Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee. In 2015 the current National Government amended the Education Act 1989, and repealed the requirement for democratic elections and student representatives on tertiary institution councils. Removing democratic representation from university councils is plainly wrong. It undermines the integrity of our public institutions, and it sends the wrong signal to the next generation of Kiwi leaders and the many thousands of hard-working academic and general university staff.

The Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill would ensure mandatory staff and student representation on university councils, and would limit ministerial appointees to four. It has the widespread support of the tertiary education sector, with key stakeholders such as the New Zealand University Students’ Association, the Tertiary Education Union, and Universities New Zealand on record as calling on all parties to find a workable solution forward, and, thus, to allow this bill to the select committee for a fair and robust debate.

The first reading of this bill comes at a time when the need for good governance in our tertiary institutions has never been more apparent. The National Government’s mismanagement of the sector is plain for all to see. Instead of treating education as an essential public good, which it is, Minister Joyce treats it as nothing more than a factory, or a cash cow for private tertiary providers to milk dry the international student market.

On Budget day, Minister Joyce announced phantom funding that was exposed by Labour to be yet another year of real cuts, another National Government vanishing act, and another brick in the wall of unfulfilled promises. The National Government has been underfunding tertiary education for years. Just ask the lecturers, the administrators, and the cleaners at our tertiary institutions, who are being asked to do more with less—and we know that that means more work for less pay.

New Zealand now ranks near the bottom of the OECD on tertiary education spending per student—behind Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, France, Germany, and Israel—and well below the OECD average. Under the National Government, total spending has fallen from around $3.2 billion a year to only $3 billion today. It is an embarrassment that New Zealand is going backwards.

It is no wonder that our university rankings are on the slide. Victoria University dropped by at least 50 places, and Canterbury and Waikato both plummeted more than 100 places in global rankings this year. To make matters worse for university researchers, New Zealand invests only half the average of research and development of the OECD countries. The result is a wave of mergers and cuts, and an increasing reliance on foreign students. That is the context of this bill.

At the same time as he has been, effectively, starving the tertiary sector and selling short our children’s future, Minister Joyce has been hard at work stifling the democratic voice of students. The National Government’s 2011 voluntary student membership legislation was an ideological diatribe that scrapped students’ universal association membership, limiting student associations and leaving them dependent upon the institutions that they were supposed to robustly represent the interests of their members to. Student associations are on such thin ice that the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations has been in danger of folding with just 10 members left after major institutions such as Canterbury and Waikato pulled out several years ago.

💬 Chris Bishop: Why do you think they left?

Because they could not afford it, Mr Bishop. Unless turned around, this could force that students association to fold after 86 years.

Worse, in the polytech sector many institutions lack any student body at all, like at Aoraki Polytechnic. Some student bodies, like at Waiariki Institute of Technology, where Mr Tabuteau once worked, are under such pressure that their voice is routinely and systematically stifled. A strong campaign by staff and students saw democracy restored to Victoria University with two members on the university council. That is, essentially, what this bill seeks to do nationwide.

While all of this has been going on, Minister Joyce and the National Government have been building up a private tertiary fiefdom that is akin to the wild west, with loose standards and weak oversight being the order of the day. As the Government doubles down on bad governance and chases the international student dollar, it is, effectively, a free for all—a free for all where numbers are inflated, tutors are enrolled in courses, and some $50 million has been overpaid to institutions in the last year.

On the substance of this bill, the silencing of students and staff on university councils directly undermines their role as a critic and conscience in society. They are crucial and legitimate stakeholders in how universities and other tertiary institutions work, and their voices deserve to be heard.

Including their voices in law on every council also assists the institution. Information can flow both ways, and feedback and opinion can be properly channelled. It creates value for both sides. This is the modern networked world in the information age. Sharing information, aligning interests, and building a positive community of support works well for the institutions, well for the students, and well for the staff.

That is why it is time in this bill to move beyond ideology. It is time to find a workable compromise and a new way forward—one that engages students, staff, unions, management, and, of course, the Crown. It should be one that ensures both good governance and strong representation, and, thus, creates shared value for all stakeholders, rather than getting lost in a war of words or an outdated market ideology that treats higher learning institutions as factories, staff as machines, and students as commodities.

To conclude, it is apparent that the integrity of our public institutions has been under constant attack by this Government, and in particular by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, who seems to relate it to an outdated business, with no respect for staff or students. This bill will provide a pathway, through a select committee process, that will reverse the Government’s attempts to stifle democracy at universities and will allow for a wider debate about the commercialisation of education by the current Government.

Proper representation also matters to the critic and conscience role of universities and other tertiary institutions. Principles of good governance demand representation of all parties—of students, of staff, and of governors. Supporting this bill would allow all the issues to be aired and new solutions found at our public institutions.

I want to signal that the Labour Party is open to extending the scope of the bill to include wānanga and polytechnics as well as universities. The draft has been cleared by both the Office of the Clerk and the Bill of Rights Act vet to allow that amendment to happen at the select committee.

Also, the Labour Party wishes to signal its willingness to cooperate with the Government and with all parties around the House to amend the bill significantly if necessary to find an enduring, positive, and relatively apolitical way forward where the Government’s partial aim—to give it some credit, perhaps—to ensure business-like governance is matched by the legitimate need to have democratic representation on university, polytech, and wānanga councils.

