Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:16884] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on clause 4A of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill which changes the constitutions of tertiary institution councils. I think it would be quite useful at this point for the Committee to understand in greater detail how the existing legislation has been put into effect. Under the existing law a tertiary institution council includes students staff alumni business employers and representatives appointed by the Government in the case of universities. The Government has changed the rules in relation to polytechnics and institutes of technology. I will deal primarily with universities because those are the councils I am most familiar with. 
A university council has between one and three student representatives between one and three staff representatives and a variety of other representatives in statute. Under the existing legislation the student representatives are nominated and appointed by the students association. In the case of the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association there are two representatives on the university council one of which the students association has decided through its constitution will be the president of the students association. That person is of course by definition elected by the students at the institution. 
The second position set aside for students at Victoria University is elected by the student populace at large in an election administered by the students association. At this point I point out—and I am looking forward to hearing Tau Henare’s views on this issue; he seems to be very eager to take a call—that the election at large administered by the students association is a very cost-effective and cheap way of getting the student representatives elected to the university council. Students associations run those elections. All students are eligible to vote in them already so adding another slot on the ballot paper to elect another representative position is a very cost-effective way of getting a student representative for the council who is elected by all students and therefore is representative of the student body at large. 
I believe quite firmly that an election administered by the university would probably have a lower turn-out than an election administered by the students association. As evidence for that I look at the alumni representatives on the councils. There is a very very low turn-out in the elections for the alumni representatives on university councils in comparison with the turn-out for the election of student representatives in students association elections. So I think it is really important that we understand how that works at the moment. 
Other institutions work a little bit differently. Massey University for example I think has three student representatives on the council; I think it had an extramural representative when I was involved a representative from the Maori students and the president of the Massey University Students Associations Federation. The federation of the students associations of Massey University allows it to incorporate the student representatives from the different campuses where they have separate students associations—[ 
Interruption 
] What was that? 
Hon Tau Henare 
: No not you; the dark one. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Oh right—discrimination that is what that is! There are different rules depending on which institution we are talking about and I think it is important that we understand those. Under the amendment put forward by Heather Roy to the bill the elections of student representatives will be solely the responsibility of the tertiary institutions concerned. It does not actually prescribe how they will conduct those elections. It simply says they will have to conduct the election in accordance with the statutes made by the council. Of course the council could make a statute saying that it will have an election and only the people the vice-chancellor picks will be eligible to stand in the election. Under this legislation that would be perfectly acceptable. I think that would be totally outrageous but it would allow the council effectively to hand-pick which students it wanted to be represented on the council and therefore severely diminish— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Yawn! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I say to Mr Henare that I know it is late and he wants to go and have his little nap but he will have to bear with us a little bit longer. 
I think one of the really important parts of having the students association appointing or nominating the student representatives to council is that it is very democratic.