ACT and National will push voluntary student association bill through parliament this week on the last Members Day. We can expect a good deal of student opposition around the country. Good for them.
Next year, students won’t pay any fees to student associations. That’s inevitable, would you pay your council rates if they were voluntary? Wherever student associations have become voluntary they effectively collapsed.
What happens next?
Well, the university, polytech or institution will step in, charge students a levy, and continue some of the services through subcontracting companies or students to do it for them. It’s already been gazetted (NZ Gazette No. 138). Institutions can charge students for: advocacy and legal advice, careers advice and guidance, counselling services, employment information, financial support and advice, health servieces, childcare facilities, sports and recreation facilities.
In other words, all the stuff that supports students and makes these institutions of learning vital, interesting places.
So, voluntary student association membership will result in … money taken off students compulsorily, leaving them with no power to determine what services are kept. Taxation without representation is one way it can be represented.
The National-Act spin that student associations are the last bastions of compulsory unionism is bollocks … it’s idealogy pure and simple.
We could’ve had a good, enduring Bill with an opt out clause and some rules around accountability of student association spending. I’d spoken a number of times with Heather Roy about some possibilities. She was willing to compromise when she her Bill looked in doubt but held the hard line when she thought she’d get it through.
Too bad, fortunately it won’t last long.
And you believe that this shows that there is widespread opposition to the law?
You clearly have a good deal to learn about real life, young man.
I see that my previous comment was censored. I just commented on how desperate Labour’s anti-VSM campaign is. No swearing or anything personal. Why was that censored?
Do the admins at least have the decency to give me a copy? I’d like to put it up on facebook so that people can see how sensitive Labour is.
I’ll keep copies of all future posts.
If you don’t like our moderation policy you can always start your own blog. Warned. Clare
Ben, there’s the thing I don’t get….
If 98% of submissions were opposed to the law, then surely the impact of the proposed law, by your reasoning, would be a drop in numbers of about 2%?
Why the need to die in a ditch over the (Claimed) 2% of those who do not wish to be a part of a student union?
Unless of course this 98% figure is a result of a orchestrated campaign to show the appearence of far more support for a cause than actually exists.
But then you wouldn’t do that now, would you, Ben?
If there’s so much opposition to this legislation within the student body why did only a couple of hundred turn out to protest yesterday, many of whom (according to reports) weren’t students, but merely the usual rent a mob?
I think it’s time that Labour started to engage with ordinary people rather than a few atypical activists.
That sounds unnecessarily petulant, and does no credit to either you or this site, Clare.
It’s the equivalent of a spoilt child threatening to pick up his ball and go home with it when the game isn’t going his way.
We like playing with your ball, and we’re grateful to you for providing it, but remember that you get as much out of our engagement as we get out of yours.
Why is it that an institution will levy students for the services they’ll no longer be able to afford? Because the services are an essential part of the university / polytech life. Students will still end up paying, it’s just that will be compulsorily paid to a university.
@ David
A services levy is upfront. You know what you pay for. I don’t think students will have any problem with this.
I find this hilarious. Instead of rising to the challenge of better managing and Marketing what a student union offers to entice students to join, the only answer seems to be membership by compulsion. With all those bright young things abounding at uni’s, why not harvest the captive market and unleash the skills they are trained in? Marketing, management, economics, hr, accounting, law etc. These kids could be getting on the training jobs if it was pitched at them correctly. Its unlikely though students of that calibre share the labour/left dream though. So we cant have that option.
You are correct, students won’t voluntarily join the Student Associations given the choice, and as a result students will lose a number of the beneficial services that the associations could provide.
The tertiary institutes will rightly step in and deliver some of these services, and a fee will be levied on the students, but are they likely to be any less effective in the provision of these services than the Student Unions? Or is it possible that the levy will be less than the Student Associations fees currently being charged?
Much of the frustration felt by students is that the Student Associations have lost touch with the people they were supposed to be representing. That the Associations are more concerned with self-interest than in truly representing the wider student body.
The passing of the VSM wont be the death knell of the Student Association, they will now have to adapt to operating in a different environment. But will hopefully mean that they will now focus on what matters, of representing the interests and needs of students to the tertiary organisations.
If the students feel the Student Associations have lost touch they are welcome to participate in the robust democratic system that allocates the assets.
Or is it just some commentator on a blog who actually is in touch with the ideas of around 3% of the nationwide vote and claims to know what the wider student body wants?
AdamR: You seem to think that we *must* have the government decide what the students want. Why do you find it so offensive to let individual students decide what they want for themselves?
If you want to attack ACT for being a minor party (which is irrelevant, because National also supports the bill and is polling about twice as high as Labour), can you please find me an example of a current NZ student politician that got more than 10% of students to vote for them?
Hasn’t Auckland Uni had a voluntary student union for a number of years and been able to fund it’s activities through other means? However, the best argument for voluntary student unionism is the student unions themselves – their arcane rules have led to much hijacking, I remember a few years ago ACT and National hijacked a meeting and passed several embarrassing binding resolutions that the SU had no desire to fulfill.