Coddington Deborah: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is also opposed to this legislation. I agree with Mr Ogilvy from United Future that we should have thrown it out right at the beginning. This legislation illustrates the Minister’s and the Government’s attitude to education in this country. I use the legal profession as an analogy. The legal profession self-regulates. The Law Society is the gatekeeper as to who can be registered as a lawyer and practise law in this country. Sure the Law Society is backed up by statutory legislation. Nevertheless the law societies are the gatekeepers and they punish their own very swiftly when they are complained about or when they do not keep up the high standards required of them. There is no better way to keep standards high than having peer groups as the gatekeepers the people who come down in judgment on those who misbehave. 
This legislation deals with only the private education providers. They are the only ones that are being taxed. The responsible ones are being punished in order to deal with those that might in the future let students down or might not obey the legislation regarding trust accounts etc. Why did the Minister not introduce legislation for instance to tax all the polytechnics when taxpayers forked out $50 million for Wanganui Polytechnic? Why was he not consistent then? Why did he not bring in legislation then to tax all the polytechnics? Why is he punishing just the private providers? All those people out there who work very hard in the education provision industry—international or export education as we like to call it—do keep high standards and do not use money for things other than what it is paid in for but they will now be punished. Where is the incentive for institutions to adhere to the rules if they know that a slush fund exists which will grow bigger each year to bail them out if they go under? 
Instead we have the New Zealand Qualifications Authority as the gatekeeper. Let us look at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Members should remember that the legislation was brought in largely because of the Modern Age Institute of Learning and Carich which both went belly-up. We have here the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s report of the quality audit conducted in February 2003 on the Modern Age Institute. The summary states: “The first NZQA audit of Modern Age was held in September 2001 and found 14 requirements of QA standard 1 not met. The current audit also found 14 non-compliances and made four recommendations.” 
That is the institution that will be charged under this legislation with being the gatekeeper for those that wish to supply export education. That is the organisation that cannot even monitor or keep quality control of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) as we saw with Cambridge High School. What we have seen with that school is a policy that is so ideologically driven that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority would bend over backwards to spin all its audits and quality checks to show that what it believes is successful is a success. 
The NCEA is a failure just as this will be a failure under this legislation. It will be a failure because the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not capable of monitoring anything at all. In fact it should not even have the word “Qualifications” in its name. It is not about qualifying anything. It is just about quantity. What the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is pushing all the time is bums on seats and never mind whether there is any learning going on—just so-called qualifications. 
Questions have been asked that have never been answered before this legislation was brought in and pushed through the House. For instance I asked the Minister in September 2003—and the question has never been answered—why the New Zealand Qualifications Authority bothers to carry out audits of private institutions if it is not prepared to take action before the financial situation reaches a crisis point as happened with the Modern Age Institute of Learning. Why did the New Zealand Qualifications Authority not advise the 500 or so students of the Modern Age Institute when it carried out its audits that they should not hand over any more fees to the institution? Why? There is no answer—silence. They do not know and they do not care. They are just fattening cattle for beef. That is what this Government thinks of export education. 
What does the Minister do? He rushes off to China to try to patch up the reputation of the safety of New Zealand schools. China puts pressure on the Minister and he rushes off there. What about New Zealand students? When does the Minister rush off to anywhere in New Zealand when parents of students in New Zealand are concerned about the quality and safety of their children’s education? Never. He does not. He does not go to places like Taihape New Plymouth or Taranaki Invercargill or the West Coast. He does not care and could not care. He just rushes it through. 
Last there are two more things. The other reason why this legislation has been introduced was because of Carich another institution that went under. Carich was a training company that had the famous Carich’s Computer Gym class which led to a national certificate in computing and business administration. Why did the numbers soar at that institution? Why did that organisation get into so much trouble? Well it was because it had a fully funded New Zealand Qualifications Authority – approved Computer Gym course fully subsidised by the Ministry of Education that gave every enrollee a free desktop computer. Sixteen-hundred computers were given out—so many that the computer company said it was the biggest single order ever given to a locally owned assembler. It is no wonder that these outfits get into trouble when this Government endorses policy that has incentives such as free give-aways to enrol people so that organisations can get more taxpayer funding. 
I conclude by saying that heaven help us if we get to the stage that the UK has got to with international fee-paying students. The UK’s  
Sunday Times  
in July stated: “For sale: university places go to cash-rich foreigners”. In the UK now if people have the money and are from overseas but do not have the qualifications they can get in ahead of domestic students who have higher qualifications but do not have the money. That is the route we are going down in this country with export education with this sort of legislation and that is why the ACT party is opposed to it.