We are keen to work with all parties. We ask the House to send this bill to a select committee so that the views of the sector and core stakeholders can be properly heard. If the Government across the aisle has nothing to be afraid of from allowing that process to go on, I hope that it too will support this opportunity for a refresh of the current law.

In the end, ideas cannot be supressed by law. Democracy will flourish despite the jackboot of the temporarily powerful. Progressive ideals will continue to inform this beautiful but fragile country of ours.

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o Te Whare. In speaking to the Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill in this first reading debate I want to begin by saying I disagree with almost every sentiment expressed by the recently dumped former tertiary education spokesperson of the Labour Party, David Cunliffe. This National Government has only just this year amended the Education Act and repealed the requirement for democratic elections and student representatives on tertiary institution councils. So this bill would repeal those changes that have only just in recent months been made and restore the requirement, for instance, that students be represented in governance on councils. These changes have not yet even taken effect on all councils. On checking with some of our university council websites, they still have councils operating under the previous council sizes, so it seems to me to be quite ludicrous to be wanting to tinker with a system that has not even been allowed to go through an initial trial period.

Those changes that the Government made earlier this year were among a number of reforms that are designed to ensure that our education system is equipped both in a strategic sense and also with the flexibility both to deal with the challenges and opportunities that the 21st century will provide but also, most important, to lift student achievement. We know that smaller, skills-based councils will be able to respond much more quickly and with much greater flexibility to the challenges of modern-day tertiary education. We in the National Party want to help all students to get the qualifications they need to succeed and to be able to play their part in a growing economy and in a modern workforce. So these changes, which have only just been recently made, will support our priority of building a more competitive and productive economy. Universities are still able to provide for staff representation and student representation on their councils, and they are doing so. This is a point I will touch on a little later in my contribution, but it is a fact that seven of the university councils have one student on their council, whereas the remaining institution actually has two. So there is student representation currently in New Zealand. Also, seven of the eight have two staff positions on their council, with the remaining institution having one staff on council.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Why not write that into the law?

Student and staff are represented. I think the member is attempting to solve a problem that does not actually exist.

The old governance settings were not written with the modern world in mind. I will actually make a few comparisons with where our universities came from and where they are now. I am proud to be a member of the court of convocation of the University of Otago. That was my Alma Mater—

💬 Tim Macindoe: A very fine institution.

—where I studied archaeology, politics, French, classics, and gender studies with other such fine people as the Minister of Finance, Bill English, and the chief whip here, Tim Macindoe. Otago is New Zealand’s oldest university, dating from 1869. It has an endowment that may be a tiny fraction the size of that of some of the great international institutions, although it did inherit 100,000 acres of farmland when it was first established. It currently has a council of 20 members, and that will reduce to approximately eight to 12. The other university at which I spent some time, the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, is a collegiate research university with no known date of foundation, although there is some evidence dating back as far as 1096 for tertiary teaching, so it has been going for around 919 years at least. It is the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and it is the world’s second oldest university, full stop. It enjoys an endowment of £4.5 billion, which is nearly NZ$10 billion—equivalent probably to roughly the entire New Zealand annual tertiary education budget. It might surprise members opposite to know that although the council of the University of Oxford now comprises 24 members, there are no student members on that council; there are three observers, however. That has not stopped the University of Oxford being regularly rated among the top—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the member and ask him to deliver what is obviously a very well-prepared speech, rather than read it.

The University of Oxford is regularly rated among the top four or five institutions in the world in such highly respected means of measuring university success as the Times Educational Supplement.

If we look at the University of Otago and its governance arrangements, there are four ministerial appointments on the board. I want to point out that those are people of very fine quality, and I will refer to my notes for facts and figures, as I believe that the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings allow me to do. So Mr Stephen Higgs, for instance, a ministerial appointment on the University of Otago Council, is a partner in Polson Higgs, a Dunedin accountancy and financial advice firm of great repute. He is also a director of Otago Innovation and is a trustee of the University of Otago Foundation Trust. We also have Ms Donna Matahaere-Atariki, the chair of Ōtākou Rūnanga and the author of many publications on Māori issues, the Treaty of Waitangi, education, and child development, who brings obviously a knowledge of tikanga but also of wider social issues in the Otago region. We have Dr Royden Somerville QC, a well-known Dunedin barrister who provides the legal expertise on the board. He was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1998. He also chairs the Council of Knox College and Salmond College. Knox and Salmond form just two of the wonderful colleges they have at Otago. Like Oxford, Otago is a collegiate system. Then there is the chancellor, Mr John F Ward, a very fine chancellor, but bringing to the university council significant business experience. He is the chair of the SBS bank and he is the chair of H&J Smith Holdings but also of A J Hackett Bungy Group—so there is tourism expertise.

So we have appointed, by the Minister of Education, people with legal expertise, accounting expertise, business nous, and the Māori perspective and a wider social conscience. These people bring valuable skills that you may not actually be able to find among the academic research staff of such a university. I think this demonstrates that, unlike the view taken by members opposite, university councils are not a training ground for the activists and political apparatchiks of the future. Their role, their important role, is to provide for a good quality education for the students who attend that institution and to make sure that their institutions are well governed, legally and financially, and delivering on the outcomes that we expect of them.

