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"Labour have said they won't necessarily commit right away to reinstating it. So we haven't necessarily seen a strong approach from Labour saying what they would do."
#LaraGreaves, 2026
One of the hosts read my mind with their reply;
"Well, we don't see much of a strong approach from Labour on anything at the moment, do we?"
(1/2)
NZ Labour continue to squat the centre-right, offering little or nothing. Just like in 2023. So the NatACT First regime has a realistic chance at winning another term, despite being deeply unpopular.
That's Labour's fault to some degree. But it's also the electorate's fault, for being willfully blind to the existence of centre-left parties they could vote for instead. Labour is like an abusive partner most left voters just can't give up on; 'maybe it will be different this time?'
(2/2)
The fees-free scheme seemed like a Labour election strategy. They promised to add 1 free year of tertiary study per Parliamentary term. So conveniently for Labour, students turning 18 would have a strong incentive to turn out at the next election, and vote to keep Labour in power.
18-21 year olds are a demographic with consistently low voter turnout. So getting them out to the polls can be enough to swing a tight election, as it was in 2017.
(1/?)
But then the pandemic hit, and democratic socialist policies like fees-free were sacrificed on the alter of paying for pandemic response policies. Leaving the 1 year free as a hanging chad when Hipkins lost Labour the 2023 election with the dopey anti-tax 'captain's call'.
(2/?)
When NatACT First took power, they presumably wanted to avoid pushing that same student vote to the left, so they kept the policy. But pushed it to the final year of study.
This had the predictable effect of tanking any ability for the policy to encourage working class young people into tertiary study. So now the regime can claim the policy is a failure - 'middle class welfare' - and scrap it altogether. Freeing up more public money to bribe campaign donors with.
(3/?)
So what to do? Clearly the attempted commercialisation of both universities *and* industry training (polytechs, etc) has been an abject failure.
The purpose of tertiary education is not to sell qualification commodities and associated services to young people (or their parents). It's to make sure that the country has enough trained professionals and tradespeople to replace those who retire, and keep our public services and infrastructure running smoothly, even as our population grows.
(4/?)
The chronic shortages of both professionals (eg doctors) and tradespeople across our society, since the corporatist 'reforms' of the late 1980s/ early 90s, makes it clear those policies have broken the capacity of tertiary institutions to do that job.
Universities have been particularly hamstrung by the commodification of their courses and research outputs. Like TVNZ, they have public interest functions, which aren't really compatible with being commercially competitive.
(5/?)
Fees-free tertiary study is a bandaid on a system that needs a full body cast. But if we're going to go back to fees-free, maybe it needs to be more targeted?
Say, a certain number of fully-funded tertiary places for each high school that serves a working class community. Which students at each school compete for, if there are more candidates than places. Either with academic performance, or some other demonstration of aptitude that society would benefit from nourishing.
(6/?)
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