Franks Stephen: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:16204] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I am always tempted to diverge from letting this House and the country know what the ACT party position is on a bill like this by the bits from preceding speeches that distract me. It is amusing I have to say to hear a reasonably coherent account from United Future’s Murray Smith of the reasons that this bill should not proceed and to then hear him say that nevertheless United Future will vote for it. That sort of thing is always amusing. 
There are three very strong reasons why this bill should not get any further than this stage today. The first one should be absolutely instinctive for every member of this House. It should stick in the craw of every legislator when a piece of considered legislation the law of the land is simply suspended by Government bullying. That is what this House is subjecting itself to. That is what we are going along with. We have seen an institution follow the procedures laid down in the Education Act and now three times as it has gone to use the rights that this House has said it should have it has been stopped in its tracks by a lot of craven people by the Government bringing in a bill and saying: “If you go ahead we will whack you.” 
The Government is not even giving us parliamentarians the excuse for allowing this to go ahead of having taken the earlier bills through. That at least would have allowed us to persuade ourselves that it was a legitimate use of parliamentary procedure. We might have thought that if it had taken the earlier two efforts any further than the introduction stage there might have been some dignity in our allowing this one to proceed. But what has actually happened is that the Government is so cynical that it introduces legislation and then does nothing with it. 
I could stand here and read out the speech I made in May 2000 when it used precisely the same kind of tactic to prevent people in this country from using Parliament’s law—just doing what was laid down in the Education Act coming up to the standard required for a university asking for assessment going through the process and getting registration. 
It is interesting to me that the effete Minister Maharey did not come here to defend his own piece. He sent Parliament’s bully. The bully on the right hand of the Prime Minister came to the House to push this little piece of bullying in. It would not be the man who has had the life of blameless excellence bringing his delicate fingers here; he would rather have the speeches in the words of Mr Mallard! It may be that it is just these scruffy tradespeople from the polytechnics—these upstarts do not appeal to our exalted former university lecturer. He does not want to get his hands dirty coming here to explain why it is that Unitec cannot join the Auckland University of Technology Auckland University and Massey University in competing in the enormous Auckland market—a market of course that is not restricted to New Zealand. I have not heard a single thing here that explains why Green members who are so keen on biodiversity think that diversity when it gets to human affairs is a real problem and that the only way one can run a sensible country is to get a wise helmsman on the rudder. 
I suspect that Nandor Tanczos does not have a very good memory but he probably would not realise that the “rudder” metaphor comes from the “Great Helmsman”—Mao Tse-Tung of course. He had his hand on the rudder and was steering China down his unwise path until it finally let 100 flowers bloom and realised that businesses companies people and everything benefits from biodiversity. 
We now have a piece of dishonest legislation that talks about the public interest but carefully does not define it. I decided that I would wait until I had heard the speeches made by those parties that plan to support Labour’s dirty little trick until I could see what they thought the public interest might be. I cannot see any public interest whatsoever in telling institutions in this country that they should not aspire to satisfy the following tests: “They are primarily concerned with the more advanced learning the principal aim being to develop intellectual independence:”. “Oh no!”—says Labour—“We can’t have any more who are aiming at that!” “Their research and teaching are closely interdependent and most of their teaching is done by people who are active in advancing knowledge:”. Labour says: “Oh no no we just want people who can read from books.” “They meet international standards of research and teaching:”. Labour thinks it would not be in New Zealand’s interests to have any more institutions doing that would it! “They are a repository of knowledge and expertise:”. Once again we have all the expertise we need in the hands of the existing teaching unions and the university staff unions! We would not want to see any competition there! 
Lastly “They accept a role as critic and conscience of society;”. We can all see why Labour does not want any more of those around why it is necessary to pull up the shutters. We can understand why the Government’s handmaidens the Greens would not want that either—because one would not want any of these claims about GE or genetic modification to be subject to too close a scrutiny by people with some international standards of expertise and knowledge! 
It is a simple old-fashioned piece of Tammany Hall - type politics. Education unions say: “You scratch our back. You give us money for training programmes and we’ll make sure there’s some money for your election. We’ll make sure there are some donations for the Labour Party. You look after us and we’ll look after you.” “Looking after” in this context means making sure there is no genuine competition. “Looking after” involves making sure that the excellence of the brand will not be allowed to speak for itself. 
That is what should be happening in the tertiary sector. The Government should not protect the tenure of people who cannot hack it. If the Minister were really interested in the public interest in high standards and in upholding standards that make a university degree different from a polytechnic or other qualification he would say: “My effort should be making sure that I de-accredit the ones that are hopeless.” Nothing would send a better or quicker message than his putting his effort not into blocking someone who meets the standard and can join the club but into saying who should be expelled from this club to encourage all the others and to make the brand really mean something. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Waikato Law School. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Waikato Law School is a very apt nomination from the National Party. We have seen the poor quality of University of Waikato law graduates. We see it almost every day in this House when the former dean of the law school answers questions to mislead us as to law. 
We have an international market. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has established itself around the world. The University of Chicago now has campus connections in Australia. The University of Phoenix had 40000 people on Internet qualifications when I last looked at I and was referred to in  
The Economist 
 as one of the better qualifications around. Auckland University has a linkage with 21 other universities for international education. But this bill’s kind of primitive brand protection of anti-competition will not shelter the low-quality institutions. This has nothing to do with the strategic assessment of New Zealand’s needs. This has everything to do with suppressing competition from what the Government regards as upstarts who have not been prepared to accept bullying and who have not been prepared to just lie down when the Government says to them: “Ignore the law; just do as we say.” It is a disgrace that Parliament is even allowing it to be debated past this stage. I can see Green members and New Zealand First members have already persuaded themselves that they will support this bill. We know that United Future will support it because it is the lapdog but the absolute patent— 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I remind the member that that is a derogatory term to use. Under  
Speakers’ Rulings  
calling a member or a party that name is not allowed. That has already been ruled on. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: United Future has made a practice of speaking and barking loudly and then voting with its master. We know that it will decide shortly before the election—possibly 3 months out if it can risk leaving it so late—that it will find an issue that it can strongly disagree with the Government on and try to re-establish a separate brand. But there will be people who will remember this. People will remember the number of times that United Future has spoken of independence and voted in a way that shows what it really is—on a leash. This bill should be voted down as soon as we go to vote on it. This bill is not in the interests of the tertiary sector.