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VSM looks virtually certain to be introduced after the Education Select Committee recommended the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill be passed into law with only minor changes.

The Act Party Bill is almost guaranteed to become law after the National Government indicated it would support the Bill through its second and third readings in Parliament. 
   Student associations and leaders around New Zealand condemned the Committee’s decision, which came despite 98 percent of submissions opposing the legislation. The Committee considered 4837 submissions after submissions closed on 31 March. Committee members visited Dunedin to hear oral submissions in the middle of the year.
   Most student leaders were outraged that despite widespread opposition to the Bill it was endorsed by the Select Committee. “They have not listened to the voice of students. Overwhelmingly, students did not want it," Otago Polytechnic Students Association (OPSA) Meegan Cloughley says.
   OUSA’s President Harriet Geoghegan was also disappointed about the progress of the Bill, telling Critic that “it was surprising and disappointing that they choose to recommend it through without any changes.”
   However, the Young Nats issued a press release in which they were strongly supportive of the Committee’s decision, saying, “This Government is giving choice back to students, and for that it should be applauded.” In the same vein, Act’s Heather Roy, an active promoter of the Bill who is due in Dunedin this week, told the New Zealand Herald that "making membership voluntary will ensure associations are more accountable to those they claim to support.”
   The reality of VSM is that many smaller and less financially secure students’ associations are unlikely to survive in a meaningful form. A PriceWaterhouseCoopers study commissioned by the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations reported that revenues from membership fees would all but dry up, leaving smaller associations without significant asset bases at risk of collapsing.
   Concerns have also been raised in several quarters that the only real effect of the Bill will be to shift the costs of student services and make them less transparent. Auckland University Student’s Association (AUSA) led the outcry over the shifting of costs, saying in a press release that VSM is a failed model which will ultimately end up costing students more for the same service levels. AUSA Education Vice-President Alex Nelder says “to provide the services we used to provide, the University of Auckland has one of the highest student services levies in the country. Students have no say over how high this fee is set, or where the money goes. The fee is much higher than at other campuses nationwide.”
   The effects of VSM on students’ associations will not become apparent until at least 2012, as the Bill is not intended to pass into law in time to affect operations for 2011.