Shearer David: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
Shearer David: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
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DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I congratulate you Mr Assistant Speaker Ross Robertson on your post. It is a pleasure to have you sitting in the Chair today. 
I will start by saying that Labour supports the Education Amendment Bill (No 4) going to the Education and Science Committee. The bill contains some good provisions that are designed to tighten up the tertiary education area. For that reason it is important that the select committee hears from submitters on those provisions. 
As the Minister for Tertiary Education just said the bill seeks to strengthen three areas. The first area is strengthening the regulation of the tertiary education system by improving and modernising the legal requirements of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Most people would say that although the changes are not completely overdue they are positive and are working in a positive direction. 
The second area is facilitating the expansion of the international education system and safeguarding the quality and reputation of New Zealand’s education system. International education is an extraordinarily important industry for New Zealand now. It is a $2 billion industry. It has grown incredibly rapidly but is also quite fragile. Looking across the Tasman at Australia we saw what an assault on an Indian student in Australia did to the Australian international education system. The publicity around that event caused many students from India who were wanting to study in Australia to consider going elsewhere. I think New Zealand picked up a number of students as a result. So the international education system is extremely fragile. I think that by strengthening it in this regard—and I believe that this is overdue—we will be able to maintain those standards and to continue to attract not just any student but the top students into New Zealand because of the system we have and what we can provide. 
Lastly the bill looks to increase transparency and accountability in the tertiary education system. Once again I think that is an important area. In the past couple of years universities in particular have started to increase the levies on students. In 2010-11 many universities’ levies have gone up about 100 percent. Rather than being $200 they are nearly $400. In other tertiary providers the increase has not been as great but nevertheless has been fairly significant. 
Although on the one hand I applaud the Minister’s desire to change the situation and to put a cap on the levies we need to look a little more deeply at why the levies are being imposed in the first place. The real reason is that funding for universities is being capped. As a result of that last year 9000 potential students were not able to gain entry into our tertiary institutions. As a result universities have decided they need to levy students for really basic stuff like buildings libraries and extra student places. They are increasing their fees so that that stuff can take place. In addressing a number of students who were protesting about this issue Professor Rod Carr the Vice-Chancellor of Canterbury University said that the students are getting “a crap deal” from the Government because it is freezing all the other funding to universities which has meant that the universities have had to impose these levies. The levies are not imposed because the universities feel they can gain more money—no not at all—the universities are imposing the levies because they cannot afford to run the university to the right and proper standard that might attract the international students I was just talking about. The universities simply do not have sufficient funding. They are levying students to pay for the most basic of things. 
It gets worse. It gets much worse because at the same time that the bill is coming in and the Minister is making a big deal about capping levies regulating the levies that the universities are charging and making them more transparent so that the student body can have a greater say in the way that the levies are imposed—again I applaud that initiative—we have the voluntary student membership bill coming through. That bill will gut the very representation that the Minister wants to consider the levies. It will gut that advocacy and that representation. 
The students associations in New Zealand will have much less representation much less health-care and much less in the way of sports cultural events and advocacy. They will have much less of a whole range of support structures that students have come to rely on and that I and others who have gone through university paid for in the past. Students are not going to have them any more. It is very simple. We know that for a fact. It is not fiction. This bill is not about anything other than a piece of ideology looking around for a problem and saying that somehow we will provide more choice in the system. Students actually have the choice now to opt out of the students association—they have the choice now. What we know for a fact—what we know from Australia—is that as soon as we take away the nature of students associations as they are today the money that goes into them collapses. As a result we end up having less money fewer services and less voluntary support for the services the associations provide. We end up with a poorer university environment as a result. 
What happens then? Well strangely enough the universities take over the funding of some of those core activities that the students associations up till now have been providing. While the Minister is laudably bringing in this legislation to cap restrict regulate and come down on those universities that are levying students what will actually happen is that with the voluntary student membership bill coming in the fees that universities are charging will have to rise. If they do not rise the core services that the students rely on will disappear. On the one hand this bill is laudable but on the other hand it completely ignores the real problem facing universities today which is a lack of funding and the fact that the Government is about to gut the students associations and the services they provide. 
While we are on the subject of the gutting of services the pulling of services let us turn to another area of tertiary education which is adult education. 
Hon Members 
: It’s gone. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: It has gone. Let me tell members what has happened to adult education over the last few months. 
Simon Bridges 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was just wondering about Kelvin Davis who is sitting opposite me with his computer out in front of him like that. I was wondering whether it was appropriate to have basically a broadcast from Toshiba in the House. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ross Robertson) 
: No the member will be seated. It is perfectly legitimate. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Adult education which has been gutted in this country was an institution that New Zealanders relied on. I relied on it. Many people in this House I bet went to night school as part of their educational experience. The number of schools that are offering night school education has gone from 212 down to 24. Well done! A whole bunch of people out there who wanted to enter the education system for the second time because they had missed out somehow the first time round now do not have the opportunity. On average 200000 people a year used to enjoy adult education; now the number is a fraction of that—a fraction. Here is the kicker: for 300 metres of Mr Joyce’s “Holiday Highway” we could have had adult education every year; for 300 metres of the “Holiday Highway” which has a cost-benefit analysis of less than a dollar we could have actually funded adult education. It is about priorities.