Brownlee Gerry: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12174] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 The part we are discussing in this bill essentially talks about the purpose of the bill which is to give validity to an appalling industrial relations situation that exists between the teaching fraternity in this country and the payers of the salaries of those teachers. It ignores the relationship between teachers and boards of trustees that for all other purposes are considered to be the employers of teachers. It is the sort of legislation that occurs when a Government decides that it will regulate everything in any area it chooses. I want to know from the Minister: if the Employment Relations Act is so good—the Act that was touted by Margaret Wilson as landmark legislation for industrial relations—why do we now have a bill that gives the State Services Commissioner certain exemptions from the provisions of that Act? What is the need for this bill? Why are teachers being treated differently from other employees? 
Further why are teachers not able to negotiate directly with their own boards? Why cannot they say to their boards: “Not only do I do my time in the classroom but I also do a bit of drama I also take sport twice a week and then on a Saturday and I think I should be paid more than someone who just does their classroom teaching.”? But they cannot do that because the Government has said: “No. Every teacher is the same and they must be paid on a scale.” I know that the Minister will stand up and say: “Oh but we have put in place management units.” Right? 
I ask the Minister if he is going to stand up and give us a lecture on those management units whether he can tell us how many teachers in this country receive their management units exclusively for sport or exclusively for cultural activity outside the classroom. There will not be many. There will be very very few because the Minister knows that those management units are overwhelmingly tagged for curriculum matters as they pertain to the classroom. I want to know from the Minister whether it is necessary— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: As it should be. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The Minister actually chipped in then and I do not want to give his interjection credibility except to say that he said that that was as it should be. That is an admission from the Labour Government that sport in schools does not matter cultural activities in schools do not matter and that all children in schools should simply be confined to the classroom and their education delivered along the narrow lines of chalk and talk. That is what the Labour Government’s vision of education is for this country and it reinforces that with a bill like this that ties the hands of both boards of trustees and for that matter the many teachers in this country who might want to be better off by being able to negotiate their own circumstances. 
I can look at the faces of those people sitting across the other side of the Chamber and see how worried they are. They know that as they go into their dying days as a Government some of their key legislation is likely to be undone by the very people it is supposed to affect—in other words the many thousands of teachers in this country who will not vote for that Government because their professional integrity is just being kicked in a heap. They are being told they are a single mass who will simply take a salary for doing a job regardless of how well they do that job. 
 The other fascinating point in this part is the requirement for boards of trustees to report to the State Services Commissioner on the conduct of strikes that affect the schools of those boards. What does that say? Is it saying that there are some strikes they do not have to report? Is it saying that they have to make some assessment of how well the strike went?