What appeared to be a draft Cabinet paper has been leaked to the National Party. A summary of it was released last week.
The country's 16 polytechnics and institutes of technology would be controlled by a head office and have their cash and community legacy assets ring-fenced at head office, National tertiary spokesman Shane Reti said.
Other assets, including buildings and land, would be taken away and consolidated.
Otago Polytechnic and the Dunedin community expressed strong opposition to the idea at the beginning of the year and Otago chief executive Phil Ker has put forward his own alternative proposal, which would enable individual institutions to remain largely autonomous.
The Southern Institute of Technology, another traditionally high performer, has also protested the idea.
Mr Cull said that in his previous encounters with Education Minister Chris Hipkins he appeared to listen to the community's thoughts, and he would have ''grave concerns'' if the proposal had any standing.
''I, my council and the wider community have made it clear that any government reforms need to maintain the autonomy of regional polytechnics in matters other than standards and qualifications,'' he said.
''Otago Polytechnic is one of the country's top-performing polytechnics and has brought considerable educational and community benefits for Dunedin and the wider region.''
At a time when Dunedin needed to train all the tradespeople it could, the reform outlined could remove the ability for courses and programmes to be developed locally to meet the needs of the community, he said.
''My understanding is that the New South Wales education sector was reformed under a very similar centralisation proposal and that was a complete disaster.
''All of these concerns have been clearly and loudly expressed to the minister, and I really hope they have not been ignored.
''The minister needs to urgently clarify whether this is or isn't the case.''
Invercargill Mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt was unavailable for comment yesterday.
