BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) : By popular demand, I am back to finish the story I was telling last night. The woman in question, who had been through a targeted selection interview process, did not get the job. She took an action against the company, which failed in the Employment Court. So she went to the Human Rights Commission and said: “I’m a woman, I didn’t get the job, and I’ve been discriminated against on the basis of my sex.” The commission, like a rabid dog, grabbed the case and charged. To cut a long story short, she took an action, which went something like this: she had no justification, she admitted privately that she had no justification, and the commission said that it did not think she had any justification but, by the way, it did not think that that big company would like that sort of adverse publicity, so why did it not sit down and write out a little cheque. We ended up writing out a small cheque for $220,000.

Hon Maurice Williamson: How much?

BRIAN CONNELL: It was $220,000. So the moral of the story is that people should grab one of the Minister’s forms and go out and make themselves a fortune. That is why we do not like Part 4. We do not like either point that the Minister in the chair, Paul Swain, is suggesting. [Interruption] I do not know what that Minister is doing in calling out; he has no idea what is in this part. I suggest he keeps very quiet. I cannot give the Minister a better example than that as to why he should rethink that component. The company paid $220,000. That is what took place. She admitted, as did the commission, that she had no justification whatsoever. She had been treated fairly, and her grievance was a complete and utter fabrication. That will be replicated by others, who will simply say they do not like the boss. They will be given a choice whether to take step (a) or step (b), and they will be able to make themselves a small fortune. Surely the Minister cannot believe that is right. It is a huge injustice. I ask the Minister to take a call and explain that away.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : Part 4 allows an individual who is so inclined an opportunity to double dip, as the honourable member Brian Connell has just outlined. People can go through either the human rights legislation or the employment legislation. It seems to me that people of such character as has just been well described will look for the weakest link. That is regrettable. I know that the Labour Party members over there do not like to admit it, but, whether we like it or not, there are people who capitalise on that sort of circumstance. They can see gold at the end of the rainbow, and they put themselves into a situation in which it is easier for the employer to pay up and write a cheque rather than to challenge their claims or assertions.

In new section 79A, “Choice of procedures”, inserted by clause 100, subsection (2) states: “To avoid doubt, a complaint referred to in subsection (1) includes, but is not limited to, a complaint about sexual harassment or racial harassment.” Why does the legislation not stipulate what can be embraced in it? Why does it state that those can be included, implying that there is something else that an individual can claim about, but not mentioning what it is? That seems to open the pie wider than has ever been envisaged before. It seems to give people who are fairly unscrupulous an opportunity to be even more unscrupulous—to capitalise on whatever weak link in the chain they can find. New Zealand First is totally opposed to this type of legislation. We believe that this matter should be tightened up rather than loosened.

I note that United Future member Paul Adams spoke quite earnestly about it yesterday. I was impressed by his contribution. He has been making assertions about the Holidays Act that seem to put him on the left side of the playing field, yet for some reason yesterday he came back to the mainstream, and indicated very well the effects of this clause. It did not sound as if he were eating an elephant, bite by bite! This part is a small part but it is a significant part, and it actually leaves a bad flavour about the whole bill. New Zealand First is not going to support the bill, but this part in particular leaves a bad flavour about the whole thing.

We have heard about several cases. I think that Brian Connell raised the worst case I have heard about in this Parliament, although I have heard privately of similar circumstances. I see no need to widen the existing system, and this measure will simply make—[Interruption] Oh, the member over there thinks it is a joke. I can tell him that many relatively small employers have been caught by the sorts of circumstances that the previous speaker just illustrated. I personally have never had the experience, but I am well aware of many small employers who have been faced with the task of either paying up, or going through a huge legal operation, with huge costs, if they challenge the system. This Part 4 opens the door so that people of that mind can have two bites of the apple. They might think they could do better under the human rights legislation, or they might think they could do better under the employment legislation.

I say to the Minister of Labour that this is employment legislation, and it should be confined to employment. Those sorts of claims should be confined to employment law. Human rights legislation has a part, no doubt, in New Zealand society, but to my mind it does not have a part in employment law. It should be quite categoric that if people want to lay claims, they should do so under existing employment legislation. So there is absolutely no need for this part. It disappoints me, and I know that it will disappoint thousands of small employers.

JILL PETTIS (Senior Whip—Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) : Employers throughout the country today will be feeling a distinct shiver running up their spines at the thought that we will be passing legislation that in any way extends the grubby little hand of the Human Rights Commission into their businesses any more than already happens.

Jill Pettis: Oh, such passion.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I am very happy to say that I am very passionate about it. I am sure that employers in Jill Pettis’ electorate of Whanganui have been through this experience. As with Brian Connell’s example, I can give chapter and verse, time and time again, of employers—decent, good employers who have a really good workforce, who have lots of staff who have worked for them for years, and who are very happy to have them—who take on someone new, and within no time at all it has become very clear that that person’s objective is to get as much moolah, booty, loot, or whatever the word is, as possible out of that employer within the shortest possible time—to take the money and run. It is nothing to do with reasonableness or with any treatment that that person has had.

I would be more comfortable, at least, if the employment law stayed with the Employment Relations Authority having some rights where there were clear breaches of the employment relationship between the staff member and the employer. We are starting to favour employees who are on the razzle—who go out to find where they can get their next bit of moolah from. We are opening the door to an agency in this country that really could not give a damn about employers. It could not give a damn about the costs. Its members all sit around in their caftans and sandals at night, with their macramé sets out, asking how they can practise fairness, decency, and honesty: “I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll put the boot into employers, because they can afford it.” That is their attitude, over and over again. To Darren Hughes, who has never employed anybody, that may seem funny, but I do not think it is funny, at all.

Now, of course, we have all the ambulance-chasers out there, who are so affluent from the regime that has been in place that they can afford to do television advertising. Members should just watch television at night and they will see: “No win, no pay; you come and see us if you have a problem.” Where is the incentive to settle, to say: “Look, we’ll bring back those staff members, we’ll do some things within the company that will re-accommodate them, and they can carry on their merry way working for us.”? Why would one want to do that, if one were a lawyer on a “no win, no pay” regime? That lawyer would get nothing out of it—nought, zero. So what are we doing? The ambulance-chasing lawyers will look at Part 4 and say: “Whoop-de-doo! Here we go, guys! This is Gold Coast holiday home stuff for us, because we will be able to take this as far as we like.” As I said, the caftan-wearing brigade down at the Human Rights Commission, who are so pious and so worried, will pass rules about how unfair it is, and so on, without any knowledge whatsoever—

Brian Connell: As they reach for their Chardonnay.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON:—as they reach for their Chardonnay, as my colleague says.

I do not think anybody in this country ever believes there is not an element of discrimination in employment; I do not think there is anybody who does not believe that. I think every person has his or her own personal prejudice. I am not a religious person, but I supported the Christchurch petrol-bowser man who said he wanted only staff members who were religious. That would have excluded me from his company, straight away, but I think he should have had the right to say that. But, oh no, if he says that now, he will be discriminating. I can understand if someone does not want a big tall bloke with a loud voice and a beard working for him or her, and says so. I would say: “That’s fine; I’m not wanted, so I will go and get another job.” But with this legislation we are opening the door to an unbelievably open chequebook. People will be able to claim that they have been discriminated against, over anything: “Oh, the employer looked at me side on as I was walking down the corridor.”; “Oh, he didn’t! Right, that’s it. We’ll have the Human Rights Commission brought in. We’ll pay for counselling services, accident compensation, a grievance case, and so on.”

This Part 4 is a disgrace. There are already enough mechanisms in employment legislation to deal with the genuine case where an employer is unfair and does act in a punitive way towards his or her staff member—and I am very happy about that. But I tell members right now that employers across this country will find it hard to lie a-bed at night knowing that the Government is now extending those mechanisms to include the Human Rights Commission.

DAVE HEREORA (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): There is no debate on the schedules. I have in front of me an amendment in the name of the honourable Dr Wayne Mapp. It is set out on Supplementary Order Paper 273, and it is to omit schedule 1. It is out of order, but the member was, obviously, signalling his intention to vote against the schedule standing part.

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Sue Bradford to schedule 1 be agreed to:

to insert in paragraph (c) of schedule 1A, before the words “cleaning services”, the words “caregiving services”.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) : The vote on those schedules is surely indicative, is it not? If this country in, say, 12 months’ time was so foolish as to vote for Labour, what we would actually get is a Labour-Green-Māori coalition Government. That is the kind of coalition we would get, because that is exactly what those votes would represent. What is more interesting is that the Green Party and the Māori Party have tried to push Labour even more to the left—than Margaret Wilson has. So we just know as an absolute fact that a Labour-Green-Māori coalition would be fundamentally a more left-wing Government. That is the real prospect facing our country.

In contrast, all the parties running from the centre through to the right are voting for a sensible approach and growth. I have to note that United Future did actually give a common-sense vote today—it is a fairly rare event, I might add. That is the big political contest that faces this country in relation to these crucial issues. Employment relations is one of those fundamental divides. One believes either in giving unions more and more preferences whenever and wherever possible or in equality and choice in the workplace, so that everyone is treated equally in negotiations.

It is interesting, is it not? National has put a real stake in the ground around the point and principle of equality. That has appealed deeply to New Zealanders. Dr Brash is telling New Zealand to extend that principle across the totality of New Zealand life—not just in the area of race relations but across all aspects of our nation’s life. In the area of employment, we want people to be treated equally. We want the 1.7 million workers—the 80 percent of New Zealander workers—who have chosen not to be in unions to be treated exactly the same as unionists. What could possibly be wrong with that principle of equality? What could possibly be wrong with that? Yet this Government, aided by its Green Party and Māori Party lackeys, is saying no to that basic proposition. That has to be a tremendously dangerous signal to New Zealand.

In the last 3 weeks, strikes either have been threatened or have happened in crucial transport sectors—Air New Zealand tomorrow and Ports of Auckland just 3 weeks ago. We just know for a fact that the unions will target the vulnerable sectors of our economy. We are uniquely dependent on exports. A greater percentage of our economy is devoted to primary exports than in any other developed country. The unions know that. For many, many years they had feather-bedded, cushioned provisions in those key industries. That held back New Zealand enormously, and the Minister knows the truth of that. For three decades we had lower growth than any other OECD country. It was a fool’s paradise. The crunch came in the 1980s. All of that was stripped out over the next succeeding 15 years, and this country has had the benefits. We have had higher growth. The Government itself has benefited from that growth.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) : I am delighted to take a call in this debate on the title of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill. All I can say is that that title is not even close to what it should be. It should really be something along the lines of: “How do we find the mechanism to get money out of the workers and fund it through the union movement, so that it can help Labour with its election campaign coffers?”.