I do want to make a few other comparisons both corporate and international. In the corporate world company boards are seldom of the size of New Zealand university councils, as they formerly were under the previous system. To give you one example, Apple, one of the world’s leading companies—arguably the biggest based on turnover—has eight members on its board of governance.

💬 Chris Bishop: How many?

Only eight, Mr Bishop. Not 20 or 30 or 40, or however many it is that Mr Cunliffe wants to put there. Infratil, which is a New Zealand leading infrastructure company, part-owner in Wellington Airport, for instance, has seven members on its board of governance, and Zespri, one of our leading agricultural companies, has eight members on its board. I think having many, many board members is no guarantee of success. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite.

If we make a few international comparisons with universities overseas—I have mentioned the University of Otago—we have the board of Harvard University, which is comprised of only 12 members including the president. Like Oxford, Harvard is regularly rated among the very top tertiary institutions in the world. There is Cambridge University, which is not as good as Oxford of course, but it has a governing council of 16 elected academic members, four external members, and three student members. We have the University of Edinburgh—only seven members on that particular council, and guess what? No students elected there. The University of Glasgow has 11 members on its overseeing council—no students there either. The London School of Economics, although it has an extravagant 19 members on its council—you would think economists would be a little bit more streamlined than that—it has no student members there. The University of St Andrews, another fine institution that is regularly in the top 10—no student members on that board. Imperial College London—no student members. Yale University has 19 members on its board—no student members. Princeton University has an extravagant 23 members on the board—up to 40—and of those members, no current students. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT—leaders in science, technology, engineering, maths—includes no fewer than seven, and no more than 10 members of its board, and guess what? No student members.

New Zealand universities are democratic, there is good student representation. To be among that list of those very, very fine institutions, adding to the governance boards is not the right way to go about that. For that reason, among the others I have discussed, this is a bill that cannot be supported. I will not be supporting it to go to the committee, and I will not be commending it to the House.

If ever the public of New Zealand needed another example of how out of touch and removed from the community this National Government has become, they just got it from that member, Paul Foster-Bell—although I will acknowledge it is the single biggest contribution that he has made to parliamentary proceedings so far this year. Mr Foster-Bell basically compared New Zealand’s universities to businesses and said they should operate like businesses. How out of touch can he be?

I want to quote from the then-chair of Universities New Zealand, in other words the former New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee, Professor Roy Crawford, who said: “The world’s leading universities have councils that are larger than company boards and are not based on a business model. This is strength, not a weakness. They recognise that it is essential to have a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives to inform and enrich their decision making.” Mr Foster-Bell said: “Oh well, these changes are relatively new and not all universities have adopted them in New Zealand yet.” No, that is right—they have not adopted them, because the universities themselves oppose them.

I sat on the Education and Science Committee when the original bill introducing the changes that shrunk down the size of university councils went through. How many submissions do members think there were in favour of those changes? How many submissions in favour? Absolutely none. Not one single submission was in favour of the changes introduced by the National Government. Every single submitter opposed the changes being introduced. They did so very, very vocally, and their voices fell on deaf ears. They were completely ignored by the National Government.

I bring a perspective to this as someone who has served as a student representative on a university council.

💬 Chris Bishop: Very good.

Chris Bishop is nodding over there. I am not sure that he ever quite made it that far—

💬 Chris Bishop: I did.

Oh, he did make it that far.

💬 Chris Bishop: I was elected.

Oh, he was elected as a student representative on a university council. Well, there you go. I hope that he will recognise the value of student representation, unlike the person who was previously sitting beside him and contributing, Paul Foster-Bell, who does not see the value of student representation.

I want to bring one specific example of the value of that student representation to the university council. That occurred during the time when I was on the Victoria University council, when the then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon—my good mate Professor Stuart McCutcheon—brought forward a proposal to change the academic grievance procedures of the university that would have, effectively, required students who went through the academic grievance process unsuccessfully to appeal to the courts. It would have removed their right to appeal to the university council, so it would have, effectively, forced students who were having difficulty with the institution to go directly to the courts.

We went to the council, as the student representatives, supported by the staff representatives, and actually made the case that this recommendation would create more risk for the university, not less. Do you know who backed us? The people who backed us at the council to overturn the recommendation of the Vice-Chancellor were the business people sitting on the university council. They recognised the contribution that the student representatives were making—a voice that would not have been heard had we not been there to give a contrary view. In the end, that recommendation did not proceed, and that was a good decision. As a result, we ended up avoiding opening up the university to much greater risk through a recommendation that had not been properly thought through.

I want to return to Professor Crawford’s comment, when he said that the original changes proposed by the Government represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the distinct role universities play in societies. He went on to talk about the universities’ need for autonomy and academic freedom, so that they can be the critic and conscience of society. The changes introduced by the Government absolutely undermine that, because they increase the amount of ministerial control over university councils and decrease the amount of democratic representation that exists—of independent representation that exists—on university councils. There are a lot of good reasons why that is a bad thing. The example I mentioned is one of them; there are many others.

