Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). I was on the Education and Science Committee which heard the submissions on this bill. 
The debate on Part 1 so far has focused on what I think was a key part of what submitters wanted to talk to us about in the bill—that is student levies. I guess we could call this bill an omnibus bill; it deals with a range of things. The previous speaker Colin King certainly spoke about the private training establishment part of it. But most of the submitters wanted to talk to us about the student levies part of it which is covered by Part 1. 
They said with regard to the student levies part that they all supported the changes to the Education Act 1989. Submitters came at the bill from a range of options actually. Both the institutions themselves and the students affected by those levies came to make submissions. Just so that we are clear I tell the Committee that students make a range of payments in the tertiary environment at the moment. There is the course fee the student fee. That is obviously a compulsory fee; it is something they have to pay in order to take part in the course. But there is also a compulsory student levy which is put on by the institutions. The purpose of that levy is not to pay for the costs of providing the education but to provide for some additional services that the institution wishes to have in order to support students.  
What started happening—and this is the background as to why this bill is so necessary—is that in the course of the last year student levies increased hugely and quite suddenly right across the country. There was an up to 600 percent increase in one instance. It was at Canterbury University that that increase occurred last year. It is interesting to note that when we first heard of this bill of course Canterbury University was in much better shape than it is today—through actions not of its own making of course. But imagine what the student levy discussion might look like at Canterbury University in the forthcoming financial year and in the financial years to come. I think those reasons are exactly the reasons why we need to have transparency in the way the student levy is set; we certainly applaud that and want to support it.  
However we need to understand the root cause of what has gone on here. Before earthquakes or any of those natural disasters hit some of these institutions—universities polytechnics and private training establishments—why was it that across the board they felt the need to increase student levies to that degree by 103 percent or 600 percent? That needs investigation. 
The institutions submitting told us that yes they were looking to have a more user-pays regime for students. Why is that? It is because the Government funding going into their sector has been so squeezed that they have had to look elsewhere to make up the difference—it has been so squeezed. That is why tertiary institutions were bringing in a more user-pays regime and they were using the compulsory student levy to do that. 
I am surprised that the Government is not railing and fighting against the idea that universities can even have a student levy that is compulsory because it seems to think that that is a rather large evil. In talking about evil I acknowledge that we cannot consider this bill with its approach to student levies in Part 1 in isolation from its twin—the twin piece of legislation coming through this House at the same time which we know as the voluntary student membership bill. They are twins that we have to look at together in terms of the provision of student services. There is no doubt that the evil twin—the voluntary student membership bill—will gut students associations in such a way that they will not be able to provide the student services they currently provide or the student advocacy they currently provide for students. That will be a natural outcome of the evil twin. 
But this debate is about the good twin. This bill is the good twin. This bill aims to make sure that tertiary institutions cannot continue to increase the student levy without transparency.  
Hon Tau Henare 
: Are you supporting this bill? 
SUE MORONEY 
: I am supporting the good twin—I am supporting the good twin I say to Mr Henare. But I am not supporting the bad twin the evil twin—the one that will mean that student services will suffer. 
This bill gives the Minister the ability to actually cap the level of the student levy—the compulsory student levy—that tertiary institutions can and do charge and have been charging at ever-increasing rates. It caps that which is the right thing to do because in this environment with the cost of living skyrocketing as it is in New Zealand the last thing that students need to face is that ever-increasing spiral of increased levies for basic student services. 
But here is the rub: if the evil twin bill is passed through this Parliament then we know that student services will suffer as a result. Who will pick up those services? The Government will not provide more funding for them unless the Minister wants to get to his feet and give us that commitment today—and I would certainly welcome that. So who will they be left to? They will be left to the tertiary institutions. Institutions will need to pick up the student services that the students associations will no longer be able to fund because of the evil twin bill. That is why we need to talk about the twin bills together because student services are at risk here. Student services will fall down the middle. The evil twin bill will stop students associations from having the resources to provide services and this bill—the good twin bill—will stop tertiary institutions from increasing levies to provide better services. The outcome will be that a whole range of student services will not be available for students to support them through their education. 
That is the dilemma for Labour members. We want to support this bill and we do because we believe there should be transparency in the compulsory levies put together by tertiary institutions and we believe that the levies should be capped because we know that the increase in the user-pays regime that is going on under this Government which is putting more and more costs on to students is not the way forward. 
This is the first time the Government is acknowledging that but it is not dealing with the root cause. The root cause is that tertiary institutions are scrambling to look for other sources of revenue. They are going down a user-pays regime because their funding has been so squeezed for providing the basic course materials and the programmes that students pay fees for. Students pay fees for courses and programmes then they pay the student levy. Certainly that is what Part 1 deals with. All of the submitters said that this was the right way to go albeit the institutions when they came to see us said “Yes but—”. They said that yes students should have transparency over what the levy is put towards and how that is made up and yes there should be the ability for the Minister to cap it. But they said that the Minister needs to be very clear that that will put tertiary institutions in a very difficult funding environment—in a very very difficult funding situation—in which they will have to make decisions about cutting services. They will have to make decisions about not being able to provide what they have provided in the past.  
Hon Tau Henare 
: Righto that’s enough now. Winding down. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well Mr Henare says that is enough. Mr Henare needs to understand the position that his Government is putting tertiary institutions and students in by passing this bill in conjunction with the other bill that it seems so intent on forcing through before the election. 
As the deputy chair of the Education and Science Committee I want to respond to what the chairperson of that select committee said earlier when he roundly criticised what he called a filibuster on the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill. I remind that member—and I am sure he knows this—that that bill does not change one thing about the way the Royal Society operates today. That point needs to be made. The Royal Society is very happy to have had the amount of debate it has had on its bill.