Hipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20928. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am happy to take a quick call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). It may or may not be quick depending on how I go.  
Allan Peachey 
: Keep the emphasis on quick. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I know Allan Peachey wants me to take my full 10 minutes. He looks like he is sitting on the edge of his seat. He cannot wait for me to get into it. The Labour Party supports this bill.  
Amy Adams 
: He loves his own voice. He’ll speak for 10 minutes. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. The Labour Party supports this bill but I do have some concerns. Before I move on to those I will talk particularly about the importance of transparency in the setting of student services levies. Increased transparency around the setting of those levies is very important. The ability of students to understand what they are paying for and to have some say in what they are charged for student services is very important. In my time at Victoria University I had a huge amount to do with the student services there which were paid for out of a levy that covered the Student Health Service student counselling and a variety of services that I think all of us in the House would agree are really important to provide to students and therefore it is important that they be paid for.  
Of course the question that remains is that if the Minister for Tertiary Education uses his power under this provision we are about to pass in order to cap the amount of money that student services can charge for those services by way of a levy then that leaves them two options: to increase user charges or to cut student services. I know what is most likely to happen. The most likely thing to happen unless the university polytechnic institution or wananga comes to the party and increases the— 
Paul Quinn 
: Or prospect for members. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: What was that? 
Paul Quinn 
: Why don’t they go and get some more members? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I am not sure what Paul Quinn is talking about. He asks why they do not go and get some more members. I say to Paul Quinn that the institutions cannot get more students because his Government has capped the number of students whom an institution can enrol. I notice that Paul Quinn has finally woken up. It looked like he was dozing off. He might want to go back into his slumber lest he look like more of an idiot than he already does.  
The issue is that tertiary institutions—the universities polytechnics and wananga—will have a choice between increasing levies and if they cannot increase levies to pay for the increased cost of students services they can introduce more part charges more user charges for students or they can cut services. Having seen a reasonable amount of what universities and polytechnics have done in the past I think that they are most likely to cut student services. I think that would be a great tragedy.  
The critical issue in tertiary education is making sure that the institutions are adequately resourced to deliver all of the services they need to. That includes student services some of which are paid for by way of levy and some of which are cross-subsidised from tuition fees. There is absolutely a cross-subsidy between tuition fees and student services because some student services are integral to the institutions’ abilities to deliver academic programmes. For example the provision of student computing facilities is a student service but it is absolutely integral to the ability of a student to undertake their course of study. In some institutions there may be some levy costs associated with that; in other institutions it will simply be paid for out of the tuition fees. Transparency around that arrangement is important and this bill delivers greater transparency. I think that is very important.  
I will talk about a potentially significant increase in student levies coming up around the corner if this Government has its way and passes Heather Roy’s Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill that will introduce voluntary student membership. At the moment students association membership is a levy and if the tertiary institutions pick up the services provided by students associations they will almost certainly fund that by way of a levy. In 1999 when students were given a choice between whether they wanted a compulsory or a voluntary regime for students association membership they overwhelmingly voted for compulsory membership. It is always useful to remember that. But Victoria University where I studied decided that it would provide many of the services the students association provided if voluntary membership was voted for. The university would still provide subsidies for clubs it would still provide a certain number of activities and so on. It would have levied students for that. The university’s levy would have delivered fewer services and cost more than the students association levy would have cost because the university could not do it as cheaply.  
This is the very real prospect that tertiary institutions will face next year. If this Government passes the bill which it promised it would not pass but now says that it will then tertiary institutions will face a very real dilemma: do they increase the levies that students pay or do they cut services—do they simply accept that those services will go? I suspect that in a lot of cases students will end up paying more for less. One way or another they will end up paying more in order to get less. That is one of the downsides of voluntary students association membership. There are many others but we will come to those I am sure when the voluntary student membership bill ends up being debated in the House again. Transparency around the way those levies are set will be very important.  
Another concern of course is that students at the moment have a real say on how the levies are set because the levies that are charged by a tertiary institution are ultimately determined by the governing council. At the moment students are guaranteed representation on that governing body. In most instances where there is a strong students association it is done through the students association. With a voluntary regime there is no guarantee that the quality of student representation will be maintained and therefore students may not have an effective voice in having their say on the way the student services levies fixed by institutions are set. I think that that would be a great tragedy.  
Labour supports the parts of this bill that introduce greater transparency around the setting of student services levies because we have seen a significant increase in student services levies under this Government—up 600 percent at Canterbury University. 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: How much? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Six hundred percent at Canterbury University under this Government and I think there should be a great amount of scrutiny around the setting of student services levies. One of the concerns that students will of course be expressing is that in an environment where institutions are choked of funding by this National Government one option they have is to increase their revenue by increasing the amount that students pay directly for services through increased student services levies. So placing a greater control on that is important but of course that does not remedy the problem. It puts a control on the transfer of costs to students; it does not remedy the problem of where the institutions get the money from to provide those services in the first place. If the Government is not willing to front up with the funding that creates very real dilemmas for the institutions.  
The price of tertiary education—the amount that students are forking out—has gone up 18 percent since National took office and student services levies of course are only one of the causes with tuition fees being the lion’s share of that. Increased costs for tertiary education mean increased student loan balances and longer repayment times. There are a whole lot of other reasons why that is a bad idea. We want to bring down the cost of tertiary education. Of course this is what the National Party campaigned on at the last election—bringing down the cost of tertiary education. Well no one is hearing National members talking about that any more. They are not talking about bringing down the cost of tertiary education any more because there is irrefutable evidence that is absolutely clear: the cost of tertiary education under this National Government has gone up by over 18 percent since it took office. National has not kept its promise to keep down the costs to students and some of the measures it is proposing including voluntary students association membership and further capping of the funding for tertiary institutions will only exacerbate that problem.  
I will briefly talk about some of the other aspects of the bill that the Labour Party supports. We do support the establishment of the new export education body. That is a good thing. I encourage the Government to keep Murray McCully as far away from that as it possibly can. He has plenty of other things that he likes to meddle in and I think he could keep his hands off the export education industry—it seems to be doing pretty well. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: Arrogant! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I agree with Jonathan Coleman; Murray McCully is incredibly arrogant. He is possibly the most arrogant Minister in the Government so I think it is important that Murray McCully be kept as far away from international education as is possible. [ 
Interruption 
] Old “Maestro” over there—maybe they should let “The Maestro” take over international education. If he did as good a job of that as he did of running Melissa Lee’s campaign in Mt Albert—[ 
Interruption 
] I want Jonathan Coleman to come and run the National Party campaign in my electorate; I really would like that. I would be quite happy to pay his air fares for him to come and run National’s campaign in Rimutaka. I would be in in a landslide after the fantastic job that he did in Mt Albert!  
Overall to return to the bill that we are debating the Education Amendment Bill (No 4)—as tempting as it is to continue to talk about Jonathan Coleman just because there is so much material there to work with—I say that the Labour Party supports the bill. This is the final reading of the bill and we are very happy to support it.