Our universities should be independent of the Government. Of course the Government is a significant stakeholder, as a significant funder. It has representation on the council, but it should not be in ultimate control, which is what it is going to be if the changes introduced by Steven Joyce are fully implemented. This is a good piece of legislation because it allows the institutions to determine what the ideal composition of their councils should be. They make the decisions, not the Government. That is the way it should be.

I am delighted to take a call on this bill. Can I first of all pay a huge compliment to my colleague Paul Foster-Bell who, I have to say, gave a magnificent speech. We learnt stuff about universities around the world, from his speech, that I think was absolutely outstanding. I cannot wait to get back to my office to download a copy of the speech and play it again tonight, a number of times. Probably the DVD will come out as well, if members want to take it to family and friends.

I have to say that this is another example of the divide that exists between the left and the right in politics. I am not being derogatory or anything, but the left truly do believe that there should be more controls, there should be more mandatory requirements, there should be more rigid structures in place for things to occur, and that the Government should have a whole lot of legislation to control things. The right of politics, depending on how far to the right you are, believe in providing more freedom to an operation or an institution or to a financial product or whatever, and allow for the people to make the choice themselves.

I have to say that universities and polytechnics have got to be the best example of a market-driven unit of operation. They have no right to guarantee enrolments; they have to have people choose to come to them; they have to be on their mettle the whole time about the product and the standard that they offer and whether indeed they are going up in world ratings and being seen to be a phenomenal institution, or they again have to be on their mettle to make sure they do not look like they are becoming stale and not the flavour of the month. And, finally, students are choosing to go elsewhere. If we had zoning, for example, like we have with schools, and you lived in Auckland you had to go to Auckland University—

💬 Chris Bishop: Woo hoo!

I know, I should not suggest this because Labour members—about three of them—are already scribbling down the idea for some legislation to have zoning in tertiary education. Thank goodness we do not. What makes me laugh is that they say it would be dreadful to have that, but we will have it for schools. But if we had zoning in tertiary education, then the universities would not have to worry. Stuart McCutcheon in Auckland would say: “Well, we’ve got a catchment of 1.4 million”—or whatever it is—“and they have to come here, so we’re fine.” But they know that almost daily they have got to keep looking at their perception in the media, their perception from the students, and their perception from the parents. Are we providing a good product?

The changes that the National Government made were to try to give some flexibility to each one of the tertiary institutions that are out there, because they are all different. It is not just that they are eight universities that are different. There are polytechnics, there are private training establishments, there are wānanga; there are big ones, there are little ones, there are fat ones, and there are skinny ones. They are all different. To think you can have a one size fits all for them is just a mistake.

That does not mean to say that it is not a good idea to have staff representatives on the councils. I actually think it is a brilliant idea to have them. I would say that if I was in any way involved in the council of a university I would be demanding that the council confront the issue of how we get staff representation, so that we hear their views. You do not want to get bushwhacked a few months into a programme you are initiating because you had not brought the staff in. So it is a good idea. But why does it have to be mandatory? Some of those operations might be so small that they can actually consult with staff, a handful of them in some cases, and know their views, without having to have them on the council. It is the same with regard to student representation. No one on this side of the House is saying that it is wrong to have student representation. I think it is a damn good idea to have it, in most cases, but not mandatory.

I was quite interested to see some of the briefing notes that came from our research unit. I do not normally read a lot of this stuff, but I read this. It talked about universities still being able to provide for staff and student representation on their councils. I knew that. It said that, in fact, seven of the eight universities have one student on their councils, with the remaining institution having two student representatives. I am going to read that again: it is not compulsory, they have got some freedom and flexibility, and it is evil that we do not have mandatory student representation. Then, seven of the eight universities do have it. They have obviously seen the merit of it. They have obviously seen the benefit of it. One of them even has two student representatives.

This is a dopey piece of legislation, and I mean really, really dopey. It is a silly thing to be doing—putting a straitjacket around our institutions. I certainly will not be supporting the bill, and I hope the House does not support it either.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. This bill is not dopey. This is a good, practical, common-sense, positive bill. What it does is it reverses Steven Joyce’s wrong answer in search of a problem, when he rammed through the Education Amendment Bill that reduced the mandatory student and staff appointees to university councils. It is not dopey, as we have heard suggested by other members, to have students and staff represented on those councils. I think it is a frankly ridiculous argument, the last speaker saying that he supported student and staff representatives and he thought it was “a bloody good idea” but it should not be mandatory. You could apply exactly the same logic to ministerial appointments. They are a good idea, possibly a bloody good idea, but why make them mandatory? You make them mandatory because you want to see those voices around that table.

When Steven Joyce made those massively unpopular changes to the university, wānanga, and polytech councils there was massive opposition. I remember, when on the select committee, the response. Of the 1,037 written submissions, there were five—only five—that supported the Government’s change. What we saw was the unions, the universities, the vice-chancellors, and the mayors coming out opposing this change. I want to congratulate the member the Hon David Cunliffe on putting this bill in the ballot and having it drawn. It is a good bill, which goes back to making sure that we have student and staff voices around the table.

This Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill is a good bill, and I hope it can pass. What we know is that when you remove those student and staff voices you reduce the institutional and academic freedom, you remove the protection that those voices around the table bring to the role of universities as the critic and the conscience of our society. They ensure diversity. They ensure that those voices, which are critical—you know, you may just see them as customers. But it is crucial to have those customers’ perspectives around the table, or you risk getting bushwhacked, as the previous speaker put it.

I called it Steven Joyce’s “wrong answer in search of a problem” because there was no problem. There was no evidence presented from any of the Government members at the time as to why we had to massively scale back membership of these councils, from 20 to eight to 12. There was no reason why we had to remove the student and staff positions. What we have replaced them with, of course, is appointed positions. I believe in democracy. I believe that those positions should be elected by their peers. That is not what we have seen in all those cases. What we saw was an ideological solution in search of a problem, because they presented no evidence. In fact, they ignored all the evidence. When you look at some of the top-performing universities, which I am sure the Government members would like to see us following—Massachusetts Institute of Technology. How many members has it got? Not 12, but 70. Cambridge University—how many has it got? It is not 12; it is 30.

When you look at the data of corporates in New Zealand and Australia, in fact it is larger boards that are bringing a bigger dividend and better financial success than smaller boards. What Steven Joyce ended up doing was somehow confusing and conflating good management practices with good governance practices. These councils are governance bodies that hear from everyone—incorporating some of those strategic decisions.

Secondly, what this good bill does is reverse more “Joyce meddling” in our tertiary education sector. We used to hear a lot about nanny State in New Zealand. Nanny State to me is Steven Joyce deciding how to spend the students’ levy. Nanny State for me is Steven Joyce deciding who is going to be on all those university councils with those ministerial appointments. I support students and I support staff and their voices being elected by their peers around those councils, and, ultimately, that is how we are going to get better decision-making and a better, higher-quality tertiary education sector.

Lastly, I want to touch on the track record of the Minister who has been making those ministerial appointments—rather than the staff and rather than the students electing them. I remember speaking in previous debates looking at Minister Joyce’s poor track record. This comes out of the New Zealand University Students’ Association submission. Of all the appointments—there were 30—only five were women. Of those 30 only one was Māori; none were Pasifika; two-thirds were chief executive officers, company directors, and accountants. What we have not been seeing is those students, the staff, the Māori, the Pasifika, the community voices around the university council tables, and that is why the Green Party is proud to support this bill.

The National Party opposes the Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill in the name of Mr David Cunliffe. The bill seeks to backtrack reforms that were in the previous Education Amendment Bill (No 2) around governance changes in this area and especially seeks to reinstate the previous requirements around student representation.

I do not think that anybody in this House would deny the importance of the student body, and also the academic bodies, in regard to tertiary institutions. But there are also other interested parties as well. The Government is one of those interested parties, as a big funder of those institutions, and the community has a role to play as well, because the community wants to see a strong institution in its area.

When it comes to looking at the council and the board, it should not just be a matter of—as the Opposition is seeking in this case—appointing students or the tertiary sector people, or whatever mantra they use for that, to determine the success of someone on the board. I think we need to take a more objective approach and look at what good governance generally is. I think the speech of Paul Foster-Bell was an excellent speech, in which he detailed through a number of boards and, basically, bodies that run institutions in the tertiary sector overseas. It was very obvious from those examples that he gave that there is a predominance of small boards—smaller than what is intended in this bill. This bill intends to reinstate the size from 12 to 20 members, as opposed to the eight to 12 that the size has changed to now in the current legislation.

When we look at those overseas examples, they are definitely in the realm of the lower number, and they show themselves to be most effective for those large institutions that have very strong academic records. When we also look at the corporate sector, there has always been a movement to lower board sizes in that area as well. That is a justification, because they look at the skills and the mix of skills that they have got, rather than necessarily the size, as determining the success of an organisation. Again, Mr Paul Foster-Bell gave some very good examples of some very big organisations in the corporate sector that have quite small boards and are seen as very effective organisations and companies that are able to deliver for their shareholders and also for their communities.

This bill comes from a philosophical point of view—from the Labour Party, of course, and supported by the Green Party, obviously, in the last speech, by Gareth Hughes. There were a few facts in that Green Party speech that were not actually correct. When you look at democracy, as the previous speaker said, that gives some kind of expectation that there would be an election for all board members on a university council, which is not how it worked previously and is not the intention of the Labour bill either. It is not something like the Parliament, for example, where you have a general election. These board members are appointed in many cases, so there is not that democracy—as the Green Party tried to indicate—of having election by peers, because that is not the case under the bill that is being proposed.

Also, the Government does not direct what happens with the student levy; the student levy goes to the student institution itself. So the Green Party is not correct in saying that. The universities are determining that they might wish to have a student levy on their own account at this time, but that is something that they have to determine and the board that is there at this time will have to determine that. So it is not the case that the Government determines what the student levy is, as that member tried to present—

💬 Gareth Hughes: The student support levies are prescribed by Joyce in regulations.

No, that is not the case. The member should actually go and investigate what actually happens at universities and see what happens with student levies and student boards, but that would be too much for the Green Party in this House to do.

💬 Gareth Hughes: You lose the argument, so you get all personal.