Hon David Cunliffe: That’s unworthy.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, that is exactly what it is. I say to Mr Cunliffe, who is the man more hated by his colleagues than any other member in this House, that had the National Party ever been passing legislation through this House late at night and had the Business Roundtable—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but interjections should be rare, reasonable, and relevant—or witty if possible. I invite members to look up Speakers’ ruling 56/1.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: There is no chance of any of those three coming from Mr Cunliffe. Had the National Party been passing legislation late at night and had the Business Roundtable or Business New Zealand been sitting out in the back room, the Labour Party absolutely would have been waging war about that. I ask members to look at who is pulling Labour’s strings, and to look at who is the driving force behind the Labour Government. Of course, National was absolutely never prepared to have that. It never happened, and never would under a National Government, because we made our own decisions. Who was skulking around in the lobbies, just straight through the wall in the little briefing rooms, and acting as an adviser, we are now told?

Brian Connell: Who?

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Ross Wilson, the head of the Council of Trade Unions, that is who.

Brian Connell: He wasn’t allowed here.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: No, I did not think he was allowed in here, either. We have had an interesting ruling from the Speaker that the Minister or the Minister in the chair who is running a bill has the right to have whomever he or she wants in the precincts of Parliament. There are some phenomenal implications for that. Let us imagine if, when the Prostitution Reform Bill was going through, we had had some prostitutes in the back room giving the Minister advice. What sort of a headline would that have given this Parliament?

But, no, Ross Wilson was sitting out the back string-pulling: “This is what we need in the Labour movement.” What they want, because this is the most important element of this bill, is the pseudo-compulsion of joining a union and paying a bargaining fee. The sting in the tail is that if one does not want to join a union or pay a fee, but still wants to be a free member of society and just get on with one’s job, there is a second double-sting that says: “You don’t have to compulsorily join the union, and so on,”—that sounds good, except for one thing—“but you still have to pay money through the form of a bargaining fee.” If members have ever heard of: “We catch you if you go left; we catch you if you go right; we catch you, anyway” sort of trick, then that is what this bill is. Why? Well, the union coffers have to be built up with money. This has nothing to do with principle and nothing to do with workers having an individual say in their employment contracts.

At the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we heard, over and over again, the following comments from a plethora of really decent, honest, good employers. I will give members an example. A man called Bill Dalbeth runs the Howick bus company in my area, and he is a really nice man with a good family, who are well respected. They run their private bus company, and do it very well. If members were to go and have a talk to the employees of the Howick bus company they would be told that he is one of the best employers in the country. At the committee I asked him how many of his staff were unionised, and he said it was probably two-thirds. I asked him how he felt about that. He said that it would be easier for him if they were all unionised and he would be very comfortable if they joined up, but he respected their choice not to do so. So it is not like he is anti-union, because he told us that it would be easier if all his employees were unionised. I said to him: “After you’ve negotiated your collective agreement each time with those who are organised in the union, what do you do with the other third?”. He said: “Quite simply, we do not want a second class of citizen. We do not want to be accused of treating our staff in different ways. We just say to them: ‘Look, guys, this is what we’ve agreed to with the two-thirds who are unionised, and it’s the same for you. OK. Nothing different, nothing special, nothing extra.”

How sensible is that? Who would not support the right of employers to say that they did not want two classes of citizen or two standards for their employees? But this Minister says: “No, we’re not going to have that. If you’re in the union you can have a sweetheart deal but if you’re not, the only way you can get it is by paying a bargaining fee.”

KEITH LOCKE (Green) : The Green Party, as everyone knows—and it has been promoted by the National Party—is supporting this bill, which does lead to greater fairness for workers and employers in industrial relations. It will lead to much better relations in our society. One of the previous speakers—I think it was Wayne Mapp—said that unions will now target vulnerable sectors of our economy, such as the waterfront. He referred back to the recent industrial dispute involving waterfront workers and their employers. Well, that dispute was largely over the question of casualisation. As the proportion of the workforce that is employed full time on that work goes up and the casual sector goes down there will be better relations on the waterfront, because there will not be a volatile workforce. There will be a more stable workforce for employers, and everyone will be much happier. The more full time workers there are the more workers can satisfy the needs of themselves and their families, so that would be very much a step in the right direction.

I cannot quite understand what Maurice Williamson was saying. He said how unjust it is that the increases negotiated by unions do not have to be passed on to non-union people in the workplace. Well, I listen to the National Party sometimes talk about hard work—about people being rewarded for their hard work, and all the rest of it. If one allows—as existed prior to this amendment that is going through—the situation of freeloading, one has people who do nothing to help to improve their conditions, and yet they benefit by riding on the back of their fellow workers in the same enterprise. I do not see how the National Party can stand for that and still support the idea of people working and benefiting from their work.

The National Party goes on about the question of choice, and says that people have chosen not to join a union. Well, the fact of the matter is that during the period of the Employment Contracts Act the proportion of union members in the New Zealand workforce went down very dramatically. It has stabilised, and in some areas has come up, under the Employment Relations Act. But it is still at a very low level. One has to ask why New Zealand has such a low level of unionisation. I have just been to Norway and Sweden, which have a very high proportion—60 percent or something—of the workforce unionised. The reason for New Zealand’s low level of unionisation is that it has been hard, even under the Employment Relations Act sometimes, for unions to talk to workers and to try to get them to join the union. Of course, in a lot of workplaces, particularly the smaller ones, the employer can put quite strong pressure on people who might want to become union members, not to become union members. So as this bill better establishes good-faith bargaining it will help, I think, to improve that situation and get New Zealand back closer to what we could consider to be an international norm among the more developed countries in terms of the level of unionisation.

Ross Wilson has been criticised very much in the debate this afternoon as somehow giving orders to the Government. I do not know the details of all the accusations that have been raised, but I did read a press release today from the said Ross Wilson. I only wish that he could come into the lobbies and tell the Government members about it. But he has not made very much impact on the Government yet. I will just read out two sentences of that press release, which relates to the Ahmed Zaoui case: “It is fundamental that the Inspector-General should have to take into account Zaoui’s human rights and the Court of Appeal decision should be acted on without further delay. It is understandable that our Government should …”—

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) : I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak on clause 1, and I say that in the view of the ACT party this bill should not be called the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill but should actually be called the “Trade Union Promotion Bill”. Perhaps it should even be called the “Return to Compulsory Trade Unionism Bill”. I am obliged to the Green member, because he has proudly said to the Committee that this bill has gone through it with the support of the coalition of Labour, the Greens, and the Māori Party. If we look at the polls we see that the only way Labour can be the Government is if that is the coalition—Labour, the Greens, and the Māori Party. The Green Party has made it quite clear that the purpose of this bill is to promote trade unionism. The member said that the level of union membership should go to some international norm, and then he cited Norway and a figure of 60 percent. He also made it clear—I do not think I am misinterpreting what he said—that in his view this bill does not go far enough. In fact, the Green Party had a number of amendments to the bill, none of which have been accepted, and no doubt those will be part of the agenda.

What I do object to is the Green member’s claim about freeloading. If we look at this bill and the previous bill, we see that they actually make it illegal for employers and their employees to enter into free negotiations between themselves. We heard evidence again and again from employers that they almost never get any constructive proposals from unions, and that most of the advances that have been made in conditions and in pay come from the employer. It is the union movement that freeloads. That is not just my opinion. Ninety percent—that is the real figure—of the people in the workforce have decided that they do not want to belong to a trade union, but Mr Keith Locke knows better than them, and so does the Labour Party and so does the Māori Party! They are going to make those people join unions, but they are going to do something else as well.

Worse than compulsory unionism is that fact that the 90 percent of employees who have not joined the union now face having to pay what is called a bargaining fee. I call it a blackmail fee. Those people will not be able to have the same pay as their fellow workers unless they pay that bargaining fee. Where will the bargaining fee go? It will go to the trade union movement, and what will the trade union movement do with that money? Will it be used to advance the interests of people who do not belong to a union? Of course it will not; the unions will give it to the Labour Party.

It is no wonder that this Government listens very carefully to the trade union movement. In my time in the House I have never seen a member of the trade union movement actually be brought into the lobby of the House to discuss a piece of legislation as it is going through. I think that is completely unparliamentary.

Lindsay Tisch: They got caught out.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Well, yes, and we actually also know, because of the Official Information Act, that this bill was written by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and that—

Brian Connell: They are the architects.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Yes. The Government had a series of secret meetings with the council. I say to the Government again that this is a very extreme piece of legislation. It will promote collective bargaining. That means employers have to sit down with their competitors to discuss their conditions. Why should they do so? This legislation does do that through the bargaining clauses I have mentioned. It also advances the grievance industry, in terms of people being able to bring bogus wrongful dismissal cases.

In my view this bill is actually based on a Marxist idea, which is that there is an unequal bargaining position between employers and employees. How out to lunch is this Government? Right now, there is a shortage of labour and employers are at a disadvantage. They have to pay large sums of money to attract labour, in order to be able to get the labour they need, yet this bill is being advanced as part of the Green, Māori Party, and Labour Party agenda.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (National) : I want firstly to pick up on the point that the Hon Richard Prebble has made, which I think is a very good point. It is the fact that in his time in the House he has never before seen the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions not just draft a bill, as it has done in the past—and we know that, thanks to the Official Information Act—but be invited into the lobby. I know that the senior Government whip, Jill Pettis, is the person who has admitted to bringing Mr Wilson into the lobby, but the real issue is why she brought him in. She answered that question, from Radio New Zealand, by saying that she brought him in because the Minister wanted him. So the Minister in the chair, Paul Swain, wanted to have Ross Wilson’s view. It was not good enough just to take the view of the officials, so the Government brought Ross Wilson into the lobby where the departmental officials are. One can only assume, of course, that the departmental officials ended up in a very compromised position, taking their instructions from the Council of Trade Unions. That is an outrageous position to place the officials in, and it just shows the level that this Government will stoop to in order to get its legislation through.

I say to the members of the Labour Party—who are in an arrogant frame of mind over many issues, and this particular bill is one of them—that not one business in New Zealand that made a submission to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was in favour of this legislation. When those Labour members go back and wander around their electorates, they will say they listened to people, and the legislation will not be all that bad. If they had listened to people, why did they not change the bill? They have actually made this bill worse than it was. Under this legislation we will see multi-employment collective agreements that lock up the ports and the transport industry, and that subject those industries to union bullying, to union threats, and to going back to the old days—and they were not good old days—of union domination. Already, Ports of Auckland is saying that that is what will occur in the ports around the country. It has told the Government that the ports will be targeted by the union movement.

