Burns Brendon: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Burns Brendon: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5952] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am very pleased to rise tonight in opposition to the Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill. I think I will be able to make a worthwhile contribution to the debate and perhaps a unique contribution because I may be the only member of the House who has actually been a member of a polytechnic council. I will speak from that experience. 
First I want to note the contribution from Colin King the member for Kaikoura who managed to fill only 2 minutes of his speaking slot. He should be standing in opposition to this bill because he represents a community that will lose its representation on the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology council under the arrangements introduced by the Minister for Tertiary Education tonight. His community will hold him to account for that decision. 
I joined the Nelson Polytechnic council—which later became the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology council—more than 10 years ago before the previous Labour Government came to office. So for Mr King to suggest that this issue is a legacy of Labour maladministration ignores the cyclical problems that are very much there in the polytech sector. At the first council meeting I attended in February 1999 we inherited a $1.7 million deficit. Who was in Government at that time? National. What was the reason for that deficit? It was largely because the Asian financial crisis had happened and like most polytechnics—they are always strapped for cash—that polytechnic had embarked upon recruitment of Asian students to try to fill its numbers and bolster its budget. With the downturn in student numbers the polytechnic went into the red. I was one of the council members who tried to ensure that it got back some form of viability. 
The council had about 12 members. It included two iwi representatives later becoming three who were important helpful worthwhile members of that council. They contributed fully. That community has a big Maori population. A large percentage of the students—about 2000 equivalent full-time students—were Maori and the council was proud to have Maori membership on it. That situation will go under this legislation and that is utterly reprehensible. I hope Tau Henare will take a call to speak in the way that he has spoken so boldly on the same issue affecting the Auckland super-city. 
A representative of the trade unions was on the council and that was very useful because the chief executive was able to talk to the unions and negotiate pay rises. A Nelson-Marlborough representative of the Employers Federation was also on the council. So it was a balanced council and it was supported by the community. The reason we were able to turn round that deficit of $1.7 million and get that polytechnic back on its feet was that the council was representative of the community it served. 
Colin King 
: Is that member sure that is true? 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Absolutely. But polytechnics like many other businesses—if one wants to describe a polytech as a business—are cyclical. They are very finely tuned; they are never much in the black. They often teeter towards the red because many of them are regional institutions like the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology of which I have spoken. If there is a drop in student numbers in a major course—like nursing—for cyclical or other reasons polytechs can be pushed into the red and into financial loss. There are ways to combat that and council membership is really important in building an institution and improving its viability. 
For instance in the case of the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology we looked at the ground training wing a huge air force - owned facility on the perimeter of Blenheim in Marlborough. It was built during the time of the former National Government. It had spare capacity and that facility is now used by the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology to train dozens of civilian aviation engineers and to bolster the finances of that institution. That case was put up and supported by council members including me. Mr King represents Marlborough. He has to go back to his community and tell them that he is in favour of gutting their council’s membership and leaving it with one community representative who almost certainly will be from Nelson. He has to go back and tell his voters that that is the support he has given to this bill. 
Another initiative was using the polytechnic site in Blenheim which had spare capacity to establish the Marlborough Wine Research Centre—a national wine centre of excellence—on the campus in Budge Street. That centre has received $10 million of research funding. It is adding value to the wine industry. Marlborough is the centre of the nation’s wine industry. That centre is another example of a strongly supported initiative driven in part by the community council membership that the Minister now wants to gut with the bill before us tonight. 
A final endeavour that was undertaken with strong council and community-driven support was the fostering of aquaculture training in Nelson-Marlborough. The mussel industry is based in Nelson-Marlborough and the polytechnic established training that was driven and supported by the council membership which included—at times—representatives of Marlborough who had a background in the mussel industry. 
I ask Mr King who will stand up for Marlborough in the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology when it is brought back to one community representative and when all iwi representation is taken away. He will have some fun in terms of iwi representation; he has eight iwi across Nelson-Marlborough. 
I conclude by commenting on some of the introductory remarks from the Minister about how this bill supposedly will introduce financial viability in the polytechnic sector and show how the Government is committed to polytechnics. What rubbish! We have a representative model in place which helps and strengthens those institutions and she will take the axe to that membership so that she can command those institutions to do what she wishes. It is not as if there is not strong State sector influence in the polytechnics. The Tertiary Education Commission is in daily contact with the polytechnics. It monitors their finances. It is able to intervene when the polytechnics get into trouble to appoint Crown monitors and to put people on to the councils to steer them out of what are quite regular occurrences because the polytechnics have long been underfunded. They are the poor cousin of the tertiary sector— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Oh more money will make it right! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: I say to the Minister that she is talking about supposedly being a Government that has a commitment to industry and training and here she is saying that she will take an axe to the representative model that is in place. What a disgrace! Here we have community-driven organisations represented by maybe 10 or a dozen people drawn from all sectors and they cost virtually nothing. The turnover for the polytechnic in my electorate of Christchurch Central the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology is about $80 million. The cost of the governance by its council is about $100000. The Government will gut the membership of those councils so that it can put in place its agenda. That is wholly inappropriate and wholly contrary to what the Government should be doing.