Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's great to be able to take a call on this the Education and Training Amendment Bill. A lot of these education bills they always have the words education" and "training" in them. So often I've got to kind of sift through to see what it's about—to remember what this one is about. I mean this would probably be more aptly called the "Fix-it-Up Bill" the "Sometimes You Don't Get it All in There So We Come Back to it a Bit Later Bill" which this is. But as I reflected on this bill I remembered my past contributions to this I reflected on that whakataukī: ko te manu e kai ana te miro nōna te ngahere. Engari ko te manu e kai ana te mātauranga nōna te ao. The manu that takes in the berries their domain is the forest but the manu that partakes of knowledge their domain is the world. Just continuing on with that narrative this bill is about what happens when you drop some of those berries. You drop some of those berries so you've actually got to go back into the forest and pick those berries up gather up that knowledge and put it into the kete put it into the statutory legislative kete and that's what we're doing here today as well. I would encourage us always that when we're weaving our legislation like the kete that we make sure that we get those harakeke connections a lot tighter you get those regulations tighter you get those clauses tighter so that the berries don't fall out. I hope everybody around the House this Christmas will be able to eat of the many bountiful berries the blueberries the strawberries and the raspberries with all our whānau this Christmas.Previous speakers have talked about the small minor technical changes that this bill will enable. There was a whole lot of massive changes that were made which this bill refers to. So these are just small technical changes. But getting through this bill means that we'll be able to focus on some of those bigger issues; those really big educational issues that our teachers are continuing to face particularly in the climate of the COVID crisis. I do want to mihi to our teachers who have been doing it tough. They've been carrying our tamariki teaching them through the COVID crisis through Zoom calls and with all the turbulence within this year as well holding that up. And everybody that knows teachers knows that they don't just do it for the money; they do it because they have a commitment to our tamariki they have a commitment to our whānau and they have a commitment to our communities. And I was reminded of this just recently when I met some teachers in the mighty metropolis of Palmerston North just last Friday as well—and I acknowledge the member for Palmerston North Mr Tangi Utikere who is a part of that most pristine profession the teaching profession and I can attest to his incredible efficiency in the teaching profession as well as a parent of one of his former students who will very soon—hopefully she's listening—graduate from university so that her father can have that university degree on his wall.Some of the issues that teachers were talking to me about was around the pressures that they feel around learning support—trying to get you know dedicated learning support coordinators into every school and early childhood centre because when you've got those pressures they exacerbate under these COVID conditions as well. So having that sort of support for our disabled children and tamariki with high needs is very very important looking at trying to find ways to expand the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme criteria and increase the funding available so that it's based on need rather than a fixed amount of funding available. Making that happen would be really really important; increasing dedicated teacher-aide funding in early childhood centres and schools—and I say that as a former teacher-aide; this is probably going back about 30 years. And I hadn't realised that what I was doing as I was talking with these other teachers was helping to support the main teacher to deal with lots of issues around the classroom. She'd give me little jobs and I'd go off and do them as the teacher-aide and while I was doing that she would be able to do some of the classroom management as well. So the importance of teacher-aides helping to manage the pressures in the classroom and finding ways to appropriately fund them is also really really important. Increasing the number of specialists psychologists physiotherapists and resource teachers—that stuff is all very important as well that helps to alleviate that pressure that a lot of our teachers are facing as well and also developing greater professional development pathways as well. Some of those professional development pathways lead some of us to Parliament as I was just talking about earlier in my speech.So this is a technical bill. It's one of those fix-up bills. The manu went into the forest grabbed as much berries but the manu took out of the forest too quickly left some berries behind and the manu had to go back and get those berries—get that legislative weave a lot tighter. And that's what this bill does. So the Greens support this bill. Tēnā koe."