English Bill: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
English Bill: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I hope there is not going to be a presumption by the Chair that this is simply a narrow technical piece of legislation. You sat in the Chair and as far as I could see heard perhaps two contributions to the debate on Part 1 and then saw fit as is your right to bring that part of the debate to a close. I was seeking the call with new material and there was no indication actually that the debate had run out or become repetitive. This is not a narrow technical piece of legislation. It involves a number of aspects of significant public policy and I hope that fact will be taken into account in your consideration of the length of the debate for this part. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I thank the honourable member for that. I had indicated on the call before that that would be the last speaker and I thought I gave a clear signal that it would be. I am conscious of the issues the member raises. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The clarity of your signal does not necessarily confirm its correctness. I will address clause 7 because this clause and clause 5 was meant to get rid of the retrospective nature of the legislation. But in the increasingly sloppy way in which we see the Government handling legislation clause 7 is actually retrospective. What it does as we see when we read it is that: “Any funds … that are unspent on the day that this Act comes into force may be used in accordance with the purposes specified in section 238I of the Education Act 1989 (as amended by this Act).” 
So what this says is that funds that were raised for one purpose quite specifically laid out in legislation are going to be used for a completely different purpose. That is what that clause means. It means that funds that were raised under section 238I for as subsection (1)(a) states: “the development promotion and quality assurance of the export education sector … ” and it goes through a list of purposes: “(i) professional and institutional development; and (ii) marketing; and (iii) implementation of scholarship schemes;” and so on. 
Then with some care subsection (2) of 238I states: “The funds of the levy must be kept in a separate bank account that is used only for the purposes of the levy.”—all the paraphernalia of a very specific purpose for which that fund was raised. I bet that there was significant discussion at the time—in fact I know there was—about the raising of this levy because it was new in the education export sector and they were not keen to pay it. They were suspicious as they should have been that the Government agency set up to use this levy would display all the weaknesses that generically funded industry-based organisations like that do. We were familiar with them right across our economy in the past and less so now. So they would have debated that at some length and many of them would have been persuaded by the purposes set out in the Act and in the end it was pretty hard to resort to civil disobedience over a levy that had such noble purposes as those laid out in section 238I of the Education Act. So they went along with it and they paid it as law-abiding citizens whether or not they agreed with the legislation Parliament had passed. Today or when this bill passes—but today is a step along the way—we are going to agree to change those purposes some considerable time after that money was paid to the Government. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: It’s outrageous. It’s retrospective. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: It is—it is purely retrospective. There is absolutely no reason why this legislation should not replicate the provisions of section 238I(2) which states that “The funds of the levy must be kept in a separate bank account that is used only for the purposes of the levy.” So why do we not do that for this particular purpose? Why do we not say that the money levied for this purpose goes into a bank account to be used for the stated purpose in the legislation? That is what happened last time and people knew that when they paid their levy it went into that bank account to be used for that purpose. 
If the Government had not thought that mattered it would not have bothered taking up time and space in the statute to write it in. Quite frankly I was a bit surprised to see it there but there it is. It was put in there no doubt because people wanted it stated as clearly as that. They wanted to know that that bank account existed with that levy for that purpose and no one could mess around with it because they did not trust the Government. 
And what has happened? They have discovered that their mistrust was well placed. Now even though the money raised for that purpose went into the bank account specified in that section of that statute this Minister has decided to use it for something else. He has decided he has a better idea than he told them then. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: Sneaky. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well it is sneaky but more important it is actually unnecessary. There is no need to further corrode the confidence of this sector in the Government by passing this particular measure.