English Bill: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
English Bill: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 National members have opposed this bill and when I last spoke I gave a number of technical reasons that were to do with its retrospectivity and unfairness. But one of the reasons why I strongly oppose the bill is that it expresses some basic philosophy of the current Government. I will tell members why. Labour works on a very simple recipe for Government: “Reward those people whom you regard as your loyal friends and punish everyone else—and do it with cash.” That is what is happening here.  
This bill is all about punishing the people whom Government members do not like—that is the private providers of education for international students. It does not matter whether the provider is a public provider; they will just mess up the market by sending a Minister to China—and that has cut into their income which they are really regretting. When the students get to New Zealand the public providers are left alone but the private providers are not. There has never been an explanation for this because the explanation is publicly untenable. It is simply that Trevor Mallard and the Labour Party do not like people who invest private capital into education. They regard that as an abomination of education. The fact that private providers attract thousands of students is by the by. So this bill to levy those providers—and it does so in an unfair manner—is expressive of the Government’s habitual instinct to punish the people whom it believes do not vote for it.  
We are passing this bill on a day when it has been revealed that the Government has decided to spend $8 million of education money on rewarding its friends—the teachers who have chosen to join the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA). They are to get a $500 cash payment which has nothing to do with their merits as teachers nothing to do with the needs of the children they are teaching but purely to do with the fact they have joined the teachers union. The other 3500 teachers who do exactly the same job will not get a cent. 
Simon Power 
: Not a dime! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Not a dime! Through the school boards parents will be asked to make up the difference of $500 per teacher for those who have not joined the union. At least when we have talked about the education export levy the Minister has given some explanation for why he has done it. I do not agree with the explanation. But when we talked to him about the levy on parents to pay the $500 for the teachers who are not members of the union there was no explanation whatsoever. So the bill as it winds to the end of its sad and lonely path through this Parliament is expressive of those basic philosophical prejudices held by the Government. It is expressive of the way in which it rewards its friends by giving them cash and punishes its enemies by taxing or levying them. 
The House needs to be reminded that this bill started out in much worse shape than it is now. When Mr Mallard is sitting in his office with his officials away from the glare of the common-sense views of the public and the Opposition his prejudices are expressed in a much more virulent form. Fortunately through the process of public scrutiny the excesses of this legislation have been dealt with—but not all of them. Although the Government has ironed out one or two of the worst aspects of the bill it has decided that it must persist with it—even though no one thinks this levy is a good idea. 
The international education export industry is vital to New Zealand. Our schools collect $125 million worth of school fees from it. The deficit in our schools amounts to $28 million. Imagine how bad it would be without the international students. They contributed $125 million in 2002 and probably they will provide more in 2003. It is unfortunate that the Minister keeps travelling to foreign countries because that is what is putting students off from coming to New Zealand and it is unfortunate that when they do come they will have to pay higher fees in order to meet this ridiculous levy—a levy based purely on the prejudice of the Labour Party.