Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 4. March 23 1981
The Basic Balls up
The Basic Balls up
During the existence of the STB (1976-79) the basic level was $30 per week. If the level had been indexed to the CPI at the level of the STB's introduction in 1976, then at the start of 1979 it should have been $36.04 (requiring a 20.1 % increase) and at the end of the year it should have been $40.65 (requiring a 36.8% increase). It is NZUSA's policy, in fact, that the basic level should be adjusted to the 1976 level.
Only a politician like Merv Wellington could, in one fell swoop, transform a very poor situation into an appalling one.
The already eroded $30 was cut by $7 to $23 per week. Thus instead of the required has its development priorities distorted. By as late as 1970 there was only one university. To-day there are five, and a few technical colleges. Even so, there are only places for about 30,000 tertiary students compared with 40,000 university students alone in NZ, with ¼ the population of Malaysia. The result was (in 1977-78) out of the 26,000 eligible applicants to the universities only 5953 were accepted i.e. 1 in every 4. Of the remaining ¾ and many other thousands more pre-university students, only a very small percentage will be fortunate enough to go overseas to countries like UK, Australia, NZ, etc. To the rest, it means an end of their academic pursuits, a shattered dream and the beginning of a lowly paid menial job if they can find one.