Davis Kelvin: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Davis Kelvin: Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:669;Page:15986] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I think the title of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill should be “Another Waste of Time and Energy Bill”. The reason is that as an educator of some 20 years every time an education bill is brought to the House the first thing I do is look through it to see exactly where in the bill it has some suggestions that will help students to learn to achieve to pass their papers to earn degrees and to get qualifications. There is nothing whatsoever in this bill that will help one single student to learn a single thing; rather everything in this bill will jeopardise students from learning and jeopardise all the support that is provided for students by students associations. 
For example I ask who will take over the welfare of students those students who might be a bit hard up financially and need to go somewhere to get a bit of help from services such as food banks. What about legal help? When students need legal help for whatever reason where will they go for it? I remember that when my sister was at Waikato University she happened to be in a pub under age and she needed some help from somebody to help her get through that situation. Who would help her if those services are jeopardised? So I believe that the title of this bill should be the “Waste of Time and Energy (Education) Amendment Bill”. 
The bill could also be called the “Let’s Focus on the Wrong Stuff Bill” because this is the wrong stuff to be focusing on in terms of helping students to learn and helping students to gain their qualifications. Regardless of whether students are allowed to join a students association it will not help them to pass. In fact they would get more help if they were part of a students association because they would have all that support behind them. So this bill could also be called the “Let’s Just Whip the Support Out From Under the Feet of Students Bill” because that is exactly what it does. Like I said it jeopardises—it does not take away—all those services that students may avail themselves of. 
We just need to look over at Australia and what happened when the voluntary student membership bill was passed by the Australian Government. Students associations there collapsed basically. They collapsed effectively or had their services drastically reduced. Basically the bill implemented a user-pays system. Of course we know that tertiary students are not exactly the most well-off people on earth so their ability to access services was jeopardised because of the user-pays system. 
Tertiary institutions over in Australia had taken over services and assets previously owned and operated by students. This resulted in unpopular decisions being made. Elite sports teams for example were being funded instead of social sports teams. Of course social sports teams play a big part in the life of tertiary institutions. When I was at teachers college we had sports tournaments and competitions against other teachers colleges. What is wrong with that sort of thing? Students actually need to have a life outside of doing all their studying. Part of that whole social side of tertiary institutions actually helps students get through university as well when it comes down to the hard graft. If students are going to be studying all the time they need a bit of time out to do the social side of things. 
Also it was noted over in Australia that more than 1000 jobs were lost in the student services area. Well that is ridiculous. In this time of recession when people are looking for jobs this bill may jeopardise more jobs. We do not need that in New Zealand. We certainly cannot rely on the cycleway which we have heard so much about from the Government. This bill reminds me of drivers: there are drivers who are insured there are drivers who are not insured and there are drivers who wish they were insured when they have an accident.