What has been the Government’s response to that? The Government’s response has been to say we should trust it, because it thinks the unions will behave responsibly. The unions may behave responsibly up until the time of the election, and then all bets will be off. This is a straight trade-off. Members of the unions have been told to keep their heads down, and that the Labour Government will effectively deliver them the mechanism to give this country compulsory union membership. That is what the bill does. The bill states to employers that if they have 10 staff, four of whom join the union, and they negotiate with the union to pay those four staff a certain rate, they cannot pay the other six the same rate without risking that they end up before the Employment Court for undermining the union. That is the reality of this legislation, so employers are already looking to find ways around it. They are already saying that they will just contract work out and avoid employing staff. Every employer everywhere we go says that he or she will avoid employing staff.

GORDON COPELAND (United Future) : Late in the year 2002, about 6 months after I came into this Parliament for the first time, I was sitting with quite a large group of Wellington business people. In terms of the conversation we were having, they asked me why United Future had gone into a supply and confidence agreement with the Labour Party. Straight away, I replied that it was firstly to keep the Greens out of the Government. They responded immediately by saying they thanked God for that. They were very, very delighted at that. But they wanted to take the conversation a bit further, so they asked me how we could possibly be working with the Labour Party, given some real concerns they had about the occupational safety and health legislation that we were in the middle of at the time. I replied that I shared those concerns, but I would try to answer their questions by saying that within the Labour caucus there is a faction that is a bit more to the right than some other Labour members, and that I thought we sort of bolstered it up. They looked at me with some incredulity and said: “Really! There are some people like that in the Labour Party?” I told them that there are some people like that in the Labour Party, and that if they thought about it they would realise those Labour members are very balanced, common-sense people. However, I said that there is another Labour faction that is extremely left wing. They asked me to give them an example of that, so I told them I would. I said that after I had listened to some of the Labour members during the occupational safety and health debate I had come to the conclusion that their world view was that all employers in New Zealand are irredeemably evil, and that all employees were immaculately conceived.

The reality is that if we want to have some balance in our industrial legislation we have to proceed on the assumption of some realities. Of course there are bad employers and bad employees, and there are greedy employers and bludging employees. The whole point is that we need to get the balance right in this legislation. I do not think we have done that. The existing status quo situation is fine. There is an old adage: if it ain’t broke, why try to fix it? This is a very, very serious matter, because whilst this legislation has been before Parliament—and I know the Transport and Industrial Relation Committee has made some improvements to it—I have had employers from different parts of this country, from Dunedin, where I am buddy MP, right up to Auckland, where I visit, say to me that their real worry is that this legislation will actually be the final straw that means that some employers—and we are talking about small-business employers in the main—will actually give it away. That would be a very, very sad day, indeed, for the future of our country.

I say to the Government that it should be very, very careful. As we know, at the moment Germany has a very high rate of unemployment—more than 10 percent. When I have talked to German politicians and analysts about why that is, they have said that one of the major reasons is the inflexibility of the labour market in Germany. We have before us there a living example of a nation that has got the balance wrong, and those things are very hard to wind back. On this occasion the Government has given in strongly to a pretty extreme left-wing view of life. I do not think the bill has the necessary balance, and for that reason, as all members know, we will vote against it. I sincerely hope that we will not see small-business people just give the game away and say that this is the last straw, after the occupational safety and health legislation and all the other things that have come their way under this regime. Some of those business people ask me whether I know they are taking home less money at the end of the week than most of their staff. The people who own the business and who are working 70 and 80 hours a week are taking home less money at the end of the week than some of their staff.

Small-business people have a breaking point. I am very worried and concerned that this bill will push them over it, and that we will see some of those people move out of business. That would be a tragedy for our future, for our economy, and for the growth of this country.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) : I move, That the question be now put.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I was very interested in the contribution from United Future, and I tell that member that another piece of legislation that will push small employers over the edge, and where the employer will be second-best to his or her staff, is the Holidays Act. You had a chance—United Future—to address the evils, from the employer’s perspective, of relevant daily pay. In fact, it will get through only on your vote. You had a chance to address it. Do not sit there sanctimoniously and tell this Committee—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Will the member please not bring the Chair into it.

PETER BROWN: I would not dream of bringing the Chair into it. To be honest, several employers spoke before the select committee about the Employment Relations Act as it is now, and almost without exception they said: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If we heard that expression once, we heard it close to 100 times from many employers—maybe not 100, but at least a significant number of times. If we want to do anything with industrial relations in this country we should be introducing more freedom and flexibility, both for the individual working person and for the individual employer.

First and foremost, we should remove the monopoly that unions have on collective contracts. It is farcical to say that New Zealanders, as a group, cannot get together and work out who will negotiate on their behalf with their particular employer in a reasonable and fair manner. One does not, and should not, have to have a union do the whole thing for one. That is an important change we should make to our industrial legislation.

But does this legislation do that? No, it does not. The explanatory note in the initial bill sets out—and I could not believe what I was reading when I read it for the first time—“To achieve this, the Act acknowledges the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships, and seeks to balance the interests of employers and employees through the promotion of unions and collective bargaining,”. Employers do have a little bit more power than employees, and one would expect that. They run the show, or at least, they are meant to. They are responsible for the location of the place, organisation, management, administration, finance, and financial risks. Employees do not take any of that into account. And one cannot have power without responsibility; at least I hope one cannot. Maybe the Labour Party disagrees with me on that.

It is important that the employer has his rightful place in an employment relationship agreement. This legislation distorts that terribly. I agree with Gordon Copeland. I chastised him a little bit earlier, but he is absolutely correct. Some small employers out there believe that this is just about the last straw. If it has the negative impact that they believe that it will have, then I think they will close up shop. But when this came up at the select committee, Labour members—Lianne Dalziel in particular, as I recall—said to employers and the other members of the committee that this legislation would have no effect on small employers or medium-size employers and that it would really aim only at the bigger employers who have large workforces.

I ask the Minister why we do not put a clause in the bill that states just that: “Nothing in this bill shall impact on the operations and activities of small to medium-size employers.” Put that in, and that will be a significant improvement. But no, it has not been put in.

This legislation has the potential to do a lot of damage. Firstly, it undermines the employer’s thinking. It also gives working people—the employees—the false understanding that they will be better off from it. However, I would say that employees will not be. There will be moves to engage people on contract and special arrangements to find loopholes in this legislation so that they are not covered by it. That will be to the detriment of employment and the employment relations in this legislation. New Zealand First does not have the fear of unions that some of my colleagues on the right have. Collective strength is an important ingredient in an industrial setting.

LINDSAY TISCH (Junior Whip—National) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I note that the Government has started to move closure motions. We have been going now for 37 minutes, or thereabouts. This is the final debate on very important legislation and it is the peroration of a number of debates during the Committee stage. It is important that we have an opportunity to express our views, and a number of members on this side of the House would certainly like to do that. I bring it to your attention that we would certainly expect to have more calls than what the Government intends with its anticipated closure motions. I would ask that you give consideration to those members on this side of the House who have spoken during the Committee stage, who are seeking calls now, and who wish to make a contribution in this Committee stage.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I will not take any more points of order. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 70/1, and I will give that serious consideration.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (National) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

Mr SPEAKER: I have already ruled on this.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: I know that you have. I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is a new point of order and I raise it from this point. The Standing Orders were changed, and this might be the second session under the new Standing Orders, whereby, by agreement, now we do not debate the schedules and we do this part at the end of the debate. Some of us, and I am sure you, find it a bit unusual, Mr Chairperson, but it has made for a better debate, because we do not have those narrow debates on title or date of commencement. However, my point is that when that was changed, the Standing Orders Committee did so with an understanding that whilst the debate would be wider, whoever was the Opposition of the time would not be disadvantaged. It is not a strict rule, but in this case, instead of having a debate on the title, the commencement clause, and the schedules, which would have been 3 hours, or something like that, or probably 2¼ hours, because the schedules would have been a lesser debate, we have one debate. I ask you to bear that in mind as part of the overall process.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am well aware of the situation. If the member would like to look at page 63—[Interruption] He did. Well he knows exactly what the situation is.

DARREN HUGHES (Junior Whip—Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) : In speaking to the title of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill, there are two particular issues that I would like to cover in these few minutes. I simply want to make sure I have the chance of expressing in this Chamber my concern over how these issues will impact on businesses in New Zealand. The two issues I particularly want to focus on are the provisions relating to the restructuring of a business, and bargaining fees. I will deal with the first issue.

I hope the Government, as it seeks to pass this bill through the Committee stage today, realises what it is doing to businesses. Surely the Minister in the chair, Paul Swain, can recollect the year 2000, when this provision was previously before the Parliament. It came into this Parliament as clause 66 in the original Employment Relations Bill. Such was the outrage expressed by businesses throughout New Zealand, that the Government backed off. It was a huge issue. I know that Willie Jackson was a member of this Parliament at the time and he felt quite strongly about supporting clause 66. He was on the Employment and Accident Insurance Legislation Committee, and the chair of the select committee at the time, Graham Kelly, had to knobble him. I was there at the time. It was in July. I have the notes from the meeting where it happened. Sue Bradford said in this Parliament the other day how she continued to fight for it. She withdrew her motion at that select committee meeting. She claims she continued to fight for it. She withdrew her motion.

This was a huge issue at the time. Now the Government has brought it back, despite the fact that business has continued to argue that this will devalue certain businesses hugely, for obvious reasons. Think of situations where staff have to be taken over, with their employment conditions intact. Think of when Air New Zealand bought Ansett. The Government now owns Air New Zealand, which it had to buy as a consequence of this arrangement. Air New Zealand, because of Australian industrial law, could not restructure the employment arrangements in Ansett. Air New Zealand basically had to take on Ansett with all the existing employment arrangements in place. Air New Zealand thought it could change them. It could not, and it darn-near destroyed Air New Zealand. It destroyed Ansett, and darn-near took Air New Zealand with it.

I invite the Minister in the chair to reflect on that. A company as big as Air New Zealand had to have the Government bail it out, partly because of industrial law similar to this. I am not saying it is the same, but it has a similar effect. Air New Zealand could not change the employment arrangements of all the staff of Ansett in Australia. Consequently, it sank, Ansett was destroyed, and almost without Government intervention Air New Zealand would have gone too. That is what is going to happen to businesses in this country. This Labour Government ought to think very carefully before it does that. So that is the first issue I want to emphasise.

