Dr Paul Hutchison MP
National Party Tertiary Education Spokesman

25 July 2007

State control of universities ‘frightening’

Labour’s Tertiary Reforms Amendment Bill gives the Government unprecedented control over universities, says National Party Tertiary Education spokesman, Dr Paul Hutchison.

“A submission by the University of Auckland and the combined Vice Chancellors, presented to the Education and Science Select Committee today, states that ‘none of the world’s leading universities are subject to the degree of control’ proposed in the bill.

“In fact, it does the exact opposite of what Michael Cullen has described. Instead of being ‘high trust’, it is low trust, and instead of being ‘low on compliance costs’ it is extremely bureaucratic.”

The University of Auckland submission says this ‘severely weakens autonomy and threatens academic freedom’, ‘opens universities to direct Ministerial intervention’, ‘establishes State control of private revenue and assets’, and is ‘generally directive and controlling’.

“This damning indictment of the bill goes even further. They submit that ‘it is wholly inappropriate and probably illegal for the TEC to be pushing ahead with implementation of the proposed new system, as if the bill had already been enacted by Parliament, without any amendment’.

“It is no wonder the CEO of UCOL says ‘that sort of sudden-death model is a very frightening model to have in front of you if you are an institution with multi-year programmes’.

“This is yet another example of Labour’s attempts to put every facet of New Zealand under central control, feeding the already bloated public service with more red tape.

“It must not be allowed to proceed in its current form.”

Ends

© Scoop Media