Oh no, no. This is just telling the truth, mate. That is how it works. With the universities themselves there has not been a great movement for a change in the legislation. There has not been something that has been shown to be ineffective. If we look at the polytech sector, it has had smaller boards for a number of years now and they have proven to be very effective—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much. It is always interesting to follow Mr Bennett because there are times when I listen to Mr Bennett’s contributions and I think: “You know, I might not know what I’m talking about.” Then I remember it is Mr Bennett and then I remember actually, for example, the little statement that Mr Bennett just made with regard to the Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill, around the fact that the Green Party member Gareth Hughes was wrong when he talked about democracy and how there was not actually any democracy with regard to student representation or staff representation, because they were appointed.

Obviously, Mr Bennett and the notes he has got—either he has read them wrong or he needs to replace his researchers. What we are talking about, Mr Bennett, is that there is a seat being placed there for a student representative who is then elected by the student body to that seat. I commend Mr Foster-Bell for his speech. He managed to find the single Māori woman in the whole of New Zealand who has been appointed by this Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment. So well done, Mr Foster-Bell—a good piece of research there. You did have to search for it. I guarantee it: you did have to search for it.

I want to commend Mr Cunliffe for trying to do the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment a favour—for giving the Minister an opportunity to undo another cock-up that—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

—all right, another mistake that the Minister has made inside amending the Education Act 1989.

Just while we are talking about amending the Education Act 1989—there are so many things that have been contributed that will make it easier—Mr Foster-Bell said that the reason why this bill should not be supported is that the Act has only just been amended, so therefore it does not make sense to go and amend an Act that has only just been amended. However, this Government is in the middle of quite incredibly pressured consultation around amending exactly the Act that Mr Foster-Bell says we should not touch because it has just been amended, and only yesterday the Government announced that it is putting in another piece of legislation to amend this Act that it amended only earlier this year.

So you cannot have it both ways, Mr Foster-Bell. Either it is all right for the Opposition to say that there is a mistake inside this legislation, very similar to the legislative changes around the 7-year cap, for example, and to give Mr Joyce the opportunity to actually admit he made a mistake, or it is not OK for the Government to go ahead and decide that it is going to continue to amend the Education Act 1989.

Mr Foster-Bell’s conversation also—if you listen to it carefully—argued for exactly this piece of legislation. By mentioning the number of universities—predominantly in America and in the United Kingdom—where there was no student voice on those councils, he argued exactly for the reason why it should be required that there be a seat for the student voice and a seat for the staff voice on university councils.

Mr Williamson, for example, talked about how the right believes in the right to choose. Again, Mr Williamson obviously did not really read his notes. He did not understand what had happened under the changes that happened earlier this year to the Education Act. The universities did not get their choice, Mr Williamson. A hundred percent of the universities submitted and said: “Please don’t make this change.” If the Government, if the right, as Mr Williamson said, truly stood for the right to choose, it would have supported that university voice, it would have supported the student voice, it would have supported the staff voice, and it would have supported their choice to have the council structure remain the same.

What Mr Cunliffe is trying to do is undo a mistake. He is trying to give the Government the opportunity to put back what is democracy, Mr Bennett, into the representation of those councils. He is trying to give the Government an opportunity to say: “We should have listened in the beginning. We should have heard and realised that we have had one series of elections without this protection.” Government members have been lauding it that there is this voice here and two voices over here. Without these protections—Mr Foster-Bell has just told us—as we look to go forward that voice will disappear.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Education (Restoration of Democracy to University Councils) Amendment Bill, presented by the honourable member for New Lynn across the House. In response to the member who just resumed her seat, Tracey Martin from the New Zealand First benches—she is always very passionate about education bills, and I commend her for that. But I just want to remind her that there is democracy, and then there is democracy. North Korea is called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—I will just leave it hanging there. I just want to say that good governance does not need specially mandated seats for all and sundry who demand them. Often there are more who demand them than there are actually places available for them.

It is a real shame that this bill has been brought to the House because it fails to take into account the amazing work that our Government and our Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, the Hon Steven Joyce, have, in fact, carried out. It fails to understand the great work undertaken to modernise and promote best-practice governance at all our tertiary learning institutions. The reforms that the Government has actually introduced, which will pass into law in February, allow universities to take better stock of how they wish to govern themselves. They promote the introduction of smaller, skill-based, and more productive university councils.

I know that different members have actually mentioned the participation of students and staff members as well, and I repeat some of the statistics that I know the Hon Maurice Williamson has mentioned. Seven out of the eight universities have one student on their new councils, with the remaining institution having two students on its council. As for the staff, seven of the eight universities also provide for two staff positions on the councils, with the remaining institution having one staff member on its council. It is not mandated; they have done it by choice.

The law changes that we on this side of the House implemented just a few months ago ensure that New Zealanders and international students attending our universities will not face deficient bylaws and processes that may affect their study opportunities. Students should be able to learn effectively without the hassles of access, bureaucracy, and unnecessary intrusions to their formative academic years. For those worried about the loss, as I said, many of the universities have actually committed to making sure of staff and student participation as well.

I just want to talk about one of the things that some universities have also removed, and that is something called the Court of Convocation, as part of the changes to governing councils. The Court of Convocation is something that not many know about—I did not even know—and nor do many university graduates. It basically elects graduates into its council, but the reason that the universities themselves actually abolished it is that graduates with eligibility were often voting in such abysmal numbers, and they had terrible turnout. It did not actually reflect the will of the university alumni.

