Moroney Sue: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Moroney Sue: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 There we have it: at the eleventh hour in the third reading of the Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill the Government is scrambling to find a reason to pass this appalling bill. Colin King a Government member of Parliament has come up with yet another reason why this bill has been put before the House. Apparently it is because it will force the industry training organisation sector and the technical institutes and polytechnics sector to talk to each other. I wish we could go back to the select committee deliberation on this bill because I sat on the Education and Science Committee—as did Colin King—which considered this bill and nowhere in this legislation is there any requirement for the industry training organisation sector and the technical institutes and polytechnics sector to meet and discuss anything. I think this demonstrates to us that the Government does not have a clue why it has put this legislation in place. At the eleventh hour a Government member is scrambling around trying to come up with something that makes him feel a bit better about it but sadly the reason he has come up with has absolutely nothing to do with the legislation. It would be laughable if it were not so serious that the Government in its scrambling around for reasons to justify this appalling bill is taking the community voice out of our polytechnic sector. 
These are challenging times when we need a Government with a specific strategy for skills and skills development particularly for our young people. As we speak far too many of our young people end up on the scrap heap in the dole queues and on the unemployment benefit and that number is growing. Sadly that number will grow significantly in the coming weeks and months as young people leave the compulsory education sector and look for training opportunities. Many of those young people will be looking to our polytechnics for those training opportunities. Unfortunately this legislation does nothing to enhance their opportunities for training. It has been well traversed in this House that the Minister for Tertiary Education who put forward this legislation has been so short-sighted in her approach that she refuses to lift the cap on the number of students who can be trained through the polytechnic sector even though growing numbers of people are going on to the dole queue. This Minister would rather pay the unemployment benefit to growing numbers of our young people than have them trained their skills enhanced and their opportunities in life enhanced by lifting the cap in the polytechnic sector. 
Instead what she has to offer this country on the last sitting day of Parliament is this bill. What does it do? It dumbs down the community voice and it particularly takes away the voice of Maori on polytechnic councils. I think that is a disgrace in this day and age in Aotearoa. It is disgraceful and it also show us exactly where this National Government stands in its complete disregard for the Maori people and the rightful place they have in decision making in this country. Yesterday this Government told Maori people that on only 1 day of the year they can fly a flag from some buildings—and it is a flag that only some of them agree with. They cannot have a seat around the table and they certainly cannot have a guaranteed voice in the decision making on polytechnic councils or on local authority bodies such as the super-city. Any time that Maori get some real power and some real decision-making opportunities this Government shuts them down. So it is complete and utter symbolism to fly a flag on some buildings for one day of the year when on every occasion that this Government gets the opportunity to keep and retain a Maori voice around the table it gets rid of it as the Government is doing in this bill. It is not as if the Labour Party the Maori Party and the Greens have been asking the Government to add something that does not already exist; we have been begging it not to take away a voice that already exists for Maori around the polytechnic council table. But what has the Government done? It has completely ignored that. 
The symbolism of a flag will not mean a thing if this Government will not give a real voice to Maori concerns Maori futures and Maori directions. That is why I was so surprised to see the Maori Party support this bill in its second reading. I think it shows how misguided the Maori Party members are. I know they were well intentioned. They thought they could talk this Government round. It was absolutely clear to every other party in this House that that was never going to happen. But in their naivety they believed that their party had a working relationship with this Government that meant it could make a difference. Well that was naïve and it continues to be naive that the Maori Party can trumpet the fact that a flag will be flying for a day but it cannot get any traction when it comes to stopping this Government from removing the voice of Maori from around the council table. That is the reality of the very sad position that the Maori Party is in today. 
This bill has also been used to remove the voice of students. If there is a group that ought to have a say in the future of the polytechnic councils and what they deliver it is of course students. They are after all the client. They are the people whom the polytechnic councils are there to serve. Yet if we join the dots between this legislation put forward by the Minister for Tertiary Education and another bill being promoted by this Government—it happens to be a member’s bill in the name of Sir Roger Douglas to make student union membership voluntary—we can see what is happening to the student voice in this country. There is a common theme and it is about dumbing down the voice of students. That alarms me because I wonder what the Minister and her Government have coming forward for tertiary education if they are taking such major steps right now to dumb down the student voice. 
It is not just the student voice that will no longer necessarily be around the polytechnic council table; it is also the representation of women. Although women were not specifically prescribed for in the current legislation that we are fortunately still working to most of the gender representation of women on polytechnic councils came from the staff representatives and the student representatives. After 1 May next year they will no longer be mandated to be sitting around the council table. So I fear for the gender balance on those councils. Why is that balance important? Polytechnics train all of our nurses; the polytechnic sector trains all of our early childhood educators; and that sector provides trades opportunities for many many women. So the voice of women on the polytechnic council is incredibly important. I am surprised to see a Government that is busy telling private businesses to get their act together in increasing the number of women on their boards while doing everything in its power legislatively to ensure that there is not such a strong voice for women on the boards and councils that it has control over. 
I am also concerned about the removal of the industry voice from the polytechnic council. If we hear one criticism about our tertiary institutions it is that sometimes they care more about academic achievements and they are not so connected with industry and what it needs in terms of skill shortages and its training needs. This bill takes away the Business New Zealand representation and the union representation from around the table. So the very people who have an intimate knowledge of what the local workforce looks like are no longer around that table. I fail to see how that improves educational opportunities how it improves training outcomes and how it improves employment opportunities for our young people in the polytechnic sector. 
In closing I say that we have seen this before in this country and it has been a dismal failure. This is going back to the dim dark days of the 1990s. The last time a National Government tried this on it was with our hospital boards. It appointed all of the members of hospital boards. It took away community representation then and what an utter shambles that was! It was the forerunner to user-pays and the forerunner to privatisation. I hope I am wrong but I see that around the corner for our polytechnic sector as well. I am proud to stand here as a member of the Labour Party and oppose the third reading of this shocking bill.