Hipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:815. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):If Hekia Parata was actually backing the teaching profession to win and was actually focused on raising the status of the profession then perhaps one way to start would be to give the teaching profession some degree of control over the professional body that is now going to regulate it and that it is going to be paying for. But no that is not what this Government is going to do. This Government so confident in its views on education and so confident that it knows better than the profession is going to take complete control of the regulation of the teaching profession. It would not do that to lawyers. It would not do that to accountants. It would not do that to doctors. It would not do that to any other profession but with teaching the Government seems to think it knows better than the profession itself. It is not going to have any democratic process for appointing the people who are going to be involved in the regulation of the teaching profession—none whatsoever.So arrogant is this Government that it seems to think that it can have complete control of the teaching profession and that that is not a problem. Here is a parallel. A few years ago when the then Labour Government was trying to regulate the real estate industry National members came down and filibustered for hours and hours complaining that real estate agents should have the right to elect representatives to their own governing body and now here National is saying that although real estate agents should have it and it was willing to delay the progress of legislation in the House for hours and hours to give that right to real estate agents it is not willing to give that right to every teacher in the country and that is wrong.If this Government really wants to raise the status of the teaching profession through the creation of a genuinely independent professional body for the teaching profession it could start by giving the profession some democratic control over who actually governs it but that is not what this bill does. That is not what this bill does at all. In fact it makes no reference to teachers or teaching in the name of the organisation. This organisation whose primary purpose is to regulate the teaching profession and to raise the status of teaching is not even allowed to mention teaching in its title. That shows the attitude of this Government when it comes to the teaching profession.Instead of a code of ethics an aspirational code of ethics for the teaching profession as we have now this Government is going to introduce a heavy-handed code of conduct—a heavy-handed code of conduct—because of course National knows best. National knows best when it comes to teaching. In fact I am surprised that all those National Ministers are not actually out there in classrooms every day teaching the kids themselves because they seem to think they know better about how kids learn than the people who are actually trained to do it and who actually devote their lives to educating the kids of this country.If this is really about raising the status of the teaching profession why is the Government seeking to deregulate parts of the teaching profession in the form of the changes that it is making to limited authorities to teach which in fact lower the entry standards for the teaching profession? They lower the entry standards for teaching. That is what this Government is doing. So much trust does this Government have in the teaching profession that it wants to audit 10 percent of all of the teacher registrations in a year. Is this going to be like a good appraisal? No. It is a paper-based audit. It is about: “Have they filled in the right forms?” and: “Have the right boxes been ticked?”.Oh this is going to be a huge paper-based exercise. Who is going to pay for that? Is it going to be the Government? No. Not one Government dollar is going to go into this massive bureaucracy that is going to be required to audit teacher registrations—to do paper-based audits of teacher registrations. No no. The teachers are going to have to pay for that themselves through the form of increased teacher registration fees and yet not one additional person is going to be sitting in a classroom working out whether that teacher is actually any good. It is a paper-based review. It is a shuffling exercise. Have the right boxes been ticked? But actually there is no guarantee that in fact the teachers are going to be any better as a result of that. It is a paper-based exercise that will result in an enormous increase in bureaucracy and it will not actually increase the quality of the teaching profession.If the new Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is supposed to provide leadership to the teaching profession why is it that the teaching profession is not allowed any say in who its leaders are going to be? What is it that this Government has against democracy? It certainly does not seem to think that the teaching profession should have any role in that process. Why is it that this body is going to be responsible now for the dissemination and the sharing of best practice within the teaching profession? What does the Ministry of Education do? What does the Education Review Office do? What do those thousands of people employed by the Public Service do if not share best practice? What do the colleges of education do if not share best practice? What does the New Zealand Council for Educational