Bennett David: Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett David: Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8497. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): The National Party opposes the Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill in the name of Mr David Cunliffe. The bill seeks to backtrack reforms that were in the previous Education Amendment Bill (No 2) around governance changes in this area and especially seeks to reinstate the previous requirements around student representation.I do not think that anybody in this House would deny the importance of the student body and also the academic bodies in regard to tertiary institutions. But there are also other interested parties as well. The Government is one of those interested parties as a big funder of those institutions and the community has a role to play as well because the community wants to see a strong institution in its area.When it comes to looking at the council and the board it should not just be a matter of—as the Opposition is seeking in this case—appointing students or the tertiary sector people or whatever mantra they use for that to determine the success of someone on the board. I think we need to take a more objective approach and look at what good governance generally is. I think the speech of Paul Foster-Bell was an excellent speech in which he detailed through a number of boards and basically bodies that run institutions in the tertiary sector overseas. It was very obvious from those examples that he gave that there is a predominance of small boards—smaller than what is intended in this bill. This bill intends to reinstate the size from 12 to 20 members as opposed to the eight to 12 that the size has changed to now in the current legislation.When we look at those overseas examples they are definitely in the realm of the lower number and they show themselves to be most effective for those large institutions that have very strong academic records. When we also look at the corporate sector there has always been a movement to lower board sizes in that area as well. That is a justification because they look at the skills and the mix of skills that they have got rather than necessarily the size as determining the success of an organisation. Again Mr Paul Foster-Bell gave some very good examples of some very big organisations in the corporate sector that have quite small boards and are seen as very effective organisations and companies that are able to deliver for their shareholders and also for their communities.This bill comes from a philosophical point of view—from the Labour Party of course and supported by the Green Party obviously in the last speech by Gareth Hughes. There were a few facts in that Green Party speech that were not actually correct. When you look at democracy as the previous speaker said that gives some kind of expectation that there would be an election for all board members on a university council which is not how it worked previously and is not the intention of the Labour bill either. It is not something like the Parliament for example where you have a general election. These board members are appointed in many cases so there is not that democracy—as the Green Party tried to indicate—of having election by peers because that is not the case under the bill that is being proposed.Also the Government does not direct what happens with the student levy; the student levy goes to the student institution itself. So the Green Party is not correct in saying that. The universities are determining that they might wish to have a student levy on their own account at this time but that is something that they have to determine and the board that is there at this time will have to determine that. So it is not the case that the Government determines what the student levy is as that member tried to present—Gareth Hughes: The student support levies are prescribed by Joyce in regulations.DAVID BENNETT: No that is not the case. The member should actually go and investigate what actually happens at universities and see what happens with student levies and student boards but that would be too much for the Green Party in this House to do.Gareth Hughes: You lose the argument so you get all personal.DAVID BENNETT: Oh no no. This is just telling the truth mate. That is how it works. With the universities themselves there has not been a great movement for a change in the legislation. There has not been something that has been shown to be ineffective. If we look at the polytech sector it has had smaller boards for a number of years now and they have proven to be very effective—