Delahunty Catherine: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Delahunty Catherine: Education (Polytechnics) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. Tena koutou katoa. It is appropriate that I start my speech today by acknowledging the loss of a very fine young leader from the polytech sector Mr Todd Fernie whose death has been made known to the Green Party. Todd was a leader at the Auckland University of Technology in scholarship and in supporting students with disabilities. This loss will be huge. He was a fine leader in human rights in the polytechnic sector particularly for people getting a second chance at an education and for people who have disabilities and a disabling society to contend with. We think of him today. 
I return to the bill. I have been listening to the debate and I know there are people outside the Chamber who are listening and who do not regard this bill’s passage as a particularly humorous experience. They are looking seriously at what is driving this bill and what is really behind the changes. I stand to speak for a third time on this deeply frustrating bill which the Green Party has consistently opposed. I will speak briefly because what more can be said except that the vast majority of submitters were opposed to the bill? 
No one has yet made a good argument for reducing representation. The model is a flawed business model. It is arguably a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is limiting community participation student participation union participation and employer representation on polytechnic councils. It gives the Minister excessive powers to appoint half the board as well as to appoint the chair and deputy chair. 
What is behind the bill; what is the rationale? No one produced a good argument in the second reading debate except possibly Roger Douglas who said that small boards work better. The majority of the submitters were quite clear that they did not expect to keep having up to 20 people on the boards but that eight was far too small a number for them. Many of the submitters were happy to look at 12 to 15 as an adequate number. It is very important that we look at the broader issue and not just at the issue of having a small group of people who are easily managed. This is about a community institution that represents community interests in education so eight members simply is not enough. 
We must also look at the issue of ministerial powers. It is not common for an external person to appoint the chair and deputy chair of a board. It is far more common in the effective working of a board that the chair and the deputy chair are appointed by the members as a mandate for the members to build trust and to act in good faith. Now we have an external person the Minister who not only will appoint four members of the board but also will appoint the chair and the deputy chair. As an earlier speaker said this is a curiously nanny State-ish approach. 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Shocking! 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY 
: It is shocking as the member says. 
Ministerial appointments must be driven by something and as the failure of polytechs has not been established it would appear that it is an ideological position driven by a business governance model. That is fine for businesses. The bill is trying to fix a problem that the public tertiary education system does not present because it is not a business. I know it is hard for some people in this Chamber to believe but not everything is a business. This is actually an investment in the public good. If it is a governance problem we need to recognise how we can improve that without reducing the opportunity to recognise the public good. 
I worked at Tairawhiti Polytechnic and that polytechnic had its issues. Requiring it to act like a business led to some very negative distortions in terms of the student body. Believe it or not a polytechnic is there for the student body but what that polytechnic has done is encourage students to enrol for courses for which they were not necessarily suited. We were encouraged to enrol them whether or not they were suited to particular courses because the polytechnic needed to survive financially. Students would end up doing courses they were not suited to and end up in debt and with no qualification. I cannot see how that was in the public interest or in the public good. But it is a business! If it is a business all we need to do is get people to pay their money and there is no responsibility for whether those people actually get an effective qualification out of it. But that is all called choice. I would argue that that is not in the interests of education that is for the public good.