The second issue is the bargaining fees. I have had many years’ experience working with two of the biggest unions in the country, the teachers’ unions. The Hon Mr Trevor Mallard will know these unions well. Far from non-union members having to pay bargaining fees, I would argue that the unions should have to pay non-union members for constraining their ability to get decent pay arrangements. The big unions in this country stifle our most skilled people. Our most skilled teachers do not get paid anywhere near what they are worth, because of the union.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Of course they do.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: They do not! Our most skilled teachers deserve far more, but the union always protects the poor, at the expense of the good. Far from those who are not part of a union having to pay bargaining fees, it is the unions that should pay compensation where non-union members are not allowed, under Labour’s laws, to be paid better than union members. They cannot be offered better deals than union members. So some of our most skilled people, especially in those big areas like teaching, do not get paid what they are worth, and it is outrageous.

DAVE HEREORA (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) : I have to say that when Keith Locke took a call earlier, a very cold shiver ran down my spine. Heaven forbid it should come to pass that if the people of this country do elect a minority Labour Government, sitting around their Cabinet table—not just in caucus, but sitting around their Cabinet table—will be the Greens and the Māori Party. If that does not send a cold shiver down one’s spine, nothing ever will. It will be an absolute disaster for this country, and about as big a disaster as this legislation will be if it goes ahead.

I think that fair and reasonable thinking people agree that employee relationships are all about balance. The best balance we can have is when employer and employee can sit down and discuss their employment conditions, without the interference of a third party that often has a political axe to grind. Under this Government, that third party will be the union movement. Make no mistake about it. This legislation has been inspired by the union movement. In fact, it has been written by the union movement. We needed no better evidence than seeing Ross Wilson summonsed—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I have heard this a dozen times before.

BRIAN CONNELL: Oh, there is Trevor Mallard calling out again. If ever we wanted a better example that the moratorium on genetically modified organisms should not have been lifted, he is it. It should not have happened. Ross Wilson was summoned to the lobby by the Minister, using Jill Pettis as his conduit—not, as one member has already suggested, to get his views, but rather so he could give his instructions on how the legislation should be promoted through the House.

This is payback time for the ex - union members who make up the current Labour Government, and there are 24 of them. The Minister who is sitting in the chair, and the other loudmouth sitting next to him, both maintain that they are neutral—they are not. All they are doing is paying back. I ask the Minister in the chair, and his colleagues, why, if unionism was so good, he needs to bribe workers to join unions. The reality is that the market is telling the union movement: “Up yours.” That is what the market is saying, because 79 percent of the workers in this country do not want to be party to the union movement, in any way. So the union movement, worried about its declining membership, went to its union mates in Government and asked them to help it out. Actually, what the unions said was that if the Government wanted union funding, it would have to do what it was told. The unions said: “You make sure that the union movement grows its ranks, otherwise we will cut off the money supply.”

This legislation will lead to strike after strike after strike. The union movement, even before the ink has dried, is starting to flex its muscles already. We are seeing it now in respect of Air New Zealand, we are seeing it in the Ports of Auckland, and I bet the freezing works are next on the agenda.

LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana) : I move, That the question be now put.

LINDSAY TISCH (Junior Whip—National) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The point that I brought to your attention earlier on is still a very valid point. This is very important legislation on which we on this side of the House want to have a say. There are still members on this side who have not made a contribution, and Government members have continued to move closure motions. I asked for your indulgence earlier on. Dr Mapp, who is a specialist in this area, and has participated—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Ha, ha!

LINDSAY TISCH: The Minister may laugh, but Dr Mapp is a specialist in this area and he has been seeking a second call. In my own case, I have not had a call on this part yet, and I do have a valuable contribution to make on areas that have not been covered. I seek your indulgence to allow this debate to continue.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member is required under Standing Order 84(3) to make his points terse and to the point. I have listened to what the member said, and I have considered the situation under Speaker’s ruling 70/1.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) : I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2), the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2), and the Human Rights Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 265.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education), on behalf of the Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education): I move, That the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is my intention to move at the appropriate time that the bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee for consideration, and that the committee present a final report on the bill by Thursday, 16 December 2004.

The bill is small, and is designed to clarify and streamline the processes for determining whether a university should be established. At the moment, the Education Act 1989 requires that two substantive tests must both be worked through before the Minister can make any recommendation to the Governor-General about the establishment of a university or other tertiary institution. The first test is a set of relevant academic characteristics set out in the Act. This is a very detailed and resource-intensive stage. The second test was introduced as part of the recent reforms to the tertiary education system that were contained in the Education (Tertiary Reform) Amendment Act 2002. This test requires the Minister to satisfy himself or herself as to whether the establishment of the institution is in the interests of the tertiary education system and of the nation as a whole. The Minister must also consult with tertiary institutions, organisations representing tertiary institutions, and other relevant bodies.

All of these steps must be carried out before the Minister can make a decision, and regardless of whether it is clear that a proposal would fail on one or other count. This means that the Minister must ask the Qualifications Authority to devote resources to considering the academic criteria, even if the Minister had decided that the proposal was not in the interests of the tertiary education system and the nation. This risks diverting unnecessarily the Qualifications Authority away from its core role of ensuring the quality of qualifications and education provision, and I think members know that it has its hands full in that particular area. The Government does not believe that a process should be allowed to operate in a way that potentially wastes scarce resources of both the authority and the institution making the application.

The bill proposes that, for universities, the high-level strategic issues should be addressed first. The bill means that only if the Minister were satisfied on national interest grounds would the Qualifications Authority look at whether a particular institution was up to the mark in terms of the academic criteria for establishment as a university. The bill also makes some amendments that align the process used for allowing the use of certain terms with the establishment provisions for tertiary institutions.

I think it is important that I draw the attention of the House to one further element of the bill. Clause 6 does have an element of retrospectivity, as it provides that any Order in Council to establish a university made after the bill has been introduced is deemed not to have been made unless the Minister states that the criteria and process contained in the bill have been met and followed. This approach is necessary to ensure that the process set out in the bill is used from now on, and for any proposals that are current.

I know that there will be some interest in how the bill affects the request made some time ago by Unitec for university status. When the Government introduced a bill in 2000, my Associate Minister noted that it was hard on Unitec and that the delay caused by the bill was regrettable. The Government’s view was that the priority was to develop a widely shared, clear strategic direction for New Zealand’s tertiary education sector. I can give a number of undertakings in relation to Unitec’s request. First, I can assure the House that Unitec’s request will be dealt with on its merits. Second, I undertake that Ministers and the Tertiary Education Commission, as well as the Qualifications Authority if it is required, will engage with Unitec and other interested parties, such as the Vice-Chancellors Committee, about the best way forward. Clearly, there are alternative routes for dealing with the matter.

To conclude, the bill represents a minor refinement of the architecture of the Government’s reforms of the tertiary education system that are better aligning tertiary education with New Zealand’s wider goals for social and economic development. It is minor. It is a sensible approach to clarifying and improving a resource-intensive process, and I commend the bill to the House.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) : In speaking to the first reading of this Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill, I say very clearly that National is totally opposed to it. This is disgraceful, manipulative, and vindictive legislation, which is being introduced today to stop Unitec, formerly the Carrington Polytechnic, from becoming a university. It is so vindictive that Part 2 inserts a retrospective measure—as the Minister of Education in a very minor way acknowledged—to try to prevent Unitec from having any chance of success in the courts in any effort to pursue its legitimate aspirations.

What I find unusual about that retrospective measure is that the Parliamentary Library stated of that part of the bill: “This appears to be designed to prevent any successful Court action by Unitec based on the present law forcing the Minister to complete the entire Section 162 process to a favourable conclusion for Unitec before the Bill is passed.” That is the Parliamentary Library of New Zealand stating that—not some politically biased party—in its analysis of this legislation. The library is actually saying that the legislation is vindictive, but it does not use that word. It just points out that the legislation is designed to stop Unitec from being able to use the court system to pursue its legitimate interests.

I have to say that I have not often seen such mean legislation introduced into this Parliament, although I will admit that Labour has done it before—back in 2000, I think. Again, the Parliamentary Library was pretty blunt about it. The Labour Government introduced an education bill limiting the number of universities, to try to stop Unitec from becoming a university. Way back then, the Parliamentary Library stated: “Unitec’s application got as far as the formation of a Qualifications Authority - appointed international assessment panel in May 2000.” So a panel had been appointed to assess the application. But, of course, what happened? Labour introduced that bill to stop it from going any further, and the institution is still waiting to be assessed.

It is obnoxious for this Parliament to be used by this Labour Government in this demeaning way, to pursue its manipulative, mean, and nasty aspirations. This Parliament should be above that mean and nasty stuff.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Is the member angry again?

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: The Minister asks whether I am angry again. Let us appeal to the reason of the Minister. What is the mischief, what is the problem, with Unitec—

Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s a bit of a long bow.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: The Minister said it himself; I asked whether we could appeal to the reason of the Minister, and he said that that was drawing a long bow. What is the mischief? If we look at the balance of graduates emerging from New Zealand’s universities, we see that we produce more accountants—or used to, a couple of years ago—than Australia or any other country in the world. We produce more law graduates than any other country in the world, apart from the United States of America.

Hon Trevor Mallard: You mean proportionately.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: Yes, proportionately. I accept the Minister’s correction. Per head of population, New Zealand produces more accountants and lawyers than any other country in the world. But what New Zealand needs desperately is for our universities to produce more graduates in applied science. The Minister has come to realise, I thought, that biotechnology and the wider areas of technology are huge areas for New Zealand’s future. Applied science is where New Zealand’s future lies, and here we have a Government constraining our universities to the old-style universities, most of which produce lots of law, accountancy, and arts graduates. We have very few universities producing applied science graduates. So I appeal to the reason of the Government: we actually need a university like Unitec that is focused on the applied sciences, that is focused on applied study at a university level.

I suppose one could argue that this bill gives the Government’s Tertiary Education Commission something to do. Maybe that is what the Government is after here. The Minister has to seek the commission’s advice on whether this fits in with “the interests of the tertiary education system and the nation as a whole”. Maybe this is something the Tertiary Education Commission could do with its $40 million bureaucracy.

Dr Paul Hutchison: $44 million.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: Its $44 million bureaucracy, one of my colleagues reminds me. This would give the commission a job to do—something, I guess, to justify its $44 million.

But it is serious. I have been around education a while. I was in universities for 13 years, personally, both as a student and as a university teacher. I have been in universities a bit longer than most members of this Chamber. I was Minister of Education for many years, and during the time that National was in power and I was Minister our tertiary sector in this country flourished. We went from the bottom of the OECD, in terms of participation, to the top. I have some experience in this field. I want to put this to the Labour Government: if Governments think that through legislative decree they can create great learning institutions, they are wrong. Great universities and our great learning institutions evolve over time, and our law should allow that process to happen. We should not seek to prevent it from happening.

