Heather Roy is not the students’ friend – and makes stuff up

Last night ACT MP Heather Roy took part in a parliamentary debate of her bill to gut student’s associations, making membership of students’ associations voluntary. She accused NZUSA of not getting back to her with a proposal to address some of the nutty things in her bill, after NZUSA initially said they would. I have spoken with the NZUSA co-president who assures me that they did get back to Roy, but she did not get back to them with a response.

In addition, I phoned Mrs Roy, and left a message on her cellphone some weeks ago. Guess what – she never got back to me either. She didn’t say that in parliament, though.

Roy has noticed that Te Mana Akonga, the Maori Students’ Association, has lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal over the injustices in her bill. (which you can read here [PDF]). While she correctly noted that ordinarily, the Waitangi Tribunal has no jurisdiction over bills, Parliament can have a bill referred to the Tribunal. I suspect that was what the Maori Party was trying to do.

Roy also mentioned that membership of Maori students associations is voluntary, implying that all parties to the claim were associations that have voluntary membership – and she said implied that they were not “official” students’ associations and could not be recognised by law. She is wrong. If she had have looked at the claim she would have seen that the claim is lodged on behalf of all Maori students, the majority of whom are members of students associations and are not surviving by voluntary membership.

It is not just Maori students’ associations that are parties to the claim – most students being represented in the claim are not with associations that have voluntary membership. EXMSS was one of the parties to the claim and has more members than ACT – perhaps that’s because membership of ACT is voluntary and not as many people want to pay to join.

EXMSS does not have voluntary membership, but it does have thousands of Maori students – more Maori students than ACT has members. EXMSS is an official students’ association – in fact, of the parties to the claim that has the most Maori members. Roy says if she was a Maori student she would be embracing the proposed freedom from mainstream associations to enhance their national body.

It is pretty clear that Heather Roy either just wants to Maori-bash, or does not wish to understand Maori student politics. Accessing education “as Maori” is irrelevant to her.

Perhaps if she’d return my phone call, I could explain. Even If I did explain, and even if she was to get back to NZUSA, I guess it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference. Heather Roy won’t turn back now, even if she believes she has done the wrong thing.

And while I`m here perhaps I`ll have to fisk this – perhaps later on tonight.