Martin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10547. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): You snooze you lose! Just a small comment before I actually address my comments to clause 40C of the Education Amendment Bill—just to move away from clause 42 to clause 40C. I think it is a shame that members of the Education and Science Committee would need anybody to pass them any notes on a bill of such importance to this country. I think that is a shame.But I want to actually address my comments to clause 40C which is the amendment to the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 1995. I think there will be many in the public out there wondering what on earth the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 1995 has got to do with charter schools. Actually it is nothing. But it is in the bill. Clause 40C(2) states: “In Schedule 1A item relating to the Ministry of Education replace ‘student information’ with ‘information’.” The reason for that just so that the parents of children under the age of 6 are aware of what this is going to do is around the Better Public Services target that by 2016 98 percent of children starting school will have participated in quality early childhood education. No argument with that. It is a great target.However what this means—and this needs to change—is that they are removing the word “student” from the association with the ministry passing on information because a child cannot be a student under this legislation until they are enrolled in school into the compulsory sector of school. But if you want to allocate a National Student Number to track a child under the age of 6 have that tracking place that information with the Ministry of Education and then have access to it you need to no longer refer to it as “student information”; you need to refer to it as “information” across the board.“The Early Learning Information … programme” is being developed and implemented “using the National Student Number … as a unique education identifier to increase the quality and volume of individual learner information on early childhood education … participation.” This is on the ministry’s website. There is a question here: “Do I have to do anything to get my child a National Student Number?”. No. “Can Ichoose not to have a National Student Number allocated to my child …?”. No you cannot. You cannot opt out. You cannot not have your child tracked from however young they are—I think it might be 1 or 2 years old. Once they are inside an early childhood education facility they are going to start having a National Student Number allocated to them.But even more than that how do you find out and how do you track the children who are not in early childhood education so that you can encourage them to go into early childhood education? Well you use the Ministry of Social Development. Through the beneficiary records of all those people who find themselves in circumstances that require the State’s support you allocate them a National Student Number. Then because you know they are a beneficiary you tie in that Public Service target with a bit of a disincentive to not put your child through early childhood education. There is no better way to meet your Public Service target of 98 percent of early childhood education. Do not bother educating the public of New Zealand that it is a good idea and that there is high-quality early childhood education and that we are going to support your children in it. Let us actually pick up through the tracking of all our children—all our children—through beneficiary numbers and through the information from the Ministry of Social Development and let us encourage you possibly through penalising you to put your children in early childhood education because the State knows best. I am not against early childhood education but I find it a very interesting thing that a Government that argued and argued and argued using the phrase “nanny State” again and again and again is now tracking every single child in this country in every method possible. This is national tracking of every single human being within a generation and this is part of this bill. New Zealand might like to know that.