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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 8. 1969.
Opinion
Opinion
Labour and Education
The Labour Party has established a Committee of three persons to examine its election policy on education. Among other questions, this Committee is considering the issue of Universities salaries. It has been decided by the Committee that the Labour Party, if it is elected to Government, "will implement parity with Australian within three years of being elected". A firm statement is expected to be issued by the Labour Party soon. These promises were given by Mr John Hunt, M.P. during a meeting held at the University recently.
Mr Hunt set himself the task of providing a "reasoned approach to the problems of the economics of education". In doing so he described the Minister of Finance, Mr Muldoon, as "irresponsible' and considered the Report of the Education and Research Committee of the National Development Conference to be a "pale, waffly document, full of generalisations that signify little .… The basic weakness of this Report being that it fails to provide anything more than well-meaning platitudes and a bit of good advice which the Government may or may not accept."
The Member based his charge of "irresponsibility" on the fact that Mr. Muldoon has used figures "as if they had been carefully compiled."
"In fact they are notional and wrong."
Mr. Hunt was not quite explicit as to the figures he was referring to but this comment is believed to concern facts relating to total patterns of university expenditure and the costs of student failure. The Speaker then accused the Minister of Finance of wishing to "destroy the universality of education in New Zealand," and in doing so pointed out that the Minister of Education, Mr Kinsella had reaffirmed this principle and contradicted Mr Muldoon.
Mr Hunt then turned to the two related questions of the development of secondary and tertiary education in New Zealand. In doing so he again drew attention to the advantages to be gained from the development of community colleges (cf. Salient) and in support of this noted that the need for such a development had been stated to him, spontaneously, by persons in many different parts of New Zealand. Mr Hunt argued that the development of community colleges could assist in the construction of our system of secondary education which would include the total abolition of the School Certificate examination.
The Member also agreed that not only was it necessary for the Labour Party to put forward (educational) proposals of this kind, but that such proposals need also to be backed by concrete thinking as to economic costs, the availability of teachers, and similar practical considerations.
Government policy as regards projected developments at the Auckland University came under heavy fire. Mr Hunt stated that it was the present intention to establish a second complex next door to Oakley Hospital—four miles away from the present site. Since students would be required to commute from one site to the other, Mr Hunt then suggested that among other inconveniences(?) this might result in "tutorial classes being held in Queen Street traffic jams".
He concluded by observing that "the Government had lost its cool, had grabbed the nearest bit of land it could commandeer. And on this land it proposes to sling (another) great, temporary New Zealand edifice of which we can all be proud."
John Hunt is often considered to be one of the bright sparks in the Labour Party. In this address he at least gave some credence to the idea that the Labour Party contains bright sparks, at least one of whom can talk with reasonable intelligence about developments in education. Mr. Hunt, unlike the Leader of the Opposition, does not concentrate all his educational attention on whether or not Christchurch schools have leaky roofs: in contrast he examines issues of greater importance—whether or not New Zealand has a leaky system of tertiary education.
Opinion
In His Anzac Day statement that "a highly organised and centrally directed espionage effort from overseas is continuing in New Zealand" Mr Holyoake reaches new levels of irrelevancy and disregard for the genuine concern of many loyal New Zealanders. Once again he drags from under his bed the long tried and true (albeit slightly worn) spectre of international conspiracy with which successive governments, National and Labour, have terrified the middle class, the elderly, and the hysterical.
It is indeed unfortunate, considering the literary effort which his advisers have put into the statement and the attention the press have given it, that the Prime Minister makes absolutely no attempt to deal with the main criticisms of the security service: that it is constantly snooping into the business of New Zealanders and New Zealand organisations that by no stretch of the imagination could be called subversive, and that it is completely free of the checks and limits which have been imposed on the police by the wisdom of centuries of British constitutional experience.
I for one would not deny the possibility of a communist (or South African or Rhodesian) spy ring in this country: indeed the size of certain diplomatic establishments suggests a likelihood. But I would deny that this gives a group of semiofficial sneaks the right to treat all opposition to the present policies of the present government as inimical to the security of New Zealand.
I would deny that it gives them the right to infiltrate and investigate the members of organisations such as the Labour Party and the late Citizens All Black Tour Association.
I would deny the right of the security service to run checks and have files on individuals who have neither applied for a job in a sensitive area of the public service nor been convicted of an offence: Security respects no rules of evidence.
And as for investigating the activities of youthful radicals, to believe that students could successfully organise subversion demonstrates a naivete on the part of the service that is somehow as alarming in its way as its extralegal activities.
The head of the security service, Brigadier H. E. Gilbert, told parliament's public expenditure committee last year that the service checks on 18,000 people each year. For what purpose? With what result in terms of subversives caught? These are the sort of questions to which Mr Holyoake should be supplying answers. Memories of the Boshier-Laurenson, Godfrey. CABTA, and other affairs are too fresh to be expunged by the traditional whitewash-by-mudslinging.
A security service has a function to perform in checking on personnel in key areas and in investigating the activities of foreign government but at present it clearly equates dissent with disloyally. It must be put on a legal basis, preferably as part of the police force. Otherwise it is the security service who are the subversives, subverting the principles of law on which our way of life is founded.
If to fight the communists we have to become like them, why fight them?