The afternoon session of the NZUSA confrence this weekend featured a panel of politicians, and thier views on student debt and student issues. Present were Dail Jones (NZFirst) Conor Roberts (Labour) Judy Turner (United Future) Metirea Turei (Greens) the Hon. Matt Robson (Progressives) and Dr. Paul Hutchison (National).
Poor old Hutchison got a bollocksing. Students were obviously not very happy with National. The rest provided fairly banal and standard party rhetoric and positions that were verbatim of thier party websites. I’ll go deeper into those positions in print.
However, Hutchison dropped the ball a little bit. After being asked “What did Crosby/Textor tell you to tell us” by VUWSA exec member Sonny Thomas, he was put into a bit of a fluster. This meant that the ’till now impenetrable National policy silence suffered a chink in its armour. After being asked his perspective of Voluntary Student Membership, he voiced his support. But then backtracked, stating definitley that no National government would support a change to Compulsory Student Membership legislation as it currently stands. This means that National will not be supporting the current bill in the ballot from the Act party, calling for a change.
Hutchison was quite adamant that National would not be supporting any such law, now or in the future. Its probably fair to imply that he means in National’s first (and in the event of subsequent) terms, VSM will not be a legislated issue.
So in summation, The National party does not support Voluntary Student Membership. At last, some policy relating to students from a party which on current polling could govern alone.
Thank god.