Prime Minister Chris Hipkins represents one thing: hope. At least, hope for rangas and hope for people from The Hutt that, despite the circumstances they were born into, they too can achieve their dreams. While he now has the biggest job in the country, it wasn’t long ago that Chippy was just another hipster arts student at Victoria University, protesting the issues that the tertiary sector is still very much facing. He was so deep in student politics, he even got arrested at a protest back in the day.
Prior to receiving a grand tour of the Critic Te Ārohi office (including describing our Luxon cover as “traumatising”), Chris had been downstairs at Auahi Ora delivering a talk on the tertiary sector where he was met with protestors from Protect Otago Action Group (POAG). Among the crowd was that unicycle-riding, guitar-playing monkey. As well as the sign-toting protesters, the space was filled with other concerned members of the community, all seeking answers on Otago University’s financial situation and the proposed cuts. While he got a good grilling, with questions ranging from “why can’t you just fix the budget hole” to concerns over the price of vegetables, Chippy said he couldn’t blame the academic community for how they’re feeling right now. “The questions are fair and legitimate, and I’d be disappointed if a university campus wasn’t a place for that, and it’s not the worst I’ve encountered,” he told Critic. This is despite someone yelling, “Okay, coloniser!” at one point.
Back in the day, Chippy was the President at Victoria University Students Association, at the forefront of protesting increases of fees. “We were in an environment where cost [of tuition] was going up, we were paying a couple of thousand and then it went up to 5k or 6k and continued going, so a lot of people got involved at that time,” he said. Chippy also mentioned that during his time as a student politician, “It was about fees more so than support, and once the fee cap came in, the attention turned to other issues in the early 2000s, such as the cost of living,” he said, nodding to Labour’s 2005 campaign to remove interest on student loans. “I had a great time, I loved it, and one of the things I like about student politics is the enthusiasm for good robust educated opinion and debate, and campuses should be places for that.” It certainly was.
Otago University is currently in a financial shitstorm, and since the time of interview, Victoria University has announced that it, too, is facing large deficits and program cuts. At the Auahi Ora forum, Hipkins reiterated that he wants all Kiwis to have access to tertiary education, and that our universities should be world-leading. However, his response to repeated questions about funding was that there will “never be enough” regardless of increases in the budget. On the question of whether or not the government can just “fix the budget hole”, Hipkins said that “everywhere” is asking for more funding, such as the healthcare sector and the welfare sector, further reiterating that no amount of money will be enough.
When asked if the government would consider a bail out of struggling universities, Chippy said that this wasn’t something the government would do due to wanting universities to maintain financial autonomy. “When I was at Vic, we went through a similar process where they were in deficit and the council was having to make decisions around this, and that did include some unpopular ones, such as no longer teaching Russian,” he said. “No one likes to see that happen, but there is a supply and demand there, as if demand is low, as long as we have to subsidise departments, then the subjects that people do want to study aren’t getting the level of support they need. So the institutions should make those decisions, not us.” Chippy also noted that universities are in better financial shape than polytechs, who were well and truly broke without government assistance.
On the quality of accommodation on offer for students, Chris said that the government had been working to change this with the introduction of healthy homes standards. He also noted that students face fixed costs when it comes to rent, and that ability to meet those costs is limited - something he empathised with having spent around 60% of his income as a student on rent - therefore showing why it's necessary to keep increasing student loan payments.
We were only given a mere 15 minutes with the man himself, so it was time to wrap things up. With the general election set to take place on October 14th of this year, we decided to ask him: What can students get out of voting for Labour come time to cast their ballots? “You will get a government that is going to continue investing in tertiary education,” he said. Pressed for more details, he replied, “I know that there are specific things that students will want to know where we stand, but we will set this out before the election… It's a choice between a government led by a party that wants to invest and one that wants to cut.” That being said, right now it feels like cuts from all sides.