Research do if not share best practice? These are all Government-funded entities but instead the Government is going to transfer that responsibility to the teaching council—which of course is not allowed to be called the Teachers Council any more—that is paid for by the teaching profession.So basically we now get a form of user-pays professional development through the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand where teachers have to pay for it themselves as opposed to something that might be provided by oh you know their employer which happens to be the Government. Who will pay? It will be the teaching profession that ultimately ends up paying for this and yet it has no say over how this body is made up.The Government wilfully ignored the vast bulk of submissions to the select committee. The vast bulk of the submissions to the Education and Science Committee were near unanimous basically saying that this bill was opposed almost in its entirety. Very few submissions—there might have been half a dozen—Tracey Martin: 13.CHRIS HIPKINS: —13 were in favour compared with the hundreds and hundreds of submissions that we heard that were opposed to this bill and yet the Government said: “We’ve made a few minor technical amendments in response to public feedback.” No actually the Government largely ignored the feedback that it received from the teaching profession. Such is the high esteem in which it holds the people who are in classrooms educating kids that it is willing to just completely ignore the feedback from the teaching profession. That is of course what we expect to see from this Government.Of course it would not surprise me now if those who took the time to submit find themselves the victims of the vile smear machine that exists within the National Government because of course we know that as long as National is in Government when people put their heads above the parapet they will be absolutely smeared—Hon Steven Joyce: Yeah whatever.CHRIS HIPKINS: Steven Joyce the master of smear over there is interjecting when we know that he has got his fingerprints all over John Key’s vile smear machine which has been operating out of the Beehive. In fact it is not just on the ninth floor; it is on the seventh floor as well because that is where Steven Joyce’s office is located. That is where Chris Bishop used to work. He used to be part of the vile smear machine that exists within the National Government.We know that when teachers put their heads above the parapet and criticise Government policy the big clobbering stick that this Government has is going to come heading in their direction because this is a Government that does not like criticism. It is a Government that does not actually want to listen to the people of New Zealand. It pays democracy lip service but does not actually believe in the fundamental principles of democracy. If it did and if it was genuinely interested in raising the status of teaching in New Zealand it would ensure that New Zealand teachers actually had a chance to have a say over the governing body.Hon Hekia Parata: Five out of nine is a majority.CHRIS HIPKINS: Five out of five is what Hekia Parata says. Who picks the five out of five?Hon Hekia Parata: Five out of nine.CHRIS HIPKINS: Who picks the five out of nine?Hon Hekia Parata: The Minister makes the decision.CHRIS HIPKINS: The Minister makes the entire decision about who is going to be on the governing body of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. That is not called democracy. That is not democracy when one person hand-picks—hand-picks—the people who are going to be responsible. That is not democracy. That is the National Government’s definition of democracy but that is not what most New Zealanders would regard as a democratic process.So heavy-handed and arrogant is this Government that it seems to think that having Hekia Parata hand-picking the representatives—the nine people—who are going to be on this council is democracy. That is democracy apparently according to Hekia Parata. And if teachers do not like it they can write her a letter and suggest some people who might be on the council. Of course she can completely ignore that but oh gosh they get a say. They could write her a letter. But do you know what? When people write Hekia Parata a letter they get an automatic bounce-back that says: “I may or may not reply and I may or may not read your email.” That is what people get when they send anything to Hekia Parata and that is her solution to democracy. If they do not like the members on the council oh they can write her a letter which she may or may not read and may or may not reply to. That is democracy National Government - style. That is how arrogant and out of touch it has got.The Labour Party will be opposing this legislation because it is heavy-handed and because it does not raise the status of the teaching profession. In fact it belittles the teaching profession. It says to teachers in New Zealand that they cannot be trusted and that they need a heavy-handed National Government to tell them what is good for them. It says that the National Government thinks it knows better about what is good for educating kids than the people who are trained and who devote their lives to doing so. That is why we will be opposing it. We will be opposing it because it removes democratic representation from the governance bodies of tertiary councils in New Zealand. This is a bad bill. This is a bad bill and the Labour Party will be opposing it.