Mapp Wayne: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14764] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This part is essentially the summary in a wide-ranging debate and National wants once again to restate its fundamental opposition to this legislation. It is statist. It is the sort of legislation one would expect from a Government that stems from a socialist background. I see the members across the Chamber are proud of the fact that they believe in a statist socialist background. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: As I was saying prior to the dinner break National has profound objections to this bill and we have these profound objections because of the Labour Government’s knee-jerk approach to dealing with a genuine problem. I think everyone would acknowledge there is a real problem involved in the question of how we protect consumers particularly overseas students in the event of failure of the institution they attend. 
Labour’s solution is the classic statist solution that we have grown to expect from this Government. Of course it is the reason why so many New Zealanders have come to the view that this Government has really run out of steam; that this Government has now just simply when confronted with a problem taken the easy way out. What is the easy way out for a Government of Labour’s heritage? The easy way out is more regulation more statutes and in particular more cost on the private sector. 
The private sector as the Government will know did not want this bill. The private sector is opposed to this bill. The private sector does not just oppose it because it does not want to do anything about the problem. It actually came up with realistic solutions that in fact all the speakers thus far have referred to. Members spoke about bonds as one particular option about insurance as another possible option and about better prudential supervision as a third option. They even spoke about self-regulation as probably the worst of all those private sector approaches where they would manage a levy system themselves. 
This was clearly not seen as the most desirable outcome but all three of those solutions were seen as better than the statist solution—the solution that is always the recourse of the neo-socialist such as the Minister sitting in the chair today the Hon Chris Carter who I am sure will be voting for this bill in just a few minutes. He and his Green mates in that other party that no one would recognise as a sensible party are from the only two parties in this entire Parliament that support this kind of State lunacy. Every other party is opposed including their erstwhile coalition partners of a sort the United Future party including the New Zealand First Party with which National has considerable differences these days and including the ACT party. All of those parties coming to the issue from different perspectives have all concluded that the statist solution is fundamentally wrong particularly when there are better options available. 
So even when the Government removed the retrospective nature of the bill that could not and did not fix its fundamental flaws—the fundamental flaw is the statist approach. This will not fix the problem in an effective way. There were better ways available to the Government. It should have listened to the sector and we would not be confronted with this bill which I guess reflects more than any other bill that we have debated today the fundamental divide between the old-fashioned statist solution and the contemporary approach which is to trust the private sector. Let the private sector organise its own solution maybe with a bit of State guidance and assistance in a prudential supervisory way but not the old-fashioned: “Let’s just levy them; make them pay; we’ll organise it and trust the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to deal with it.”