Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16327. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on a couple of matters. It may come as some surprise to members opposite—and it might even wake up Paul Quinn if I am lucky—that I am going to speak about the fact that there is unnecessary law. I think that I have a reputation amongst members on the other side of the Chamber for liking big Government and lots of laws and regulation which is grossly—Colin King is nodding. 
Colin King 
: Absolutely! 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: There we go. Well this is the exception proving the rule. In particular I will speak about the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 176 which some of us felt was more appropriately placed within the State Sector Management Bill because it is a matter of the organisation of the State sector but we lost that debate with the current Chairperson earlier today as to its placement and we respect his ruling entirely in that regard. But what this particular Supplementary Order Paper does is change where the policy function for tertiary education is placed. I can see that I really am not doing very well with Mr Quinn at all. Currently that policy function is held within the Tertiary Education Commission—I say to Mr Quinn that he needs to wave a white flag not a blue one—and it is to be transferred back to the Ministry of Education. That is not a position that we on this side of the House necessarily oppose. The functions of the Tertiary Education Commission have been overburdened. It has certainly had some issues with getting some of its core mandate completed and the policy function did not always sit easily with the commission so that is to be transferred to the Ministry of Education. 
The question we have on this side of the Chamber is why we need to do this at all through this process. Why are we doing this through a legislative process? We do not think it needs to be done in this way in any way shape or form. The reorganisation of the State sector does not necessarily require any kind of legislation. We had to do it earlier today in terms of Archives New Zealand and the National Library because of the statutory functions of the Chief Archivist the National Librarian and the Turnbull librarians. In the previous debate we were changing the parts of the Public Records Act and the National Library of New Zealand (Te PunaMatauranga o Aotearoa) Act that deal with how we protect particular functions. On this side of the Chamber we felt that those protections were not adequate. That is not what this bill is about though. This bill is simply about a policy function of a particular Government agency that the Government has decided to shift. On this side of the Chamber we do not have a problem with that concept but we ask whether we are making law just for the sake of it here. Perhaps the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education might want to respond as to why we have gone down this path. 
The whole question of whether laws are required to do some of the things in this legislation also came up during the select committee process in respect of the issue of secondary-tertiary partnerships. There are in fact a number of very good models of secondary-tertiary partnerships in New Zealand and that is covered in Part 1 of the bill. There are a number of such programmes and members would have visited them. For example there is the tertiary high school at Manukau Institute of Technology which is an excellent model of working with kids— 
Colin King 
: But they have legislation though. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I say to Mr King that the question is whether legislation was needed—that is the point. It is happening. The point I make is that it is under way. It is actually operating. One of the concerns expressed to members on this side of the House was that if we move into a more legislative framework around this matter we would be restricting the flexibility that is inherent in making these sorts of programmes work. A lot of us know about different kinds of programmes like this around New Zealand. 
Concern was expressed by some providers that if we start putting in tight legislative rules about how these secondary-tertiary partnerships operate then they might not be able to continue to be the flexible responsive kind of operations we want them to be. Again we make it very clear that members on this side of the Chamber are strongly supportive of partnerships like this. In fact we need more of them. We need to make sure that children who are not coping in the traditional environment of secondary schools have a vehicle with which to continue in training and education. I am sure that the Minister in the chair the Hon Anne Tolley is nodding. She may well have visited the Manukau campus too. It is an excellent model but it is not the perfect model for every town region and city in New Zealand and other models can be explored. This matter is covered in clause 10 which will insert new sections 31A to 31L into the Education Act 1989. 
The question we ask is whether we are restricting ourselves. We do not oppose this move but it seems that on both these counts the law may be unnecessary.