Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I ask whether you could please give us the Reader’s Digest version of the clause 4A debate. I think there is a bit of confusion.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): No, there is none at all. It is just a matter of form. Normally, when the question comes up, the Chairperson says: “The question is”, and then we go on to debate it. There is no problem. We are debating clause 4A.

I was hoping that the member in charge of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill, the Hon Heather Roy, might have taken a call on this particular question first of all, to explain its meaning to the Committee of the whole House. It is not enormously clear why the Education and Science Committee has recommended that this clause be inserted. The commentary on the bill makes a reference to the need for new clause 4A to be inserted, which would make a consequential amendment to the principal Act. But there is no rationale for why the Education and Science Committee chose to make the change at this time. It would be useful if the member in charge of the bill could let us know the rationale for that change.

To put an uncharitable view on what that change might mean, it is a continuation of what Labour considers to be the chilling effect on student government across our tertiary institutions in New Zealand, which is being made to pursue an agenda that the political parties concerned have not been able to achieve in any other way. New clause 4A takes away the rights of student governments to use their own process to put in place their representatives on the councils of universities, polytechnics, or other tertiary institutes. Those are the institutions, the bodies, or the vehicles that govern how an institution will run. Critically, from the point of view of most students, they are the body that will determine the fees that are paid by students. Therefore, it is very important that students are represented, and well represented, on those councils. But in this bill we have seen a change to the way those individual, autonomous institutions are able to select their council representatives. That is how it looks.

I ask the member in charge of the bill to speak to this issue and let us know what she intends by that change, and, just as critically, why it is necessary. You see, all these independent, autonomous institutions already have their own processes in place for how they ensure students are represented at council level. Mostly, it is through a very well-established relationship with the student government, which this bill represents a direct attack on.

National is now supporting this bill, having promised at the previous general election that it would not support it. Here we are tonight debating clause 4A, which National members are right behind, in lock step with the ACT Party—both wings of the ACT Party. There is a unity, in that sense, on this issue. We need to know why they are trying to change the way autonomous institutions are able to make up their councils. Left unexplained, it seems to be just another attempt to reinforce this Government’s opposition to student government.

Students have the choice to shape student government now. Students can, at any stage, using the provisions of their constitutions, make a decision to call a meeting to alter their election provisions for selecting their representatives. They can call a meeting to change the philosophy of their own student government, and to change how they want it to run. They are also, of course, as other members have said, in a position to change that arrangement if 10 percent of students sign a petition saying they want to have a referendum on the way their student government is made up. If that happened they would already, in existing law, be able to change the way their representation is selected. But here we see, in addition to a bill that throws the baby out with the bathwater, the Government introducing this clause in the select committee in order to determine how the councils are made up.

This could easily be part of a wider agenda. The architect of the existing compromise, Tau Henare, has walked in to watch his finest work being destroyed by his own colleagues. Politics is a strange old thing. We need to know exactly why Government members have gone down this path. They say that the current arrangements of student government are anti-democratic because there is an element of compulsion to those arrangements, yet they are not prepared to participate in the debate to discuss it. They want to ram the legislation through. They have had all of their hard workers moving closure motions because they are not interested in debating this issue. By their own actions in the Committee tonight they have shown exactly what their agenda is in pursuing this legislation. I am concerned that the councils, which control huge amounts of taxpayer money, are having their make-up changed by the member’s insertion of clause 4A, and I think the Committee needs a thorough explanation from the Hon Heather Roy about why she has decided to do that.

I am very happy to take a call on clause 4A of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill, which changes the constitutions of tertiary institution councils. I think it would be quite useful at this point for the Committee to understand in greater detail how the existing legislation has been put into effect. Under the existing law, a tertiary institution council includes students, staff, alumni, business, employers, and representatives appointed by the Government, in the case of universities. The Government has changed the rules in relation to polytechnics and institutes of technology. I will deal primarily with universities, because those are the councils I am most familiar with.

A university council has between one and three student representatives, between one and three staff representatives, and a variety of other representatives in statute. Under the existing legislation, the student representatives are nominated and appointed by the students association. In the case of the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association there are two representatives on the university council, one of which the students association has decided through its constitution will be the president of the students association. That person is, of course, by definition elected by the students at the institution.

The second position set aside for students at Victoria University is elected by the student populace at large in an election administered by the students association. At this point, I point out—and I am looking forward to hearing Tau Henare’s views on this issue; he seems to be very eager to take a call—that the election at large administered by the students association is a very cost-effective and cheap way of getting the student representatives elected to the university council. Students associations run those elections. All students are eligible to vote in them already, so adding another slot on the ballot paper to elect another representative position is a very cost-effective way of getting a student representative for the council who is elected by all students, and, therefore, is representative of the student body at large.

I believe quite firmly that an election administered by the university would probably have a lower turn-out than an election administered by the students association. As evidence for that, I look at the alumni representatives on the councils. There is a very, very low turn-out in the elections for the alumni representatives on university councils in comparison with the turn-out for the election of student representatives in students association elections. So I think it is really important that we understand how that works at the moment.

Other institutions work a little bit differently. Massey University, for example, I think has three student representatives on the council; I think it had an extramural representative when I was involved, a representative from the Māori students, and the president of the Massey University Students Associations Federation. The federation of the students associations of Massey University allows it to incorporate the student representatives from the different campuses where they have separate students associations—[Interruption] What was that?

