Baillie ChrisCHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2). The purpose of the bill is to make amendments across a range of matters in the Act to give effect to new policy decisions and to make minor and technical changes. While they may seem minor and technical changes in the added Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) ACT believes there is enough to worry about for us and we will not be supporting the bill.There are a number of areas of change. I'll just go through a few. The Police vetting provisions—where the Education and Training Act is amended it's all non-teaching and unregistered employees of early childhood education (ECE) services and registered schools must be the subject of a vet before they start work instead of two weeks in which absolutely makes sense.The Teaching Council—we talked a bit about the Teaching Council over the last few months. It's been noted that matters of teaching conduct are taking too long to go through the disciplinary process. The aim is to strengthen the Teaching Council processes which makes sense as it is their core business; a lot of other stuff isn't. I know a matter that has been dragging on for over two years and this is unfair on the teacher involved and the family and it needs to be dealt with.On the surface of it the compulsory student services fees amendment sounds OK but when we read give Government more flexibility to regulate" we in ACT are justifiably nervous.The private training establishment changes are to enable the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to exercise discretion about whether to cancel the registration of a training establishment in relation to immigration breaches—seems a bit like overkill. Five cases 2018 to 2019 affecting a total of about 60 students. Were the cases intentional innocent mistakes or even incompetence from Immigration New Zealand? A lot of work needs to be done in that area. It seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.The bill extends the Education Review Office's (ERO) mandate to enable it to review professional learning and development. As an ex-teacher the mention of ERO makes me nervous and I'll be looking forward to finding out more detail about this change.Then we have the new sections around student accommodation where "a code administrator may authorise any person to do at any … time any 1 … of the following things"—and there are seven things: enter a premises get any person to produce documents remove documents inspect the training work and any related materials and talk with any person. It just seems very authoritarian and warrantless searches and privacy issues and possibly not justified.Then we come to SOP 118—that we got yesterday. We're concerned about this for a number of reasons and it seems to be another chapter in the agenda of the ECE area and we have every right to be cautious. If we look at new section 17(2) in the SOP when applying for a licence "The Minister may grant approval but before doing so must take into account—(a) a high-level assessment of the relevant attributes of the area to be served including (without limitation) the demography of the area the needs of the communities in the area the needs of the children in the area and the availability of licensed early childhood services in the area with different offerings (for example … te reo Māori);". There are a number of other lists but the last one is "(g) any other matter that the Minister considers is relevant to the application". This just seems to be giving huge subjective powers to the Minister.New section 17A—when applying for a licence a Minister may at any time impose new conditions on the approval or amend or revoke any existing conditions. New section 17B—when applying for a licence the Minister must specify an expiry date for the approval that is no more than two years after the date on which the approval is given. Anyone prepared to start up and do business in New Zealand in the current climate needs every help they get. They need certainty; this doesn't provide it.New section 17D—the Minister may issue statements relating to network of licensed early childhood services including "(1)(a) the Government's strategic priorities for the establishment of licensed early childhood services;". We had a taste of these priorities earlier in the year and we have reason to be concerned. I could go on but instead we'll wait until the select committee process to ask the questions that we believe need answering but until then we won't be supporting the bill. Thank you."