Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION AND TRAINING (TEACHING COUNCIL FEES AND COSTS) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.Much has been said about this bill. Unfortunately a lot of the things that have been said about the bill don't actually resemble the facts so I want to just go back and recap the history of why we are here debating this particular piece of legislation. The organisation now known as the Teaching Council was established by the last National Government. It was then known as the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand the professional and regulatory body for the teaching profession in New Zealand. The clauses of legislation that are being challenged are the clauses that were passed when that organisation was established by the then National Government. The legislative provisions that have been challenged successfully in the court were not put in place by the current Government; they were put in place by the last Government. So let's be very clear about that.The overall effect of the court challenge which was brought by the Post Primary Teachers' Association—the PPTA—was to overturn fees that the council had established under those legislative provisions put in place by the last Government. The Teaching Council has not had a fee increase for over a decade. They had consulted on an increased fee. They had made the decision to impose an increased fee. They had made the decision to move from a three-yearly registration to a yearly registration in order to smooth the cost of that fee increase for the teaching profession.The courts found that they should not have done that: first of all that they had made a mistake in law in their decision to shift from a three-yearly registration to a one-yearly registration; and secondly that the law as passed by the last National Government did not allow them to collect fees to cover all of their functions which had been the assumption of the Parliament—and I can say this because I took part in the passage of that bill through the select committee process. It had been the intention of the Parliament that the council could collect fees for all of its functions. The courts found otherwise. That left the Teaching Council in a difficult position because it effectively means that every fee that they have collected for teacher registration since they were established in 2015 could potentially not be valid. That is not a tenable position for the council to be left in.So this bill does not—again contrary to some of the claims—overturn the PPTA's win in the court. The fee that was recently established that the courts overturned remains overturned. What this bill does is validate all of the fees that were collected up to that point from 2015 onwards because I think everybody should agree—I hope—that it would be untenable to say that all of those fees that have been collected over a six-year period were no longer valid. So it validates those previous fees but it does not validate the fee that the court overturned. That fee remains overturned. So the fee reverts back to the one that existed prior and that is the three-yearly lower fee.The second thing the bill does is it allows people who have paid their one-year registration fee in the meantime to use that as a down payment towards their slightly higher three-year registration fee. So it means that they won't have to be refunded the money only to then give a slightly higher fee back to the Teaching Council; they'll effectively have to pay a top-up in order to get their three-year registration. I think most people in those circumstances would prefer it that way rather than getting a refund and then having to pay the money back again almost straight away. So it's a relatively simple and pragmatic decision.So ultimately this bill creates certainty for the Teaching Council around what it can charge fees for recognising that this discrepancy in the law has existed since the council was established in 2015. So it simply provides greater clarity for that.Nicola Willis: Fees go up under Labour.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well the member opposite says the fees go up under Labour. Hekia Parata stood in this House when the law was passed and said the fees were going to go up. That was ultimately the decision of the Government of the day and they were quite open about the fact that fees were going to go up under the law change that they were passing. This Government has deferred the fee increases by continuing to provide a subsidy against the fee to defer the effect of the law change passed by National that would have increased the fees before now. The reason we are debating it now is that the Government has ultimately reached the point where we're not going to continue to top up to compensate for the decision made by the last National Government which is what we have been doing up until this point. So Nicola Willis can shout all she likes but the ultimate reason the fees are going up is because of the law change passed by the last National Government. Those are simple facts. The records of the House will show that. The Hansard will show that—that the fees increasing now are a result of the law change back in 2015.The other piece of feedback that did come through the select committee process which I am sympathetic to is that on the leadership provisions inserted into the law by those 2015 changes the overwhelming feedback from the teaching profession is that they don't believe that they should have to pay for those through their teacher registration fees. That was something that Labour expressed some concerns about at the time that law change was passed in 2015. We also shared some of that concern. So the Supplementary Order Paper that I have presented makes it very clear that the Teaching Council cannot charge the profession through the registration fees for those functions. If they are undertaking those leadership functions they will have to do so with the agreement of the Minister whoever that Minister is and the Government of the day will have to pay for those functions.Let's again remember the situation that the Government inherited. When we became Government in 2017 the Government of the day that we replaced was about to transfer to the then Education Council a whole lot of additional functions including the management of teacher professional development which teachers would have had to pay for and ultimately that would have meant that the fees would be even higher than the ones that the council has been consulting on. We made a change to reverse that decision of the last Government because we didn't believe that the fee levels of the magnitude that would have been required under the law and under the processes put in place by the last Government were justifiable.So the National Party may try and rewrite history but the facts are quite simple. When we became the Government teachers were facing an exponential fee increase because the previous National Government were transferring more and more functions to the Teaching Council or to the Education Council as it was then known and expecting the profession to pay for those. They can try and rewrite history but the teaching profession remembers that and they know full well what they were facing under the last National Government. So this is very clear and the Supplementary Order Paper that I have tabled makes it even clearer that those leadership functions that the profession don't believe that they should pay for through their registration fees they will not pay for through their registration fees. If they are to sit with the council they will be paid by central government and that is appropriate. This bill gives the council the ability to go back and consult on a new set of fees. They will start that process again. The teaching profession will therefore have the opportunity to have their say on what the appropriate level of fees is.The Government's also doing some further work which will come through in subsequent bills to look at the overall costs that the council faces. There's no question that the changes made to the way the council undertakes its disciplinary functions—again changes made in 2015—have increased the overall cost structures and cost pressures on the council. Some of those costs are justified; some of them are not and so there will be further legislative change coming in that area to ensure that the teaching profession only pays the level of fees that are absolutely necessary to ensure that the council can perform its core statutory functions around registration around discipline and around those other specific processes that are so important to the self-regulating teaching profession that the Government is committed to and that I think the teaching profession itself also wants to see.So this is a good bill. It is a necessary bill. It is a bill of course we would prefer not to have to pass through the House but it does provide certainty to the council and to the profession about what can be charged for through fees. The fee-setting process can now start again. The profession can have their say on that and if the National Party wants to put forward a bill to reverse the changes they made in 2015 of course I'll look forward to seeing that.