Rainbow Wellington has condemned the Government support for a proposed law change, which will make student union membership voluntary. Although there were nearly 5,000 submissions against it and only a handful in favour, the government majority of those on the Education and Science Select Committee has recommended that the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill given government support. Rainbow Wellington chair Tony Simpson describes it as "a vindictive act of social vandalism". "Select Committees should be reflecting public views, not pushing ideological wheel barrows," he says. "Anyone who knows anything about student affairs will be aware that student associations do extremely valuable social work in assisting students to make the transition to tertiary study and to adulthood, and play an important surrogate role when students are living away from their home city and family, often for the first time." "This particularly applies when students are at an age when many gay and lesbian young people ‘come out' and face immense pressures and transition problems. They need good support to cope with these. Throughout the student communities one finds just such support and counselling groups established through student unions." Simpson says students are also notoriously broke, and if given the choice of paying or not paying for the social services they receive through their student union, they are going to take the soft option and not join up. "The upshot will be a serious gap in student life which the universities themselves, already strapped for cash and suffering from government parsimony, will not be able to fill." "This message was clearly conveyed by many of the submissions on the Bill, and is confirmed by earlier experience of similar legislation in 1999, repealed by the incoming Clark government. Those on the Committee who backed the Bill know full well that what they are doing is destructive and negative in the extreme, and bear a heavy responsibility for any consequences of their irresponsible action in supporting this Bill."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 6th October 2010 - 10:05am