We can take, for example, the former university of Steve Maharey, the Associate Minister responsible for this bill—Massey University. It also happens to be my former university. Massey University started out as a college, Massey College. It was initially involved in teaching about farming, and has evolved to become one of the great universities of applied science in the world. It has grown hugely, if one takes its entire breadth and coverage. It is not strong across all areas at the moment, but the area of applied science certainly is. It is one of the great applied science universities of the world. As a graduate—and I was a reasonable graduate—of Massey University I had entrée into any of the great universities of the world. As a Commonwealth scholar coming out of Massey University, I had entrée into any of the great universities of the world—and that place started as just a farming college.

I will refer members to another important institution in Australasia. The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology is a university. It started out as the Working Men’s College in 1887 and it was amalgamated with the Philip Institute of Technology in 1992. What started as two very modest institutes of technology—one was a working men’s college—has evolved to the point that the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology is now a major university in Australasia. Beyond that, the institute has major teaching linkages to South-east Asia. It has a major international operation covering the whole of Australasia and into South-east Asia. If Australia had had New Zealand’s legislation, that might not have happened. That institution has evolved over time and grown to be a hugely valuable tertiary institution for Australia and for our part of the world.

The tragedy of this mean, manipulative, short-sighted legislation from the Labour Government is that it kills that evolution. It provides that Government dictate shall determine what organisations will be universities, and it protects some universities that probably should die because they are not good enough. It is possible that, over time, universities decline in status. Everyone knows which faculties in which universities are worth studying in. Not all are, and people know that, but Governments should not try to dictate this matter by law. Unitec has evolved to the stage where it now offers very fine courses in the applied sciences and technology. It ought to be able to evolve those further as a university, just like the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Auckland University of Technology have done. New Zealand needs more than just graduates in law, accountancy, and the arts. It is a tragedy for New Zealand’s future if this legislation goes any further.

STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) : That was an interesting speech from a member of the Opposition who does know a bit about universities in New Zealand. But I clearly heard in the Minister of Education’s first reading speech that this bill does not have a mechanism to close down universities or foreclose on opportunities for new universities. I heard that there is a need for a national strategy for the tertiary sector—a proper, strategic approach within the national interest—and an efficient decision-making process. Those priorities need to be set. This bill is a minor refinement of our current tertiary reforms. I support this bill.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) : In Whangarei we have a couple of secondary schools that I will call School A and School B. A decade ago each set out a vision for its building programme. One of those secondary schools has met its vision absolutely stunningly, which is just fantastic. The other one has struggled to achieve its vision, for no reason associated with the school or the school management. It has not got bad buildings, but it has not been able fully to achieve its vision. The reason it has not done so is that it has been caught up with policy shifts. That is what happens with education—there are policy shifts. Whereas School A had roll growth at the same time that the Government poured money into schools to accommodate roll growth, School B did not. Therefore, when it came to bulk funding, School A was able to make maximum use of it, but School B was still trying to catch up.

Basically, this bill creates very much the same situation of a policy shift. We have two very similar institutions, one that has been accorded university status, and one that has been trapped by a policy shift that is the creation of a Labour Government. Believe it or not, a Labour Government said we should limit the number of universities we have, and create a degree of elitism within them. That in itself is not bad; I am not saying it is bad, but I am just trying to explain the circumstances.

The source of this bill goes back to the decisions made—I think the Hon Lockwood Smith was involved in them—about a decade ago, or more, that enabled tertiary institutions other than universities to teach and award degrees. That was the source of it. That was very much a positive move, but, unfortunately, the ramifications of that particular decision were not thought through at the time. Of course, the knowledge and skills required across a whole array of endeavours within our society have increased so much that the highest qualifications no longer justify certificate or diploma status; they actually justify degree status. In the same way, a college of agriculture increased the knowledge that was required in that particular area to the point that it needed to award bachelor degrees, masters degrees, and doctors degrees. Tertiary institutions grew significantly, and the number of degrees awarded within them also grew significantly.

It was natural that some of those institutions would wish that the status of their degrees had “university” attached to them. That was particularly true of institutions that were trying to move into the international market. They wanted to be able to attract people, and to do so the degrees that they offered had to have the word “university” on them. In practice, two very similar institutions pursued the course of changing their status from technical institution or polytechnic to university. One of those was the Auckland Institute of Technology in Wellesley Street. It used to be the old Seddon High School, which my father went to. The other was Unitec at Point Chevalier, in the grounds of the old Carrington Hospital. The Auckland Institute of Technology headed the pack, but not without some considerable effort. Some fairly arbitrary criteria were established around what a university was; they related to the proportion of sub-degree courses, bachelor degree courses, and so on. The Auckland Institute of Technology was awarded university status in 1999 by Max Bradford.

New Zealand First would argue that that was going down the wrong line. We do not believe that it was the right way to go. It created some unfortunate incentives. For example, to be a university an institution had to have fewer than a certain proportion of sub-degree courses. There was a very easy way to get that status—just cut sub-degree courses. In doing so, those institutions had incentives to become something that they were not, and something that they were not necessarily good at. They really needed to stick to what was their common ground and what they were good at, and, in fact, that was, in many cases, scaffolding students into that part of the education market that is hard to penetrate—into a tertiary education programme through sub-degree courses, degree courses, etc. By establishing those arbitrary criteria about what a university was and was not, all the incentives were wrong. So we believe that that was the wrong move.

A Labour Government was elected that said it wanted to prevent the proliferation of universities, and to create stronger universities, rather than have a whole lot. Unitec was caught up by that, even though its process was already well down the track. The Government responded with the Education (Limiting Number of Universities) Amendment Bill. Also, at the same time, the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission review was going on; it was just commencing its work. The outcome has certainly been that Unitec can justifiably claim it has been treated wrongly. However, two wrongs do not make a right, as far as New Zealand First is concerned. We believe that it is eminently sensible to have a public-good test at the beginning of the process of any application, whether for a university, a polytechnic, or a wānanga. It seems stupid to have an expensive process of proving that an institution has certain characteristics—a process that would be carried through at quite a considerable cost—when, at the end of it, the institution still has to go through a public-interest test, which could wipe out the whole thing. It seems sensible to have that at the beginning of the process. In general, that means this legislation makes sense, but if we start applying it to the Unitec situation—its application was submitted in 1996, and it has gone a long way down the process—then we see that the situation does seem very unfair. There is no doubt this bill is aimed at Unitec.

There is another worrying part of this bill—and Dr Lockwood Smith referred to it. The explanatory note states: “The Bill would have retrospective effect in relation to any Order in Council establishing a university that may be made after this Bill is introduced into the House of Representatives. Such orders would cease to have effect and expire unless the Minister can confirm that establishment would be in the interests of the tertiary education system and the nation as a whole and that the procedures set out in the Bill had been followed.” I want people to listen carefully to that statement, because it states that even if Unitec has advanced its claim all the way to the point that an Order in Council is made, it will be rendered null and void—even though Unitec has proved its case. To have proved its case, a public process has to have been applied; Unitec has to have already proved that the country and the tertiary education system need another university. Despite Unitec having gone through that, under this bill, which is retrospective, it would have to go back to the beginning. That is, obviously, a dilemma that will have to be resolved at the select committee.

New Zealand First wants to make another point. We believe that both National and Labour have failed in terms of the dilemma that has been created in the system by degrees being allowed to be taught by a range of different institutions. National would have been happy to have 100 universities. We have just listened to Lockwood Smith. National would have been happy for Telford Rural Polytechnic to be a university. Any organisation could have been a university. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa could have been a university if it had wanted—that would have been fine. That, obviously, is nuts. Labour, however, would probably reduce the number of universities to four, if it had its way.

New Zealand First believes that we need a new class of tertiary institution. We need a class called “university of technology”, whose members would be different from a university in their parameters and criteria, and would carry out the very actions that the Auckland University of Technology and Unitec do. They would be able to give their degrees the status of being university degrees. In fact, the Auckland University of Technology, which is what it calls itself, is not a university of technology, because there is no such thing in New Zealand; it is a university.

Hon Maurice Williamson: What does it matter if it’s a university?

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY: It is because of the status that goes with degrees in terms of penetration of the foreign market, and all those sorts of things. That is fairly obvious. Therefore, let us have a class of institution that we can be honest about, and that is different, and in which pure research does not have to go along with teaching, but currency in scholarship does. Another problem with the definition of a university is that it just does not fit comfortably with the institutions we are talking about—with either of them. If we look at them, we see that they are idiosyncratic in terms of the other tertiary institutions that we call universities.

New Zealand First will vote for this bill to go to the select committee. We will explore these issues. We give no guarantee of support beyond that point, but we certainly will use the opportunity to advance what we think is the sensible solution to the dilemma that the system faces that neither National nor Labour has been able to resolve—that is, the development of a new class of tertiary institution called a “university of technology”.

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) : I begin my contribution by thanking the Hon Brian Donnelly for his contribution. I think it was informative and thoughtful, as is his habit. It was a useful exposition of the context of the current bill, and there it included an interesting idea about universities of technology that is worth exploring further. I thank him for that.

I make the point that the Greens support taking a strategic approach to tertiary education. We supported the tertiary reforms for that reason, and we supported the development of the Tertiary Education Commission. It seems to us that the legislation is back to front now, and that this bill is an attempt to create a more sensible approach towards how we go about establishing new universities. It seems to us that institutions that intend to become universities now go through the hoops. They go through the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and all the different hoops that are put in front of them, and then they face a political or a national-interest test.

Stephen Franks: A political test. You got it right the first time.

NANDOR TANCZOS: Well, it is a political test. The question of what is in the national interest is always a political decision, so it is a political test. [Interruption] I suggest to Mr Franks that his idea of what is in the national interest is not always the same as that of National, Labour, or the Greens. It is affected by his political position. That is obvious. I am surprised that the member needs that to be pointed out to him.

We think it is sensible to make the strategic decision at the beginning of the process, and to begin with an evaluation of whether a new university is in the national interest. I think it really comes down to a philosophical position as to whether one supports a strategic approach to tertiary education or one does not support that, and the Greens clearly do support it. It seems to me that some parties support a rudderless approach both to tertiary education and to the nation in general—a rudderless approach that says that we need to have no direction and no management. That kind of approach does not work for any business, and I am not sure how members think it will work for a country.

The Greens do have concerns with regard to this bill, however—in particular, concerns around retrospectivity. Of course, that part of the bill is designed to address Unitec; that is obvious and has been said before. We think that there are questions of natural justice that need to be addressed. Unitec has put a monumental effort and resources into proving its case to become a university. It has been stymied by a change in policy, as Mr Donnelly said. We think that Unitec is in a unique position. We are not aware of any other institution that is in a position now to become a university. The position of Unitec is unique, so the retrospectivity in this bill is clearly an attempt to simply address its particular case. We think that Unitec can advance good arguments about why it should get university status, and of course, there are arguments against that, as well. We look forward to addressing that question in the select committee, and to nutting out the details of the pros and cons of that matter. We will be interested to see what comes out of that.

