Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:669;Page:15983] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 As we are debating the title of this bill I think it could be called the “Increased User-Pays for Students Bill”. In reality if we take all of the ideological argument out of the bill which I will get into in a moment the bill will significantly increase costs to a number of students. 
At the moment a lot of services are provided by students associations using a relatively modest fee taken from all students. They are provided universally and are universally available to all students. Under this bill students associations will not have the ability to do that. Students will have to pay individually for a lot of the services currently provided by students associations. 
The other point is that in some cases universities may well choose to pick up and provide those services if the students association is no longer able to do that. Universities may well decide that they will provide some of those services but they will not be able to do so at the cost that current students associations can do it. Students associations have a huge amount of voluntary labour involved with them and therefore they are able to provide services a lot more cheaply than universities can. That is one of the reasons why we should call this bill the “Education (Increase in User-Pays for Students) Bill”. I know that for a fact because back in 1999 when we had a referendum on whether membership of the students association at Victoria University should be voluntary or compulsory overwhelmingly students voted to retain the compulsory membership element. 
The university did have a contingency plan in place should students have voted for voluntary membership. It basically involved charging students an additional levy that would replace the students association levy. So students would be no better off financially; in fact they would pay more. The university knew that it could not deliver the same services the students association delivered at the same cost. The university knew it would end up having to pay significantly more and therefore it was going to pass that cost on to students and students were going to pay more. 
I understand that some pretty compelling evidence was provided to the select committee that argued just that—that this bill will not decrease costs to students. It will increase costs to students. PricewaterhouseCoopers I believe gave evidence to the select committee that suggested that would be the case. That is one of the reasons why this bill could be called the “Education (Increase in User-pays for Students) Amendment Bill”. 
It could also be called the “Abolition of Campus Culture Amendment Bill” because students associations deliver a huge amount in terms of the culture of campuses not just at universities but also at polytechnics. In fact at some of the smaller polytechnics they have a critical role in delivering cultural activities and cultural services to students and contributing to the vibrancy of tertiary education in this country. I think it will be a real shame to see some of those things go by the wayside if this bill is passed. 
There are other titles that have been suggested concerning the removal of choice for students which is inherent in this bill. Students will not get to choose whether they want to keep the system compulsory or voluntary as they did in 1999 under what I think was a very good compromise worked out by Tau Henare Deborah Morris and other colleagues in the then New Zealand First Party. Students will not get that choice this time around. I am disappointed because I think it would be good to see them given that choice. I would support a referendum and Labour has an amendment in that frame. The 1999 referendum forced students associations to sharpen up their acts. 
Yes I do think some of them need to sharpen up their act. Some of the things that have gone on at my old students association at Victoria University in the last few years are totally unjustifiable. I think the accountability back to students that would be required by a referendum that gave students the choice of whether to continue with compulsory membership or to have voluntary membership would go some way to addressing that. We sharpened up our act an awful lot when we knew that students were going to be voting on whether they would keep the students association membership compulsory or get rid of it. I think some of the students associations around the country could use that same discipline at the moment. Unfortunately that choice that opportunity is being removed from them. That is one of the reasons why this bill could be called the “Education (Removal of Choice) Amendment Bill”. 
There are some other slightly more cynical titles that I can come up with. The bill could be called the “Be Nice to Heather Roy Bill”. Up until she lost her job as a Minister the National Government was going to vote against this bill. Heather Roy then lost her job as a Minister and the Government decided it would vote in favour of her bill. There is nothing wrong with being nice to Heather Roy. I happen to think Heather Roy is quite a nice person. But I do think it is ironic that National members suddenly decided they would support this bill in order to be nice to Heather and to make Heather feel warm and fuzzy.