Delahunty Catherine: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:972. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):I am pleased to take another call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and I would like to just cover off a couple of issues that were raised before. The issue of the name of the council—I agree with the Minister of Education about the importance of the word “Aotearoa”. I would be the first person to say it is very important to recognise that the foundation of this nation is Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that should be reflected in the way in which we name our institutions. I have no problem with calling it the “Teachers Council of Aotearoa New Zealand”. I do not think there is any problem with including that word and I would hate anyone to think that the Green Party would oppose that. What we are arguing for is a name that reflects the two issues: one that we are Aotearoa New Zealand and two that this is about teachers. Our disappointment is with the first bit not with the second bit. I just want to clear that up for the benefit of anyone listening.I also would like to agree with Tracey Martin’s analysis of what happened at the Education and Science Committee regarding the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 21. We never heard anything about it. It was never mentioned. We had a very exhaustive time going through all kinds of issues. There was a great deal of detail on the bill about registrations about monitoring about teacher practices and about various rights but there was absolutely no mention of removing the clause “natural justice”. So it has come to us as a surprise. It was not something that we anticipated. Initially when I looked at the Minister’s amendment I thought: “Oh this looks OK.” and then that has been brought to my attention. I realised that no we need an explanation for this. Perhaps the Green Party could support it if there was an explanation but we have not had one. The challenge was put out probably an hour ago and we still have not had one. We need an explanation about why the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper is going to remove that clause on natural justice. It is actually really important when dealing with issues of rights that we address the issue of natural justice. There may be a perfectly harmless explanation but we did not hear it at the select committee and we have not heard it yet. We would like to hear it.I would like to also address some of the university issues because the clear-cut most outrageous issues in this bill have been around the right of teachers to choose their own representation on the Teachers Council as it was and around university governance. There was a really interesting submission at the select committee by a guy who was an expert in governance and management. He came to the select committee and said: “This is bizarre. If a person knows anything about governance and management management needs to be lean small and efficient; governance needs to be broad inclusive and creative.” He said further: “Any modern organisation will have small management and big governance for that reason.” He said that it is completely ridiculous to be making the governance of important leading educational institutions smaller.Although there are places for Māori and a few other places guaranteed there is so much not guaranteed about this including the rights of people to dispute the power of the Minister that we had professors come to the select committee—many professors not one or two—arguing that this was setting up conflicts with the fundamental purpose of the education system. Not only were they saying you have got governance and management completely wrong they also said that when the universities are the critic and conscience of society the university council members must be able to raise difficult issues and disagree. If you go into the clauses about the removal of people from that council there is some very interesting language in there which needs to be scrutinised around the removal of people who dare to disagree. The point of governance is that it should be a robust environment where many voices are heard so that disagreement can be worked through not so that disagreement can be silenced.That is why although we agree that both on a teachers professional body and a university council there is a role for ministerial appointment it should not be the controlling interest. It is very concerning that there is the possibility of removing people who dissent. That is what the professors were talking about. They were talking about the role of the university which is an ancient role or the wānanga or any other institution where hopefully the wise heads gather in our society where they challenge the Government of the day or the thinking of the day and they tell the country: “We must act with a bigger picture. We must act with a wider understanding. We must act with a deeper perspective that comes only from people who are focused deeply on those issues.” Limiting the size of governance and removing the free and open—