Hipkins Chris: Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8493. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): If ever the public of New Zealand needed another example of how out of touch and removed from the community this National Government has become they just got it from that member Paul Foster-Bell—although I will acknowledge it is the single biggest contribution that he has made to parliamentary proceedings so far this year. Mr Foster-Bell basically compared New Zealand’s universities to businesses and said they should operate like businesses. How out of touch can he be?I want to quote from the then-chair of Universities New Zealand in other words the former New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee Professor Roy Crawford who said: “The world’s leading universities have councils that are larger than company boards and are not based on a business model. This is strength not a weakness. They recognise that it is essential to have a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives to inform and enrich their decision making.” Mr Foster-Bell said: “Oh well these changes are relatively new and not all universities have adopted them in New Zealand yet.” No that is right—they have not adopted them because the universities themselves oppose them.I sat on the Education and Science Committee when the original bill introducing the changes that shrunk down the size of university councils went through. How many submissions do members think there were in favour of those changes? How many submissions in favour? Absolutely none. Not one single submission was in favour of the changes introduced by the National Government. Every single submitter opposed the changes being introduced. They did so very very vocally and their voices fell on deaf ears. They were completely ignored by the National Government.I bring a perspective to this as someone who has served as a student representative on a university council.Chris Bishop: Very good.CHRIS HIPKINS: Chris Bishop is nodding over there. I am not sure that he ever quite made it that far—Chris Bishop: I did.CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh he did make it that far.Chris Bishop: I was elected.CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh he was elected as a student representative on a university council. Well there you go. I hope that he will recognise the value of student representation unlike the person who was previously sitting beside him and contributing Paul Foster-Bell who does not see the value of student representation.I want to bring one specific example of the value of that student representation to the university council. That occurred during the time when I was on the Victoria University council when the then Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon—my good mate Professor Stuart McCutcheon—brought forward a proposal to change the academic grievance procedures of the university that would have effectively required students who went through the academic grievance process unsuccessfully to appeal to the courts. It would have removed their right to appeal to the university council so it would have effectively forced students who were having difficulty with the institution to go directly to the courts.We went to the council as the student representatives supported by the staff representatives and actually made the case that this recommendation would create more risk for the university not less. Do you know who backed us? The people who backed us at the council to overturn the recommendation of the Vice-Chancellor were the business people sitting on the university council. They recognised the contribution that the student representatives were making—a voice that would not have been heard had we not been there to give a contrary view. In the end that recommendation did not proceed and that was a good decision. As a result we ended up avoiding opening up the university to much greater risk through a recommendation that had not been properly thought through.I want to return to Professor Crawford’s comment when he said that the original changes proposed by the Government represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the distinct role universities play in societies. He went on to talk about the universities’ need for autonomy and academic freedom so that they can be the critic and conscience of society. The changes introduced by the Government absolutely undermine that because they increase the amount of ministerial control over university councils and decrease the amount of democratic representation that exists—of independent representation that exists—on university councils. There are a lot of good reasons why that is a bad thing. The example I mentioned is one of them; there are many others.Our universities should be independent of the Government. Of course the Government is a significant stakeholder as a significant funder. It has representation on the council but it should not be in ultimate control which is what it is going to be if the changes introduced by Steven Joyce are fully implemented. This is a good piece of legislation because it allows the institutions to determine what the ideal composition of their councils should be. They make the decisions not the Government. That is the way it should be.