 2 “Validation”. We have looked carefully at the regulations from 2002 and at the provisions of the Education Act. At the very minimum therefore we want some assurances from the Minister concerning the following issue. 
The regulations of 2002 which are being validated do not contain a purpose clause. That was stated to the Education and Science Committee by the ministry. Section 238I of the Education Act set out in the Reprinted Statutes of New Zealand volume 34 states that the purposes of the levy are the promotion development and quality assurance of the export education sector which may include professional development marketing the implementation of scholarship schemes research support etc. 
The one thing missing from that is essentially an indemnity provision whereby successful institutions would pay for unsuccessful institutions—which is the purpose of the current legislation. An indemnity provision is not contained in the regulations of 2002. It is not contained in the statutory provisions that were inserted in 2001. This new indemnity provision is being created only in the legislation before us now and it is worth noting as others have noted that there was an intention to apply this provision retrospectively. But that intention has gone and that is good. 
I question the Minister whether we are simply validating some regulations that have expired or whether the intention of the Government is—because we are voting against the regulations so we are not validating them—in a sense surreptitiously to achieve by way of the validation of the regulations what it has not achieved through the legislation. In other words has the Government sought to achieve through the regulations what it has not been able to achieve through the legislation? 
That is a very important issue. The sector will need an absolute assurance if that is the case. One would like to think that the only thing clause 7 does is simply confirm the types of expenditures that were set out in section 238I of the Act as passed in 2001—that section which did not have this indemnity provision. 
I want to make two points. Obviously National is opposed to the whole idea of the indemnity provision. We think that that statist solution is wrong and that there are better methods which were suggested by the sector itself. The Minister must know about those. 
The second thing is that National is opposed in principle to validating regulations that have expired and clause 7 at least on a narrow reading will validate the narrower expired regulations from 2001. Even that is bad enough because it means all the levies that were collected in 2001 2002 and 2003 were inappropriately used once the regulations had expired. The Government used the levies even though it did not have the authority to do so and now the Government has come to Parliament essentially to ask us to fix up its mistake. 
Frankly members on this side of the Chamber will not partake in that legislative charade. We think the proper course would be to pay the levies back. Is that not really the principled approach—instead of our having to come along with the pooper-scooper and fix up this problem for the Government? Well we will not play any part in that.