Cunliffe David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1035. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):I would like to focus on clause 6 of the bill. Clause 6 repeals sections 171 and 173 and goes to the issue of the governance of our tertiary institutions.This is the first opportunity that I have had since picking up the tertiary education portfolio for Labour to address myself to these issues. Of course I acknowledge and defer to the experience of my colleagues who have done the work on this previously. But good sense teaches me that when you are new to something what you should do is ask the stakeholders. In this context that of course includes students teachers professors and university and tertiary institution management and vice-chancellors. That is the logical thing to do. As I was reflecting on this bill it struck me that it is doing the opposite. It is turning away from a tradition of inclusiveness and representation. It is turning away from having the voices of students and staff and institutional governance all represented on the councils so that any tensions trade-offs and disputes can be transparently aired and good process put around the governance of those issues.I ask myself why would it be that a Government would seek such a radical departure from the status quo. To hear from the New Zealand University Students’ Association and from the Tertiary Education Union the first issue is there is nothing broken here. There is no obvious problem to be fixed that would require such a radical solution.I turned then to the records of the submissions which I note that the departmental regulatory impact analysis describes as mixed. It was 1600 to one—1600 opposed to the Government’s measures and one in favour. That is described as mixed. I then turned to the analysis in the regulatory impact statement that supports clause 6 of the bill and it went through the typical and meritorious options analysis process. What it did up front was put in place the principle that the Government sought to serve which was quite simply to shrink the councils and then it tested a range of models against that determinant of shrinking the councils. Guess what? It came up with a model that shrunk the council. That is very different from what at least two-thirds or by the sound of it three-thirds of the sector—the students the staff and the management of universities—all want.So why is this occurring? Is it international benchmarking? Well the regulatory impact statement cannot confirm that. What it does say is that one notable study—and I will quote from the statement—says that “Smaller shorter Australian and New Zealand studies find that larger board size is correlated with better firm performance.” That is interesting is it not? The bigger boards actually perform better most logically because they integrate the various issues through one governance process. We are left not wondering but quite clearly opposing this clause and that is why Labour is introducing Supplementary Order Papers that would essentially delete clause 6 and leave in place the representative nature of university governance.As I have been around campuses during orientation weeks and during the election campaign this was one issue that virtually nobody agreed with. Virtually nobody on campus supports clause 6 of this bill. This is a Government railroading change on the sector and not listening. It is somehow appropriate starting off the third term of this Government at the end of 2014 the election year that it is demonstrating already that it is not listening. It is a Government that is not listening. The sector is unanimous in its objection to the fundamental nature of this part of the bill. The sector wants a representative university council structure and this bill takes it away.