Street Maryan: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Street Maryan: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:659;Page:8601] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I will begin with something that has been lacking in the contributions of the National members to the entire passage of this Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill and that is a vision for what the polytech sector ought to be able to achieve and contribute to New Zealand. Polytechnics provide an extraordinary range of educational opportunities which an intelligent Government should be able to use in order to guide them to meet the future needs of this country. The skills development that is required at this time in our history depends on the kind of vision that one has for the country a decade or two—or more—on from here. We know that that kind of vision and the kind of energy that could be given to the polytech sector is missing because this is the only piece of legislation that the Minister for Tertiary Education the Hon Anne Tolley can come up with to direct our polytechs for the future. 
This is a bad law. It is a limiting constricting and restrictive bill. We should be looking at how to harness and energise the polytech sector to do what is needed to provide the skills for the future of New Zealand. This bill is not a response to regional learning needs. Polytechs are a response to regional learning needs. That is their purpose. They fulfil an extraordinary need. They fill a gap in an essential part of the delivery of tertiary education in New Zealand. Part of it concerns the preparation and the upskilling of the workforce—that is the current workforce not just the future workforce. So for those people who are not able because of family commitments to migrate to large cities to go to universities then polytechnics are exactly the right place for them to access tertiary education opportunities—whether they are diploma certificate or degree programmes—locally and as close to them as possible. 
If this was a visionary piece of legislation that equipped New Zealand to meet the educational needs that would prepare us adequately for the future it would be applied to wananga and to universities as well. If there was anything visionary about this legislation why would it not be applied to wananga and universities? The answer is that the Maori Party would not have a bar of this legislation being applied to wananga and therefore there was a political reason for the Government not to extend the provisions of this legislation to wananga. The reason it is not extended to universities is that they are too hard for the Minister to deal with. So we are left with the polytechs. 
What is the basis of this legislation? The Minister has tried to outline—for the first time I have to say in the entire presentation of this bill before the House—some rationale for the development of this legislation. It goes like this. It is based on old information; it is based on a mentality that the Government had when it was in Opposition. I thought that it might have got out of that mindset by now a year into its tenure as the Government. Government members are stuck back in their Opposition heyday of accusing everything in polytechs of being a twilight golf course—that everything was a twilight golf programme that they could mock parody and ridicule. Any concerns about those objections raised in the 9 years those members were in Opposition were—if they were justified—addressed by the previous Labour Government. This Government is acting on old information and outdated data. It needs to get out more and go and visit the local polytechs to find out what they are in fact offering. They are upskilling not only our young people and not only our second-chance learners but adult and working people in New Zealand who are looking to upskill and reskill themselves in the event that they have lost jobs. So this Government has taken this legislation to address old outdated information. Its members have not kept up the analysis is inadequate and the recipe is not appropriate. 
This legislation cuts back the numbers on polytechnic councils. That is the major thing that this legislation does. Nothing in the bill is about a vision for polytechs. Nothing in it is about the skill needs of the present and future workforce of New Zealand. It is simply all about governance. Who said that governance was in trouble in the polytechs? I absolutely dispute the Minister’s claim about viability in the polytech sector. If the Minister had some vision about polytechs she would know that it costs to provide tertiary education opportunities in a long skinny country like ours just as it costs to provide hospitals in regions. The purpose of having polytechs in regions is to enable educational opportunities that are post-compulsory to be made as available as they can be to as many people as possible. That is a vision; that is the start of a vision. In response to that legitimate vision for polytechs this Government is cutting back the numbers on councils. In so doing I say to Maori Party members it cuts iwi representation—it cuts them out. The bill says that it is desirable to have Maori representation but it makes no effort to ensure that that happens. 
The bill cuts out student representation—representation from students who have contributed. I will quote from chief executive officers who made submissions to the Education and Science Committee. The chair of the Wintec council Gordon Chesterman said of the students association that its members had contributed greatly to the council in the 9 years he had been chair. They had been very professional and had made a great contribution. He said: “I certainly wouldn’t be frightened of having that continue around the table.” So what is it that the Minister is frightened of? What is it that the Minister does not want to have around the polytech council tables that could assist appropriate governance? It is community input community representation and people knowing what is required on the ground in each region. It is in fact people to direct the polytech through the governance structure to deliver its mandate to provide relevant tertiary education offerings and courses to the people in those regions. 
So we have the cutting out of iwi representation of representation from students and staff and of industry representation. Surely this Minister could have listened to employers around the country but that is not the pattern of her tenure in this portfolio. She does not make a habit of listening to anybody so even industry representatives who are able to say what industry requires in each region are unable to be guaranteed a position on a polytech council. This is not a visionary piece of legislation. It is not even about a tight financial environment as the Minister said in her speech. This is about a lack of vision for the tertiary education sector.