Baillie ChrisCHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2). The purpose of the bill is to make amendments across a range of matters in the Act to give effect to new policy decisions and to make other minor and technical changes. There are some valid and reasonable changes in the bill even if they are minor and technical but taken as a whole the desire to get more Government control is obvious and ACT will not be supporting the bill.The major areas of change are police-vetting provisions that better align with the Children's Act 2014. This makes sense but I would be surprised if most childhood services and schools don't already have a policy like this without the need for legislation. Teaching Councils have been talked about quite a lot recently and it's been noted that matters of teachers' conduct have taken too long to reach an outcome. The aim is to strengthen the Teaching Council's disciplinary processes. It makes sense as it is their core business and a lot of other stuff isn't and it shouldn't be. I know of a matter that has just concluded after three years. It had dragged on for three years. It cost the person involved over $10000 and it is the direct cause of a number of health conditions. After three years a simple letter stating There will be no further action." ended the anguish and a distinguished career and this is unacceptable and it needs to be sorted.I've spoken to many teachers and principals and I haven't yet come across one who thinks the Teaching Council should be involved in teachers' professional development. There's a conflict of interest and the teachers actually know what they need to learn. They're doing it now and they can sort it.The amendment to the compulsory student services fee sounds OK but we in the ACT Party shudder when we read "give the Government more flexibility to regulate". I think we all know what that means. The PTE—or private training establishment—changes are to enable the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to exercise discretion about whether to council the registration of a private training establishment in relation to immigration breaches. There were five cases in 2018-19 affecting a total of about 60 students. This area needs to be looked at but we don't believe this sort of authoritarian attitude is warranted and we have to ask: is it the "private" part of PTEs that's the problem?The bill extends the mandate of the Education Review Office (ERO) to enable it to review professional learning and development. As an ex-teacher the mention of ERO makes me nervous and this addition of responsibility doesn't alleviate this nervousness at all.Then we have new sections around student accommodation. A couple make sense—for example the provider must ensure employees must be of good character and undergo police vets amongst other things. But new section 634A in clause 57 says where an administrator can authorise any person to "enter and inspect any premises" to check that the provider is complying with the code. You can't just barge into a gang pad to look for drugs without a warrant so we think this is quite an overreach and not justified.Then we come to Supplementary Order Paper 118 which is a concern for lots of reasons adding another chapter to the agenda around early childhood education centres (ECEs) that I think we have every right to be suspicious about. I won't go into the details—I think some previous speakers have done that very well—but the concern ACT has over the control the Minister seeks to have over private businesses wasn't addressed properly in the select committee. Too many inadequately answered questions that make us suspect other agendas and ideologies are the main reasons for this addition. We also think that all ECEs should be treated equally including kōhanga reo. ACT opposes this bill. Thank you."