Treaty claim lodged to stop VSM

Labour have failed with their year of filibustering the VSM bill. It completed the committee stages last night and is set down for third and final reading on Wed 28 September.

Hilarious to hear Labour MPs use 1984 speak in claiming the bill removes democratic rights from students. They would have you think our soldiers fought in WWII to defend the right for students to be forced against their will to fund a incorporated society that advocates for things they don’t support.

Having failed in the House, NZUSA have come up with a new strategy:

Maori student representatives have formally lodged a claim into the Waitangi Tribunal seeking an urgent Tribunal hearing into the impacts of ACT’s bill to end universal membership of students’ associations. The Tribunal has acknowledged receipt of the claim and is currently being considered as a single new claim. …

The claim seeks the Tribunal’s recommendation that the Bill is:
(a) abolished and
(b) that provision be made to protect tauira Māori, their local roopu, and their national representation.

“NZUSA supports this claim. The government does not seem to care about the real impacts this will have on the ground. The disgraceful fact remains that the government has done no analysis or real consideration of what impact this Bill will have on student services, student representation, and the quality of education for students as a whole,” says NZUSA co-President David Do.

Mr Do is of course a former chair of Princess St Labour.  NZUSA at times resembles the tertiary education wing of the Labour Party.

I have to say it was very forward-looking of Governor Hobson to have inserted the secret fourth article:

ARTICLE THE FOURTH

Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and to the respective families and individuals that if it establishes any tertiary educational institutes in New Zealand, it shall require all students thereof to become a member of an association of students, and pay whatever fee is demanded by said association, so the association can pay for taonga such as psychic hotlines.

I guess the next step after this will be for NZUSA to ask the United Nations to intervene.