The Greens will support the referral of this bill to a select committee because we support taking a strategic approach to tertiary education. But we have an open mind on retrospectivity and Unitec’s case, and we make no further commitment beyond that stage.

MURRAY SMITH (United Future) : I rise to speak to the first reading of the “Education (Unitec Prevention) Amendment Bill”, also mistitled the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill. As has been said by previous speakers, this bill is not about establishing universities as much as it is against the establishment of Unitec as a university. This bill is reprehensible in terms of the way that Unitec has been treated. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Unitec’s application to become a university, the fact that Unitec has been strung along for 5 years at huge expense, and been mucked around by this Government, is absolutely reprehensible. I think the more airing that the issue gets, and the more that this Government’s attitude towards Unitec on this matter is aired, the better it will be.

The purpose of this bill, clearly, is to prevent Unitec from registering as a university. It also alters the application process for a tertiary education institution that seeks to be registered as a university. At present institutions submit their proposals to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, which then considers whether the institution should become a university. The bill provides that the Minister must make a decision on the strategic implications of establishing the new university, for both the nation and the tertiary education system, before a detailed assessment of the criteria can be carried out by the authority. There is a retrospective aspect to this bill, in that any current applications will fall under the bill’s jurisdiction. Unitec is the one such application.

The Government is obstructing Unitec’s efforts to become a university. This is the third time in 4 years that the Government has drafted legislation to block Unitec. The story began in 1996, when both the Auckland Institute of Technology and Unitec lodged applications to become universities. In November 1999, the Minister disestablished the Auckland Institute of Technology and established the Auckland University of Technology. In 2000 both the change of Government and the threat of legal action by the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee halted Unitec’s final tick-off. Unitec argues with some force that the way it has been treated is unconstitutional and is a breach of the well-established principle that the executive should not suspend the law, or the application of the law, without the authority of the legislature. It relies on section 1 of the Bill of Rights 1688 and also on Fitzgerald v Muldoon, acase reported in New Zealand Law Reports 1976, Volume 2, at page 615.

The fact that Unitec has been singled out like that is simply not a very good look for any Government. But it reflects the sort of ideology of this Government, which comes through in terms of its education policy and has been well seen throughout the approach that it takes. Indeed, it has been reported to me that Howard Fancy made a comment publicly not long ago that when this Government came into power the ministry had one policy objective, and the Government had a multitude of policy objectives. That just shows the amount of political interference and involvement that there has been in the development of education policy. It shows that blind ideology dominates over common sense, over rational planning, and over the best interests of New Zealand.

Unitec argues that excluding it from university status serves no useful purpose. It has argued that in the competitive market model there has been such an overlap between universities of society, which traditionally study the humanities and pure science, and the newer universities of the economy, often known as institutes or universities of technology, that the two are virtually indistinguishable. Dr John Webster, Unitec’s chief executive officer, said that the Minister had obviously decided that Unitec now meets the criteria for university status so comfortably that if a fair assessment was conducted, the Minister would find it hard to turn down the application. It is very hard to argue against that conclusion.

Both the Association of University Staff and the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee have endorsed the bill. They support restrictions on the number of universities, arguing that New Zealand needs to have a greater level of investment in the existing universities rather than more universities.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Of course!

MURRAY SMITH: Of course one would expect them to argue that. There is something of a degree of self-interest involved, no doubt, in their comments. The Association of University Staff and the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee are concerned that any increase would upset the Performance-based Research Fund result and could threaten the international reputation of the New Zealand university sector. The association would also like to see the bill go further, by restricting the term “university” from usage by private establishments.

However, this bill does give an opportunity for a lot of examination of the whole area of university structure. United Future members have a number of questions that they want to see addressed during the select committee process, and we will support the bill’s referral to the select committee in order to hear submissions and start addressing those issues. Our support for the bill is not beyond the first reading, because of the real concerns that we have about it. Some of the questions we want to see addressed are questions like whether there are too many universities, whether we have too many of the same model of university at present, and whether there are other models. I have heard New Zealand First suggest that maybe we ought to expand the meaning of “university” and bring in some other models, and I think that is a worthy issue to pursue. Then there is the question of whether New Zealand is big enough to sustain more universities of the same scale as the current institutions. In 2002 Auckland University received $197 million, Otago University received $129 million, and even the Auckland University of Technology—the best comparison with Unitec—received $75 million. Universities are expensive. Another question to consider is whether the hundred million dollars that would likely have to be spent on Unitec is the best way to spend our education dollar. Should early childhood education take priority over another university? In 2003 Unitec received $55.8 million from the Government. If it became a university, that amount could easily double.

This bill is evidence of strategic planning by the Government for the university sector. However, New Zealand needs to have a better focus for the overall tertiary sector. If the Government is to continue investing in universities, New Zealand needs to have an improved designation for universities. Their purpose, both individually and as part of the greater university sector, needs to be examined and better described. Research functions alone cannot be the only criteria to evaluate universities on. What about teaching standards? Primarily, universities carry that dual function, yet there is a dearth of research and evaluation in terms of teaching standards, and that really is what we should be looking at very closely.

To support this bill is to consent to the transfer of a large amount of power, even if that power is not used frequently, to the Minister of Education. Can the current Minister or any future Minister be trusted to act, in the words of the bill, in the interests of the tertiary education system or the nation, over and above his or her political ideology? I think not. At present the Tertiary Education Commission is unable to take a leading role in the direction of the universities. It remains a fledgling bureaucracy, which hampers the strategic planning of the tertiary sector. That is another issue that we ought to examine. For other tertiary education institutions seeking reclassification as universities this bill would indeed save them substantial amounts of time and money, and that approach is welcome. I understand that a proposal can cost in the vicinity of $500,000 on the part of the institution and that that would be matched by an equally large amount from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority in order to assess it against the criteria. To request a reclassification straight from the Minister would be somewhat less expensive than that.

In terms of the restructuring of institutions and the approach that is taken in the bill, there is some commendation for sorting out the overall policy objectives before institutions are put to the extent of using valuable resources, which could well be wasted at the end of the day. That does have some merit, but I go back to the point that those sorts of issues should have been addressed 5 years ago, at the time that Unitec was looking to become a university, and not now, 5 years later, when Unitec has been strung along and has now been put into the position of having to look at court action—and then the Government is looking at frustrating that, as it has looked at frustrating other court action. United Future will support this bill’s first reading. We look forward to the continuing debate on it.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) : I am always tempted to diverge from letting this House and the country know what the ACT party position is on a bill like this, by the bits from preceding speeches that distract me. It is amusing, I have to say, to hear a reasonably coherent account from United Future’s Murray Smith of the reasons that this bill should not proceed, and to then hear him say that nevertheless, United Future will vote for it. That sort of thing is always amusing.

There are three very strong reasons why this bill should not get any further than this stage today. The first one should be absolutely instinctive for every member of this House. It should stick in the craw of every legislator when a piece of considered legislation, the law of the land, is simply suspended by Government bullying. That is what this House is subjecting itself to. That is what we are going along with. We have seen an institution follow the procedures laid down in the Education Act, and now three times, as it has gone to use the rights that this House has said it should have, it has been stopped in its tracks by a lot of craven people, by the Government bringing in a bill and saying: “If you go ahead, we will whack you.”

The Government is not even giving us parliamentarians the excuse, for allowing this to go ahead, of having taken the earlier bills through. That at least would have allowed us to persuade ourselves that it was a legitimate use of parliamentary procedure. We might have thought that if it had taken the earlier two efforts any further than the introduction stage, there might have been some dignity in our allowing this one to proceed. But what has actually happened is that the Government is so cynical that it introduces legislation and then does nothing with it.

I could stand here and read out the speech I made in May 2000, when it used precisely the same kind of tactic to prevent people in this country from using Parliament’s law—just doing what was laid down in the Education Act, coming up to the standard required for a university, asking for assessment, going through the process, and getting registration.

It is interesting to me that the effete Minister Maharey did not come here to defend his own piece. He sent Parliament’s bully. The bully on the right hand of the Prime Minister came to the House to push this little piece of bullying in. It would not be the man who has had the life of blameless excellence bringing his delicate fingers here; he would rather have the speeches in the words of Mr Mallard! It may be that it is just these scruffy tradespeople from the polytechnics—these upstarts do not appeal to our exalted former university lecturer. He does not want to get his hands dirty, coming here to explain why it is that Unitec cannot join the Auckland University of Technology, Auckland University, and Massey University in competing in the enormous Auckland market—a market, of course, that is not restricted to New Zealand. I have not heard a single thing here that explains why Green members, who are so keen on biodiversity, think that diversity, when it gets to human affairs, is a real problem and that the only way one can run a sensible country is to get a wise helmsman on the rudder.

I suspect that Nandor Tanczos does not have a very good memory, but he probably would not realise that the “rudder” metaphor comes from the “Great Helmsman”—Mao Tse-Tung, of course. He had his hand on the rudder and was steering China down his unwise path, until it finally let 100 flowers bloom and realised that businesses, companies, people, and everything benefits from biodiversity.

We now have a piece of dishonest legislation that talks about the public interest, but carefully does not define it. I decided that I would wait until I had heard the speeches made by those parties that plan to support Labour’s dirty little trick, until I could see what they thought the public interest might be. I cannot see any public interest whatsoever in telling institutions in this country that they should not aspire to satisfy the following tests: “They are primarily concerned with the more advanced learning, the principal aim being to develop intellectual independence:”. “Oh, no!”—says Labour—“We can’t have any more who are aiming at that!” “Their research and teaching are closely interdependent and most of their teaching is done by people who are active in advancing knowledge:”. Labour says: “Oh, no, no, we just want people who can read from books.” “They meet international standards of research and teaching:”. Labour thinks it would not be in New Zealand’s interests to have any more institutions doing that, would it! “They are a repository of knowledge and expertise:”. Once again, we have all the expertise we need in the hands of the existing teaching unions and the university staff unions! We would not want to see any competition there!

Lastly, “They accept a role as critic and conscience of society;”. We can all see why Labour does not want any more of those around, why it is necessary to pull up the shutters. We can understand why the Government’s handmaidens, the Greens, would not want that, either—because one would not want any of these claims about GE or genetic modification to be subject to too close a scrutiny by people with some international standards of expertise and knowledge!

