Freedom To Associate – And Dissociate

Hon Heather Roy MP speech to the Second Reading of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill; Parliament, Wellington; Wednesday, October 20 2010



Mr Speaker

I move that the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Mr Speaker, I am very proud to be the sponsor of this Bill. Compulsory membership of students associations has been an issue since I became a Member of Parliament in 2002. However, the issue goes back much further than that. When I did a quick search on the internet I found media releases calling for Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) from 2000. I hope that those who campaigned so hard then are listening today because their efforts, their lobbying and campaigning were not in vain.

This is, in fact, the fourth Bill on Voluntary Student Membership to come before this House. Clearly this isn’t an issue that will go away and only full voluntary membership of student associations will solve the principled human rights issue, and practical accountability and responsibility issues, that compulsory membership violate.

These issues were all traversed in detail at the Select Committee hearings. I would like to thank the Committee for its hard work, the officials to the Committee, and especially to those who took the time to make submissions – both written and oral. Prebble’s Rebels, ACT on Campus and the Young Nats past and present deserve a huge thank you for keeping this issue alive over a large number of years. Your efforts and dedication to the cause are rewarded in this Bill.

I would also like to thank Sir Roger Douglas for his ‘Midas touch’ with the drawing of Private Members Bills. Although originally drafted by me and put into the ballot in 2006, this Bill was drawn from the ballot in his name last year. He shepherded it through its First Reading and Select Committee hearings, and handed it back to me when I was no longer a Minister. An issue this important shouldn’t be left to the luck of a draw, but fortunately we got there in the end.

Mr Speaker, by the beginning of 2012 it will be illegal to compel a student to join a student association in order for them to be allowed to study at a tertiary institution. That, Mr Speaker, is called Freedom of Association and that is the principle my Bill is based on

As a society we prize our freedom Freedom means choice, and choice is the most fundamental principle of a free and democratic society. That is why the Bill of Rights Act 1990 protects the rights of individuals to determine who they associate with, which political ideas they associate with, and do so without compulsion or undue influence.

Section 17 of the Act guarantees the right to ‘freedom of association’. Compulsory membership of associations is simply not commensurate with this clause.

Over time, attempts to soften compulsory membership – by introducing conscientious objection and referenda provisions – have failed to resolve the major conflicts of compulsory membership with the Bill of Rights Act and with the financial interests of students.

It is extraordinary too that many years after trade union membership was made voluntary for workers without the sky falling in, universities and polytechnics – seemingly bastions of freedom of thought, speech and inquiry – have maintained compulsory membership of student associations. Now this relic of a bygone era is finally to be bid farewell.

A high level of accountability is essential with any form of public funds. But students associations have consistently shown that they lack the accountability necessary to manage the sort and scale of funds that compulsory membership gives them.

Lack of democratic accountability in the form of low election turnouts means that democratic processes have failed to ensure that mainstream interests are represented.

Likewise, poor financial accountability has been the norm rather than the exception. Often the only tangible checks and balances on an association’s expenditure is a treasurer’s report at executive meetings and a yearly audit. Too many of these audits show deeply worrying trends of financial mismanagement and fraud. We don’t have to look too far for evidence.

In 2003 the Office Manager of Massey Students Association was jailed for stealing $203,000. In 2005 the Victoria University Maori Student Association treasurer was jailed for stealing $161,000. In 2007 the President of VUWSA spent $22,000 upgrading the association’s van without authority. In 2009 the Office Manager of the Christchurch Polytechnic Students’ Association was jailed for theft of $175,000. Whitireia Polytechnic Students’ Association has allegedly lost $750,000 of students’ money over several years. These are just a few examples. Students who provided the funds for all of this didn’t get value for money, as they certainly didn’t when a VUWSA official spent $6,000 of their money calling a psychic hotline in 2007. I suspect she didn’t get much value from it either.

For compulsory bodies with large-scale incomes, the current law represents a completely insufficient level of financial accountability.

We will hear no doubt from the Labour and Green members today that my Bill will be the death of student unions.

They will cite the conscientious objection provision as a substitute for choice, but they won’t tell how it is virtually impossible to invoke it because the union officials have the power of yay or nay. Mostly they opt for nay.

They will tell us that referenda provisions mean students determine their own destiny, but they ignore the fact that consistently low voter turnout at students’ association elections further emphasises the lack of representation of students’ views.

But the thing I find quite pathetically sad is the talk by the Bill’s opponents of impending doom; the death of associations. Sad because they have such little faith in what they themselves offer. This Bill is not about killing student associations. It is about empowering students; providing the incentives to deliver to students the services and facilities that they want.

One submitter summed it up this way:

“A move to genuine voluntary membership (where you have to pay a fee to belong, and the student association is disadvantaged if it does not persuade you to join) will eventually result in student associations that are more accountable and responsive to their members, rather than treat them as ATM machines. They would focus on making sure the association provides benefits to members who join, that the advocacy is focused on issues of importance to their members, and that members are regularly engaged and communicated with.”

Mr Speaker, I fully support the free rights of students who choose to join a student association and for that body to campaign and lobby, and to charge a membership fee. But the rights of that association should not extend to compelling others to join, be charged a levy or to be actively misrepresented.

The Education (Freedom of Association) Bill will allow students to decide for themselves whether an association is a club they want to belong to. It will align the rights of students with all other sectors of our society. Freedom of association means real choice. It means students will also have the freedom to dissociate.

I commend this Bill to the House.

ENDS

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