Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look I want to take a call on this and I just want to comment on a number of things that the Minister Chris Hipkins has said. As I've said before in this House as much as possible we want to try and get cross-party agreement on areas that shouldn't be contentious. The reason that National members on this side will want to take a number of calls around this part is because the provisions while there aren't that many of them are hugely significant in the context of the accountability of our education system.Now I agree with the Minister in terms of what he's just outlined: it was National that put through the Education (Update) Amendment Bill 2017 to shift to this new framework around accountability. But let's just talk through some of the amendments. I do have a range of questions for the Minister and I'm glad that he's in the chair so that he can take a number of calls on them but again let's just remind ourselves what we're dealing with here. We're moving to a new reporting framework.So the first question that I have is around this amendment which is We're just going to shift out the transition from January 2019 to January 2020." Look I've been in this House; I've seen many pieces of legislation. People tend to pluck out January as the month. Now that may make sense in this context—we have a school year; many schools come back at the end of January or early February—but it would be good for this committee to know given that as much as possible we want to support amendments that make sense why it is that we need those additional 12 months. I know that we've had a bit of discussion in the Education and Workforce Committee but it would be good if he could talk to that.Then I guess one of the parts I am very supportive of and I'm sure my colleagues will have a number of things to say about it—I was swayed by the New Zealand School Trustees Association and can I acknowledge Lorraine Kerr—is just this issue of shifting from a four-year cycle to a three-year cycle. Again there were several submissions on that. On this side of the committee we think that does make sense but really the devil is in the detail. Again I just want to raise a couple of issues that were raised in select committee and by officials and it comes back to the process and particularly the powers of the sector. While that three-year cycle might make sense for schools in the normal course of their business of course in the select committee process many of us were sitting there and recognising that schools will be established outside that process.There will be multiple issues when you've got 2500 schools which will occur that mean that they may need to fall out of cycle. There is a provision in the bill that addresses that but it's not detailed in terms of the criteria that the secretary might need to take into account. We didn't have a whole lot of advice from my perspective around what those situations may be and it is really important because again we need to be thinking about those schools that could be in a vulnerable situation or in a situation whereby they've been established mid-cycle. There is a provision there. There's not a lot of detail around the exercise of the secretary's powers in this particular situation. I am interested in the Minister's view: has he had advice around how often we think that we may see something done mid-cycle?I think the other issue that I want to raise—which again has been dealt with in the amendments in this part—is this issue of effectively financial sign-off. We've gone from two board members to the board member and principal—and again I have huge respect for the many principals out across New Zealand. At an operational level I would love them to be spending less time on things like infrastructure and potentially financial issues so that the board could get on with their job but clearly there has been a shift as part of this legislation to go from two board members to a principal and a board member. So I think it is worthwhile for this committee to traverse that and I would love the Minister to stand up and take a call and talk us through that.I think the other thing that I did also want to raise is just around this issue of 2020 and the fact that effectively the strategic plan will become the charter at that point. I think that again the conversation that some of my colleagues and I have had has been around the shift—[Time expired]"