It is a simple old-fashioned piece of Tammany Hall - type politics. Education unions say: “You scratch our back. You give us money for training programmes, and we’ll make sure there’s some money for your election. We’ll make sure there are some donations for the Labour Party. You look after us, and we’ll look after you.” “Looking after” in this context means making sure there is no genuine competition. “Looking after” involves making sure that the excellence of the brand will not be allowed to speak for itself.

That is what should be happening in the tertiary sector. The Government should not protect the tenure of people who cannot hack it. If the Minister were really interested in the public interest, in high standards, and in upholding standards that make a university degree different from a polytechnic or other qualification, he would say: “My effort should be making sure that I de-accredit the ones that are hopeless.” Nothing would send a better or quicker message than his putting his effort not into blocking someone who meets the standard and can join the club, but into saying who should be expelled from this club to encourage all the others and to make the brand really mean something.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Waikato Law School.

STEPHEN FRANKS: Waikato Law School is a very apt nomination from the National Party. We have seen the poor quality of University of Waikato law graduates. We see it almost every day in this House when the former dean of the law school answers questions to mislead us as to law.

We have an international market. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has established itself around the world. The University of Chicago now has campus connections in Australia. The University of Phoenix had 40,000 people on Internet qualifications when I last looked at I, and was referred to in The Economist as one of the better qualifications around. Auckland University has a linkage with 21 other universities for international education. But this bill’s kind of primitive brand protection, of anti-competition, will not shelter the low-quality institutions. This has nothing to do with the strategic assessment of New Zealand’s needs. This has everything to do with suppressing competition from what the Government regards as upstarts who have not been prepared to accept bullying and who have not been prepared to just lie down when the Government says to them: “Ignore the law; just do as we say.” It is a disgrace that Parliament is even allowing it to be debated past this stage. I can see Green members and New Zealand First members have already persuaded themselves that they will support this bill. We know that United Future will support it because it is the lapdog, but the absolute patent—

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind the member that that is a derogatory term to use. Under Speakers’ Rulings calling a member or a party that name is not allowed. That has already been ruled on.

STEPHEN FRANKS: United Future has made a practice of speaking and barking loudly, and then voting with its master. We know that it will decide shortly before the election—possibly 3 months out, if it can risk leaving it so late—that it will find an issue that it can strongly disagree with the Government on and try to re-establish a separate brand. But there will be people who will remember this. People will remember the number of times that United Future has spoken of independence and voted in a way that shows what it really is—on a leash. This bill should be voted down as soon as we go to vote on it. This bill is not in the interests of the tertiary sector.

JILL PETTIS (Labour—Whanganui) : It has been interesting listening to the contributions this afternoon and I remind Opposition members that Unitec first applied for redesignation in 1996. I am sure that some of those members over there will remember that in 1996 National was in Government. So if it felt so passionate and strongly about the issue at that time, it could have been expedited, and I think perhaps it is a little bit of a case of crying when one is safe.

The Vice-Chancellors Committee obviously commented on this and we accept that it has a view on this issue. It does represent the country’s universities and its view is that the distinctive characteristics of universities needed to be maintained to protect established standards and New Zealand’s reputation as a provider of university education of international standing. The committee went on to state that this country needs a greater level of investment in existing universities, and not more universities. I acknowledged at the beginning that that was the view of the Vice-Chancellors Committee. However, I do have to concur that ongoing investment in existing universities is a good thing. As a clarification, I also point out that under the process proposed in the bill the Minister could decide whether another university would or would not be in the interests of the nation, and the tertiary education system as a whole. That is one of the key parts of the legislation, in that we do have to look at the national interest, rather than just sectional interests.

I was particularly “amused” with the comments of Mr Franks from the ACT party, when he referred to competition. I remind those Opposition parties that since we have been in Government we have spent a great deal of time cleaning up the mess left by National when market forces, rather than educational service delivery, and quality of education, were the prevailing focus in education, and that mess will take a long time to repair. We are grateful for the sterling work that is being carried out by many educators at many levels in New Zealand.

Those competitive market forces did not deliver in every instance the quality of education that we need in this growing nation of ours. This Government is focused on quality, rather than market forces, and it is quite scary to hear the mantra being repeated by ACT and National about what they would like to reintroduce into education if, heaven forbid, they ever got the chance.

I would encourage them to visit our educational institutions right from early childhood, rather than being closeted in some self-constructed ivory tower where they have clearly lost touch with what is really happening out there. We in this Labour Government visit schools as often as we possibly can. In fact, I suggest that most of us would be in a school at least once a week. We see and hear the comments that are made by parents about what market forces did to their school, and the vast majority of them do not want to return to that at all. This bill is focused on quality, rather than quantity, and that is what is incredibly important for the future of this country.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) : The first thing I would like to say about this bill is that I am very saddened that all the west Auckland members in the House, like Chris Carter, John Tamihere, David Cunliffe, Lynne Pillay, and Helen Clark, even, have chosen to sit there like stuffed dummies and say not a word.

Jill Pettis: They’re not here. They’re in their offices.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Did members hear what the senior Labour whip said about her own members? She said that they were not here and that they were in their offices. She is not allowed to say that.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please continue.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: I think Madam Speaker should have taken her up on that, but I shall take her up on it. Those members are all lions back in the west of Auckland, saying to Unitec: “Look, we think you’ve got a good case, and certainly we’ll give it some consideration.”, but where are they today? Guess who spoke on the bill? The member for Rotorua, who has a very strong knowledge of west Auckland, and the member for Whanganui, who is now dealing with having Michael Laws as mayor! I have to say that that is a big enough issue that she should concentrate on rather than worrying about this one.

I want to deal with this subject in two distinct categories. I shall deal with the specific Unitec example, but first I shall deal with the bigger picture of whether there needs to be any limit—whatever it is—on the number of universities. I advocate that that is just a nonsense. If we go back a few years, there were only two or three, then there was four, then five, then six. We are up to eight now, and I do not think anybody would suggest that eight is a magical, mythical number. But guess what! Five of those are represented in Auckland, at different locations. Massey University has a facility on the North Shore. I know that the University of Otago is in Queen Street, where it has a campus and a lecturing facility. We have Auckland University and Auckland University of Technology. And that is how it should be. The actual number of physical locations and the name tag on the front of them is pretty irrelevant.

Let me explain this to the Government: if the Auckland University of Technology were to merge with Unitec tomorrow, then the day after that merger there would still be a campus at Carrington, where Unitec is, there would still be the same number of lecturers there, and there would still be the same number of students attending classes there, but it would qualify for university status. There would still be the same courses, the same programmes, and the same funding. The Government would not be up for more or less funding. In fact, the world would not change at all. So what the Government is saying is that if the institutions do some sort of dirty little deal whereby they merge, that will be OK, and the new institution will be a university, but it will not let there be any more.

Well, let us go through the argument. Maybe there needs to be critical mass—maybe the institution needs to be very big. There will be some members in this House who think that a university needs to be very big to be successful. Let me take Auckland University, which I think has about 30,000 equivalent full-time students. I think Massey University has a similar number. People will say that unless a university has 30,000 equivalent full-time students, unless it is a really big institution, it cannot be successful. Well, I ask those members to go to the north-east of the United States to have a look at some of the Ivy League universities. A number of some of the most successful and prestigious universities in the world have only 3,000 enrolments. They are quite small.

Jill Pettis: But it costs them.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: Jill Pettis is going on about the cost. We should close down Princeton and Harvard because they are hopeless, according to Jill Pettis. She knows best. All those world-class Ivy League north-east United States universities are hopeless. Jill Pettis from Whanganui has ruled that they are hopeless. They are too small, and they cost too much. That is what she has just said, and I am pleased she said it, because I am happy to double-dare her on any one of those stunning universities. I have been to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, on the river at Boston, where I worked on a transportation theory paper. It is a stunning university. It is the most stunning place I have been to. I had a look at Oxford University, and I felt it was mouldy and old compared with the focus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

So here is my next challenge to Government members. What if the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered to come down to New Zealand and partner Unitec, out in west Auckland? What if it offered to put some of its most stunning programmes into action there, under its guise? Would it be allowed to? No, no, because in Steve Maharey’s head a light bulb has gone on that says: “Eight is the number; eight is it.” There are not eight members of a soccer team or a rugby team, but Steve Maharey says the number of universities shall be eight, for some reason. There are eight furlongs in a mile. Maybe that is where it came from. I am trying to work out where the number eight came from.

But it would make no difference to this country if we had 35 universities, as long as the quality of the education that they provided was fine, as long as the standard that they provided was fine. I know of a proposal at one stage—it did not go through, but it may still—whereby some foreign universities were talking about setting up a university of information technology on the banks of Lake Taupō. They were looking at a site on which to create a very small, high-tech, information technology - centric university. But Steve Maharey said: “No, you can’t do that. New Zealand can have only eight universities.”

The reason we have heard from those two very interested members, the member for Whanganui and the member for Rotorua, who have probably never even visited Unitec in their lives, and the reason they do not want to let new universities go ahead, is that the Vice-Chancellors Committee said: “We don’t think it’s right, and we don’t want any.” Well, let me deal with the Vice-Chancellors Committee. When John Hinchcliff, now a Labour councillor for Auckland, was the chief executive of the Auckland Institute of Technology, he came along and pleaded with us to make the institute a university. I was the Associate Minister for Tertiary Education at the time. I have a lot of respect for John Hinchcliff. He put up a terribly good case. As soon as he became a vice-chancellor and was off to the Vice-Chancellors Committee, he said: “Oh no, I don’t think there should be any more of this sort of nonsense. We don’t need any more universities.” How bad is that? His attitude was: “Once I am in the club and you have closed the door, I don’t want any more in there, competing with me—no matter what quality of education they provide, and no matter what standard their service is.”

Stephen Franks: Pull up the drawbridge.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON: That is right; “Pull up the drawbridge, drain out the moat, and get the crocodiles to circle, because now that I am in the castle I don’t want anybody else let in.”

I want to go on record as saying that I think it is a disgrace that Steve Maharey has had this idea. It goes right back to the individual person. No policy of any Government should go back to that. Steve Maharey hates the idea of more universities. He has said so. He brought in a bill to limit the number of universities. The first bill that he brought in would have limited the number of universities to eight. We managed to persuade him not to proceed with that stupid bill. Now he realises that he had better be a bit more opaque about it, so, rather than having a bill that limits the number of universities to eight, he has introduced this Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill, which puts an enormously convoluted process in place but still gives the Minister the killer punch. If a new university does get through, he can stop it; in that way, he will still be able to keep the number of universities at eight.