So we on this side of the House are keeping our promise to make sure that New Zealand gets the best delivering of education to ensure that we have world-class universities, and the people of New Zealand get best practice in leadership in these public institutions. I will be voting alongside my party colleagues in not supporting the advancement of this bill. We will be supporting the current process, which is actually working for New Zealand.

I am pleased to stand to reiterate the Green Party’s support for this bill. It is a well-thought-out piece of legislation that seeks to undo some of the damage that has been done to the tertiary sector over recent years by this Government. It is a simple and straightforward enough proposition to get a much better balanced and more democratic approach to establishing the governance of universities. It is a topic somewhat dear to my heart. I studied at three different universities and taught at two. I had a 13-or-so-year career as an academic, and I understood from the inside out that the culture of a university, the way in which it is governed and the way in which it is managed, is very influential in the success or otherwise of that institution, and that is a point I will return to.

I was on the select committee that dealt with the ill-fated Education Amendment Bill (No 2), and there was an enormous number of submitters who were almost universally opposed to it, including some fairly high-powered groups and individuals, and including Universities New Zealand, representing the vice-chancellors of all of the universities. It was not the most radical, hare-brained group you could name in the country. They came out, not least of all, criticising this notion of reducing the number on the governance bodies and, critically, making so many of them ministerial appointees. There is a serious challenge there to the independence of the universities. They are deemed to be the critic and conscience; this is part of their founding purpose—to be critic and conscience of our societies, and for the most part they have historically done that quite well. That is not something we should take lightly.

We saw an example just a week or so ago where the independence of an academic was threatened and challenged. A gentleman from the University of Canterbury was threatened with being blacklisted for a ridiculous business about being called a gang associate. The police commissioner, to his great credit, has backed off that and will put the matter right, but it just highlights that academic independence is important. It is always under threat and it must always be defended, and governance bodies have a role in doing that.

One of the submitters on the earlier bill—the bill that fundamentally changed the nature of governance bodies—noted that the bill as it was then confused governance and management. Mr Foster-Bell, with his interesting litany of numbers and percentages and so on, was actually talking about management. I have been a business adviser. I know very well that a small, tight, fast-moving, nimble management team is actually a very good thing to have. But sitting behind that you want a very strong governance group that reflects the diversity of the organisation, and there are few organisations as complex and multifaceted as a university. We need to recognise that complexity in the make-up of the governance body. It should be making long-term, well-informed, thoughtful decisions about the future of that organisation, and then devolve them to the management team to implement.

I mentioned earlier the culture of universities. We want our universities to reflect a culture of inclusiveness, of participation; because I know from experience, both as an academic and as a student, that that is where people thrive. People need to feel that they are part of something where they are included and where their opinions, their information, their knowledge, and their contribution is respected—even if not always necessarily listened to, in the sense of winning the argument. If you take away from people the right to have the argument, to be part of the contributing body, to speak to the matters—whatever their matters might be—before the governing body, and if you deny people a voice at that table, you are doing them a significant disservice. Over time, it will degrade the quality of the decision making and it will degrade the quality of the culture of that organisation. I am a great believer—both in public sector and academia, and, indeed, in business—in this notion of being inclusive and of encouraging participation, because only then do you get the best out of people.

If people know they are on a governance body by the grace and favour of a Minister or, indeed, of ministerial appointees, their contribution will be constrained because they will always have a thought of: “Oh, I mustn’t offend. Mustn’t rock the boat, as anything too overtly critical might end up with me being spun out of here.” So the notion of having preserved positions was important in maintaining that integrity and that independence. This is a very good bill. We are very pleased to support it.

In contrast to the previous speaker, David Clendon, I want to make the point that this is not a well-conceived bill. This is a bill that seeks to undo something that Parliament considered only about 2 years ago, and something that was advanced for very good reasons.

Mr Cunliffe, when he introduced this bill—in his remarks in the first reading of this bill—placed the bill and the reasons for its advancement within the general context of the policies that the Government has advanced towards tertiary education. I want to address a couple of the points that he said. What was his first major point? His first major argument was that the Government has underfunded tertiary education—well, nothing could be further from the truth. Since 2008, when we inherited Government in the teeth of the global financial crisis, we have increased tertiary spending by 14.4 percent. University funding is up 20 percent since 2008. So the claim by Mr Cunliffe that the Government has underfunded tertiary education is just simply not borne out by the facts. Tertiary funding, and university funding in particular, has increased far in excess of inflation.

What was his second claim? Well, his second claim was that the Government is failing students—that the tertiary system is simply failing to provide for students. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. You could look at a plethora of statistics that the Government puts out on this or that the universities provide to the Government, which then get published, to prove this. I just want to point to two particular metrics that indicate that this is a tertiary system, under this Government, that is performing. For example, in 2013 the university system—the tertiary system—produced the highest number of Bachelor’s degrees ever. The highest number of Bachelor’s degrees ever, up 23 percent since 2010, in just 3 years.