💬 Hon Tau Henare: No, not you; the dark one.

Oh, right—discrimination, that is what that is! There are different rules depending on which institution we are talking about, and I think it is important that we understand those. Under the amendment put forward by Heather Roy to the bill, the elections of student representatives will be solely the responsibility of the tertiary institutions concerned. It does not actually prescribe how they will conduct those elections. It simply says they will have to conduct the election in accordance with the statutes made by the council. Of course the council could make a statute saying that it will have an election and only the people the vice-chancellor picks will be eligible to stand in the election. Under this legislation that would be perfectly acceptable. I think that would be totally outrageous, but it would allow the council effectively to hand-pick which students it wanted to be represented on the council, and, therefore, severely diminish—

💬 Hon Tau Henare: Yawn!

I say to Mr Henare that I know it is late and he wants to go and have his little nap, but he will have to bear with us a little bit longer.

I think one of the really important parts of having the students association appointing or nominating the student representatives to council is that it is very democratic.

I spent some time on the Education and Science Committee for the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill, and I am trying to remember when we discussed clause 4A. It seems to have come out of the blue, and I do not remember being informed about it by officials, being given any background on it, the select committee having any kind of debate on it, or any submitters coming to talk about it.

Clause 4A seems to be an anomalous clause that does not relate to the alleged purpose of the bill. It seems to be the exact opposite of what the ACT Party claims it is, because it is actually interfering in the political process. The ACT Party’s claim about the bill, which I do not agree with at all, seems to be that we must not interfere in political process.

The Green Party is at a loss to understand where the clause fits in the bill. The clause seems to be more to do with a bill we debated at the select committee some time last year—I think it was the Education Amendment Bill (No 2)—which was about changing the polytech councils. The clause seems to be more to do with deciding that the role of students will be limited because the ACT Party does not want the influence of students over councils at universities and tertiary institutions. We have a major problem with that approach. We are very surprised the ACT Party members are supporting the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill in one breath, and then in the next breath going on and on about freedom.

Some of the submitters who came to talk to the Education and Science Committee talked a lot about their freedom. They were talking only about themselves. They had no concept of the freedom of other people, but they certainly seemed to be obsessed with the idea that they did not need students associations because they were free spirits and students associations did not matter. They had no ability to empathise with, or show any imagination towards, other people who might have needs.

Clause 4A is all about the constitution of councils, and it does not seem to fit logically or coherently with the overall ethos of the bill, if there is one. The Green Party is at a loss to see why clause 4A has been done this way. Maybe it has something to do with inconsistencies with the Education Act, or maybe it has something to do with the way legislation is drafted, but the clause does not seem to have much to do with the coherent clauses and the fundamental purpose of the bill, which we have just debated. I cannot see how the clause is linked with the principal purpose of the bill. It certainly seems to me like political incorrectness gone mad on every level. That is really a good description of the bill and possibly what it should have been called. But we are not here to debate the name of the bill; we are talking about clause 4A.

I do not have a lot more to say about clause 4A except that I would like to be able to say that we had a robust and coherent debate on it at the select committee, that everyone who was there understood the clause, that it was discussed intelligently, and that we stand behind it. But, in fact, we did not, we do not, it was not, and it will not be.

We in the Green Party would like to know why one would dictate how many students could be appointed to a council. Why would ACT members, if they are interested in freedom, talk about there being “at least 1, but not more that 3, persons who must be appointed following an election (conducted in accordance with statutes made by the council)”? That sounds extremely Draconian. It does not sound like freedom. It does not sound like the students are getting to make choices. It sounds as if the system at the moment, which has worked perfectly well, is going to be changed so that the councils on the tertiary institutions will have all the power. Well, guess what, they have all the power now. They have a huge amount of power.

We have a vulnerable student body that has lost access to universities in huge numbers. When I sat on the select committee and listened to submissions from Māori organisations, Pasifika organisations, disability activist groups, and people concerned about all kinds of issues I heard that the last thing they wanted was for the councils of their organisations to have more power over them. They wanted students to have the right to collectively organise, to advocate for themselves, and to be able to elect representatives to participate in things like councils.

I am at a loss to see how clause 4A usefully contributes to the idea that students have rights and that students are valid participants in the governing bodies of their organisations. If we want to disempower people, why are we not honest about it and say that this bill is about disempowerment, that it is about breaking down the opportunity for students to organise politically, and that, under clause 4A, it is about breaking down the opportunity for students to choose freely their own representatives in the manner they want? If ACT members want to be honest, then they should talk about what the bill is really about, instead of writing clauses that do not make it clear and do not help the public have any understanding of why the National Government has supported ACT on the bill.

The Green Party is appalled that we have actually undermined students in so many ways in the last 2 years. Students have been undermined ever since Roger Douglas brought in user-pays. The situation is getting worse by the day, and now ACT wants to take away students’ fundamental rights not only to have their needs looked after in terms of services and clubs but also, through clause 4A, in terms of how those services and clubs are appointed.

I agree with the previous speaker, Catherine Delahunty, to a certain extent. Clause 4A seems to be an odd clause to have included in the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill. It would be interesting to know what the member in the chair actually thinks of it, given that it was included by the Education and Science Committee. But I want to talk from my experience at Massey University about why I think this particular clause simply will not work in real terms, when we think about it in practical terms. At Massey University, there are a number of different campuses and each campus has its own students association.

Progress to be reported presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill and no progress on the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.