Let us go back to this process. Let us go back to what are successful universities overseas. Let us go back to those nations whose universities are well respected. I think the United States is very well respected for its tertiary sector, especially at the upper end. There are some stunning, quality universities. Some of them are really small. A university that I saw, up in the north-west of Maine, had only 1,000 students. It was turning out biotech graduates beyond one’s wildest dreams. That sort of thing can work well around the rest of the world, competing for the quality brains, for the quality students, and for endowment funds, and making things happen, but back here in little old New Zealand we have adopted the Mao Tse-Tung approach. We will decide, here in this room, what is good for people. We will forget the public test, forget whether it is right or wrong, and forget even whether the local Labour members in west Auckland tell the Unitec chairman and Dr John Webster, the chief executive, that they think their case probably has got a lot of merit, and they really want their votes and their students’ votes, but they could not convince the Minister to agree to do it.

That is not good enough. I want one of the west Auckland members—Chris Carter or John Tamihere—to stand up and tell us what he says back in his electorate. David Cunliffe can tell us. He should tell us now what he thinks. He should stand, take a call, and tell us what he thinks. Let us hear from Lynne Pillay. Sometimes we cannot tell whether Lynne Pillay is standing up. No, she is not going to. Not one of the west Auckland members sitting in the House today is prepared to get up and defend this appalling legislation. The Labour senior whip, Jill Pettis, is on the phone. She is trying to get a few of those members to come to the House. “Get down here!”, she is saying.

We are totally opposed to this bill, and we will vote against it.

TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) : I speak as the member for Christchurch Central. Christchurch is a city of one-third of a million people and two universities, and when one hears that one thinks that maybe this sector is crying out for a proper strategy. This bill is a flaming beacon of strategy in the area of tertiary education. This bill clarifies the law. The Minister must first make a decision on the strategic implications to the nation and to the tertiary education system of the setting up of a university. It allows the Minister to decide to reject a case, if he or she is not satisfied on national-interest grounds, and it ensures that any current proposals to become a university are considered under the processes clearly laid out in the bill. Who could possibly argue with that kind of logic? I commend this bill to the House.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : This education bill is ironically called the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill, and the explanatory note states that the bill “proposes to clarify the current process for determining the establishment of universities.” I was absolutely in agreement with my colleague Dr Lockwood Smith, who noted from the Bills Digest, which is a very thorough, objective, impartial view of the situation, the final comment regarding the retrospective application of this bill—and it says it all. Under the heading “Comment” it is stated: “This appears to be designed to prevent any successful Court action by Unitec based on the present law forcing the Minister to complete the entire Section 162 process to a favourable conclusion for Unitec before the Bill is passed.” That is what the bill is about. It is fairly and squarely about a blockage by this Minister, Mr Maharey. It is nothing to do with clarification of the process.

Hon Maurice Williamson: Not at all.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: What is it about?

Hon Maurice Williamson: It means the Parliamentary Library will probably get closed down now.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: That would be a very, very serious possibility under this Minister. [Interruption] It could be closed down for putting out that dreadful, neutral, impartial, objective, highly thoughtful, well-researched paper.

What I would like to point out to the House is that what came out on 17 September from the Hon Steve Maharey—the man who has led a life of blameless excellence—was a statement headed “Law establishing universities clarified”. Every time I think of that Minister I think of his background as a sociologist, and of the words of Professor Roberts of Victoria University, who used to say that for every new sociologist that gets a PhD and comes to town, it brings a hundred thousand new problems. Well, here we have a university lecturer, one Steve Maharey, who did not quite get the PhD, but, unfortunately for New Zealand, has become the tertiary education Minister. He has brought not just a hundred thousand new problems but many, many more than that. He stated in his press release: “The bill allows the Minister to decide to reject a case if not satisfied on national-interest grounds.” The Minister knows best—that is what it is. This is the “Minister knows best” bill, and that absolutely defies the whole idea of academic freedom, choice, and quality. Central to this sector is the philosophy of any good education system that there should be choice, quality and freedom, but here we have the Hon Steve Maharey saying that the law that establishes universities is being clarified, and that it will allow the Minister to decide to reject a case if he is not satisfied with it. The Minister knows best.

I note that there is almost an alignment with that position from those such as the Association of University Staff. That has nothing to do with vested interests, of course! The association said: “Any move to increase the number of universities would extend the current two-tier structure in research capability revealed by the Performance-based Research Fund results, and has the potential to threaten the international reputation of the New Zealand university sector.”

I go back to the basis on which the Education Act 1989 was established, and the criteria that were set out by the Act in terms of the qualities that a university would ideally have. I think Stephen Franks went over them. They are primarily concerned with more advanced learning, the principal aim of which is to develop intellectual independence. He was absolutely right to say it is nothing about size and nothing about the number of universities. It is all about quality, and it is all about quality outputs. Around the world there are examples of universities of extraordinary quality that are small, and there are examples of just about every configuration that one can imagine. It is hugely worrying when we have a tertiary education Minister just saying the Government will stop that by blocking it come hell or high water by means of legislation, because he thinks he knows best about it.

The criteria for universities go on, and I think Stephen Franks pointed out that one of them was the point that a university should accept the role of critic and conscience of society. I well remember the late Dr Eric Geiringer, who used to say just how important it is to have researchers in universities—indeed, acting as a beacon, a lighthouse—who are questioning, innovating, and doing all the things that are vital with regard to looking at everything a Government and a Minister such as Steve Maharey do, and bringing them to task in terms of what education should really be about. As I have said, that should be under conditions of choice and of quality.

There are four key areas in relation to this bill that one should stress. The first is its retrospective effect. Is there a compelling reason to bring in the retrospective clause? On any criteria, there is no compelling reason whatsoever for that. If one goes back into the history of this bill and looks at the blockages and the go-slows that this Government has imposed year after year, one realises that the Government is absolutely defying Unitec and not allowing it to have its application heard fairly. In fact, the retrospective provision should not interfere with accrued rights or legitimate expectations to be treated fairly and consistently. The bill does not contain a savings clause for existing applications for university status, as is the usual practice. The Unitec application is the only application affected by the bill. There is no compelling case whatsoever for retrospectivity.

The second key point is that, surely, each application should be treated on its merits. That is absolutely fundamental, and when determining the application of Unitec, the Government should allow that process to happen. But it has put up every possible hurdle and obstacle in the road for Unitec. The Government failed in its legislation a couple of years ago, and it has now descended to the dizzying depths of bringing in this bill. The third key point is whether statutory obligations should be carried out. Undoubtedly, Unitec’s application was illegally suspended in May 2000. Even when it was discharged in May 2003, the Minister failed to carry out his statutory obligations. The fourth and final key point is whether the bill will streamline the process. In actual fact, the bill does the direct opposite of that. How can those who are to be consulted comment on the national interest when they do not even know whether the institution concerned has the characteristics of a university? No, the so-called decision will just be made. How can the Minister take a decision on the national interest without that information?

This bill is yet another of the excesses of the Labour Government in determining to control whatever it possibly can, and it is a huge worry when it tries to do that to our university institutions.

Hon TAITO PHILLIP FIELD (Minister of State) : I am very pleased to contribute briefly to this very good Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill. I really feel sorry for the public out there who are listening to the tedious waffle from Opposition members. I congratulate the very good Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education) on this bill. We all know that there is a question about how many universities a small country of 4 million-odd people should have, and I am very pleased that this bill will, in effect, clarify and streamline the processes for establishing universities, so that the strategic national-interest issues are addressed in that process. That is a common-sense, rational approach that every New Zealander can understand. I cannot understand why Opposition members do not understand that. I support this very good bill.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) : I move that the—

Opposition Member: Holidays Amendment Bill!

Hon PAUL SWAIN: No, no. It is not the Holidays Amendment Bill. That has to be read a third time. I move, that the Holidays Bill be now read a third time. [Interruption] No, no. Which committee? I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker—

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Education and Science Committee—

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) : I move, That the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. All those in favour please say “Aye,” to the contrary “No”. [Interruption] I have not heard anybody call—

LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. When you called, no one voted for that motion. I voted against it on behalf of members over here on the Opposition benches. Government members did not vote. When you called “those in favour”, there was no response from Government members. I voted against the motion, so the motion is lost.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : I would like it to be noted that I did in fact shout out “Yes”, but in the ensuing hilarity obviously no one noticed that. So there was at least one vote in favour of the motion.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am ruling on the point of order. It is my call to make, and I am now asking “to the contrary”. I have not yet heard that response.

Opposition Members: No!

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Ayes have it.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We have just witnessed in this House Minister Swain come in and first of all say that he was going to support the first reading of the Holidays Amendment Bill. Then it went to the third reading of that bill, and then I am not sure whether it actually did get back to the first reading—

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will be seated. We have dealt with that, and we have moved on.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: Would you be able to clarify exactly what we are doing, Madam Speaker?

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. The member moved the motion correctly. There will now be silence during the voting.

BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am not certain, at all, of what is being voted on at the moment. Would you put the motion again, please?

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: If the member had listened, he would have heard that the Minister moved the first reading of the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill correctly.

BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I respect your ruling. This is a new point of order. Having put the motion, I distinctly heard you call for those who were in favour. No one from the Government’s side—

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. The member will be seated.

BRIAN CONNELL: This is an important issue.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will be seated.

BRIAN CONNELL: I have not finished my point of order.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will be seated now.

BRIAN CONNELL: I reserve the right to put my point of order.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will rule on the point of order.

BRIAN CONNELL: I have not made it yet.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: If the member is not seated, he will leave the Chamber. I have ruled very clearly on that matter.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Labour) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. On extremely rare occasions the odd little minor mistake is made. I would like to be able to move that the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee for consideration and that the committee report the bill by Thursday, 16 December 2004.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member needs leave to do that. Is leave granted for that? Leave is not granted.

LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We have already started the vote. The Clerk has asked which parties are voting. I have cast 27 votes opposed. We have had some points of order already. I do not know how far we have gone with the vote and I do not think—

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No vote has been called yet. The Clerk is conducting a vote.

LINDSAY TISCH: I have actually cast 27 votes opposed.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No vote is called until the Clerk calls it.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I think the House is now in considerable difficulty. You have said that the Minister has moved a motion and voting has commenced. Yet, oddly enough, halfway through that procedure the Minister sought leave to move a motion that was apparently a different one. Leave was then denied. I cannot see how we can vote on something when the Minister, right in the middle of it, seeks to move something different. That seems to be an inappropriate process that we are going through.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no difficulty at all. The vote has commenced on the motion originally and correctly moved. The Clerk will conduct the vote.

LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) : I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I want to know, very clearly now, what we are voting on.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will read it for you. The Minister, Paul Swain, moved that the Education (Establishment of Universities) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Science Committee. That is the extent of the motion that members are voting on.