A Second Opinion

No promise that the boarding abatement on bursaries will be abolished, a student Price Index but no guarantee of a bursary increase — it looks like this is what students can expect from a Labour Government in 1979.

This was revealed by Russell Marshall, Labour's Education spokesperson, at Canterbury University last week. Marshall also reviewed his party's efforts on bursaries when last in office.

"With hindsight, we didn't handle that very well." This masterpiece of understatement was as close as he came to admit ting that the 1975 Standard Tertiary Bursary had been a huge shambles. However the students were told that their massive demonstrations hadn't had anything to do with the hurried introduction of the STB in the last budget before the election. Labour had really intended to do it all the time. They were just working up to it slowly.

Marshall was ready with a list of excuses to explain away his lack of promises. No guarantee that a Labour government would abolish the abatement. Instead, "progress on its removal or substantial improvement". The old standard of conflicting claims on the money available was hauled out to justify this.

Sue Green, NZUSA's 1975 Education Vice - President challenged Marshall to promise students the abolition of the abatement. She said students had been sold-out during Labour's last term of office and asked how they could be expected to vote Labour this time around when more of the same is promised.

Marshall responded emotively, claiming that the electorate wants people who will make promises they can keep." I am not in a position to say the abatement will be abolished If this means some students won't vote for us so be it."

This failed to bring tears to students' eyes. Canterbury Executive member Greg Waite said it seemed Marshall was saying that neither party is going to do much for students. He added that it was about time a commitment was made to them.

To be fair Marshall did offer students some concessions. He promised that a student price index, on which both the Labour Party and NZUSA were working in 1975, would be introduced. He said that it was official policy that 1979 bursary levels would be "commensurate with what would have been the comparable 1975 level". He dismissed this somewhat tortuous statement as "rather complicated". However it seems to offer no definite promise of a bursary increase.

Marshall also stated that it had been the Labour Government's intention to introduce monthly, possibly fortnightly, payment of bursaries a year after the introduction of the STB and he saw no reason for not going back to that.

Marshall admitted that students have good grounds for complaint and that the case for the abolition of the abatement is strong. However, he implied that students and NZUSA are not taking enough note of all the other groups whose chums he must consider.

It's interesting to note that when Marshall was criticising NZUSA in response to a question he said, "I have talked to some of your student officials here about student politics and I don't want to divulge too much of those conversations." This brought a broad grin to the lace of Canterbury President Mike Lee, who was chairing the forum.

(Lee's relationship with NZUSA National Office is not congenial, and it is not good news to learn he may have been undermining NZUSA at Parliamentary level. But more of that in a special NZUSA supplement in the near future)

The Labour Party's attitude to students is insulting. It seems party officials are confident that students will be pissed off with the National government and therefore Labour will be able to grab student votes without having to make any concessions to them..

Don't be too confident Labour. Students may be promised a sympathetic hearing from Labour's Education Policy Committee, but sympathy doesn't pay rent.

Christchurch correspondent