Something that I am particularly proud of is the performance of Māori and Pasifika students because they have historically underperformed both in our secondary education system and, in particular, in our university system. Well, the gains that Māori are making are quite remarkable under this Government. For example, the number of Bachelor’s degrees achieved by Māori is up 46 percent since 2010. Take a look at Pasifika—quite remarkable—up 68 percent since 2008. A 68 percent increase in the number of Bachelor’s degrees. So Mr Cunliffe’s second claim, that the system is failing, is simply wrong.

What about his claim that the tertiary system is dependent on foreign students? You know, the members opposite have a very odd attitude towards foreign students. And I have heard Tracey Martin—I missed her speech before—rail against foreign students before. Actually, international students are a vital source of foreign exchange for universities, but also for this country. They provide jobs; they create economic growth, including in our regions; and they are extremely important. So, again, this is not about increasing dependence on foreign students.

What else has the Government said? And in particular I want to respond to David Clendon’s remarks about the critic and conscience of society. Does this bill destroy the independence of universities? Does it take away from that important role of universities as the critic and conscience of society? Absolutely not. That section of the Education Act 1989 is completely unchanged.

Does this bill increase the Government’s control of universities? No, it does not. The Government currently appoints around a third of council members to universities; it will still appoint around a third of members to councils. Chris Hipkins, actually, in a somewhat odd contribution to the debate, did make the point that the Government is an important stakeholder in universities and in tertiary education because it is the majority funder of tertiary education. Most students out there at universities will not know that the Government is funding 72 percent of their degrees, on average, at universities.

This is not a good bill. The Government’s changes back in 2013 were all about flexibility and were all about introducing greater skills-based people for these university councils in the context of a world of massive online open courses, or MOOCs as they are called, and in the context of a world of increasing international competition from China, from India, and from other countries in the developing world. In an environment in which we want our students to be internationally connected and we want our universities to be globally connected, the changes made by the Government were sensible and prudent, and, therefore, this bill should fail.

I call the Hon David Cunliffe in reply.

In this short summing up, may I touch on some of the arguments that have been raised around the House. The Government noted that seven out of eight universities have one student rep, and that seven out of eight have two staff reps. What, then, is the problem about writing that into law as of right? Although I think it is obvious that two student reps, elected as of right, with democratic rights, is the way to go. That does, Mr Bishop, support the critic and conscious role of universities.

There are arguments raised by the Government that universities should have small boards, but then, in a very puzzling contribution, Mr Foster-Bell quoted a number of overseas universities that, although they are reputable institutions, have boards of 20, 30, or 40 members. I am not quite sure what point he was trying to make, because that flew in the exact opposite direction of the law change that this bill seeks to reverse.

The Government then took refuge in the argument that small boards with no student reps are better, contradicting the earlier point that most of the unis have at least one student rep. So we looked through the list of institutions that have no student reps. Guess which ones popped up? Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre had no student representation. It did have National MP Barbara Kuriger on the board, but that did not stop 5 years of systematic rorting, resulting in a payback of $6.25 million. I think an independent student voice would have spotted that rort, because the board was asleep.

And if that is not enough, what about Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi? It had no student on the board either, but it also ripped the taxpayer off so badly that the Warriors football team was awarded a 3-month diploma for turning up for 1 day. Do you think a student rep on the board might have stood up and said: “That’s just a little bit suspicious.”? And if the National Government was so OK with students on the board, it would not have told the Waiariki Institute of Technology student representatives to shut up about the merger or they would no longer get funding for the student association. That is the kind of, as I said earlier, jackboot tactics that this bill seeks to outlaw. And if it was not happening, we would not need to enshrine in law what, admittedly, in some cases, happens in practice.

That is the principled argument. But I think the Government missed the message at the start, which is that Opposition parties are seeking to find a workable new way forward. Actually, this bill is designed to get the debate to a select committee. What we want to do is work across the House and with stakeholders across the sector to find a new way. Perhaps it will not involve taking the boards back to the size that they once were, even if—thank you, Mr Foster-Bell—those of Oxford University and Cambridge University and a whole lot of others are much bigger. But maybe there is room for compromise on that.

Maybe the compromise here is something about ensuring that there is a proper right for student representation and staff representation, rather than it happening by accident or by dint of perseverance in the face of an ideological approach from a Government that, actually, Mr Foster-Bell and Mr Williamson exhibited when they said: “University students associations are just a hotbed for political apparatchik.” I wonder if they said that to the former president of the University of Canterbury Students’ Association, the Hon Peter Dunne, who is in a position to influence this bill—and I hope that he will reflect his experience as a former student union president and cast his vote for the voice of students to be heard as of right in institutions across the country.

This bill represents a genuine attempt by the sector, working across the House, to find a new way forward, a consensus way forward, and a compromise forward. It will allow the whole sector to engage systematically, properly, and with protection of their independent rights to get a win-win outcome for institutions that understand joint value creation and that are going for shared value. I see Jian Yang there—an experienced academic. He would normally involve his students. He would want to see staff represented. He must be deeply uncomfortable sitting on that side of the fence, where those rights are currently not enshrined in law. This is a genuine attempt by the sector and Opposition parties to provide a win-win future, one that underpins the democratic rights of students and staff to have a voice in the institutions that are there to serve them and all New Zealanders. Thank you.

Thank you. I was making a genuine attempt to get you to sit down at the end of the 5 minutes.