Power Simon: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Power Simon: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:15010] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 This is a bill that although small in stature has a significant impact on the education sector and in particular on those that choose to provide educational opportunities by way of being private providers. We have watched as Deborah Coddington and others—including Mr Bernie Ogilvy from United Future and Pansy Wong from National—have outlined what peculiar legislation this is. Instead of concentrating the Government’s mind on issues regarding the quality of the courses offered by the various educational providers this legislation simply isolates one group of providers regardless of the quality of the educational courses that they offer to students. This legislation divides the tertiary education sector between the courses offered by public State-owned providers and those offered by private providers. Unfortunately the bill does not examine the quality of the product that is offered to students by institutions nor does it test the quality of courses in a way that would have avoided the fate of the two institutions that collapsed. Because of those collapses this legislation is now being wheeled in at the last minute as a rescue measure. 
 The major difficulty with this legislation is that it is simply against private providers and is not in favour of ensuring there is quality education for fee-paying students. What this bill should have done as my colleague Deborah Coddington pointed out—and this was raised during the second reading and the Committee stage—is to take the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Tertiary Education Commission and put those two bodies on the rack. Those bodies should have been asked how it came about that two institutions collapsed and lost students’ money during the course of those collapses. More particularly the Tertiary Education Commission and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority should have been asked about exactly what they were doing at the time of the collapse of the two institutions. But instead of the Minister turning his mind and his focus to the Government authorities that have a statutory responsibility for the quality of courses provided at educational institutions he simply decided that he would go after the private providers alone. 
Members on the Opposition side of the House have consistently said throughout the course of the debate on this bill which has been lengthy that that is the wrong way to look at educational questions because who provides the service or the course is not the issue. The issue is not whether the provider is State-owned or privately owned; the issue is whether the student who is paying for the courses provided by an institution is receiving quality education in return for the money that is being pumped into the institution. 
 The Tertiary Education Commission which was to have been a light-handed streamlined strategic steering instrument now employs 324 people and in the last 12 months it has spent $7.8 million on consultants and contractors to do the most basic of tasks—that is to implement the charter and profiles system. That is what the Tertiary Education Commission was supposed to do in the first place but no it has paid $1 million to Burleigh Evatt for the implementation of the charters and profiles system. What was the Tertiary Education Commission doing when the institutions collapsed? Where were Andrew West and his team when that occurred? Where was the New Zealand Qualifications Authority when it occurred? This legislation should focus on the audit and quality control functions of those two institutions not on punishing private providers per se. 
During the same week that we see a bill that will punish private providers about to presumably pass through this House we also learn that the Government has stitched up a deal with the Post Primary Teachers Association and is to offer only to members of that association a $500 sign-up bonus. Over 3000 quality competent teachers who are not members of the association will be left out of that deal. What does that deal do for the quality of the education that our children receive? What does that deal do for the quality of the courses that our children will be taught? It does nothing! All that it does is reward members of the association for their collective bargaining. I know that my colleague Roger Sowry would say that under the Employment Relations Act which passed through this House under extraordinary urgency in the year 2000 it is contrary to the Act to allow bargaining arrangements to favour members who belong to a union over people who do not belong to a union. 
The Government’s intentions in respect of education are crystal-clear this week. We find legislation that slams private providers and we find dirty deals being done with the Post Primary Teachers Association but not with teachers who are not members of unions. As my colleague the Hon Roger Sowry asked where is the good faith in that bargaining arrangement and where is the good faith in the arrangements that private providers sought out when they set up institutions to provide courses and opportunities for students that the State did not provide? The public providers did not make opportunities available to the students who were seeking those opportunities from private providers. The Minister of Education needs to stand in this House to tell members who are debating this bill that it will not punish just private providers and to tell members that his deal with the Post Primary Teachers Association is not in breach of the Employment Relations Act. I believe that it is in breach of that Act. 
This bill is a farce and the two authorities and organisations that should have been under the gun following the collapse of the two providers are not other private providers but the Tertiary Education Commission which is slack at best and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority which could not even find a chief executive for 18 months because it has been in such a shambles during the last 12 to 15 months. This bill has taken a long time to go through this Parliament and the reason it has taken such a long time to do so is that it is bad law. It is a bad ideological step to punish providers because of their public or private status and not to seek out the institutions that will not provide quality education to the students who attend them.