Martin TraceyTRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. New Zealand First will support this bill because in the interim between now and a New Zealand First majority - led Government that will not renew the charter school contracts we need to have some protection for these students.I want to take issue—and it is with great disappointment that I do so—that the chair of the Education and Science Committee believed what the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education said with regard to the fact that charter schools are more accountable than State schools and they quoted several things. They said it was because there are audited financial accounts. Every State school files an audited financial account every year. They said it was because they have quarterly reports. Every State school is required to file a quarterly roll return. They said it was because they have in their contracts an annual plan or key performance indicators (KPIs). Every State school has an annual plan with KPIs that must be publicly available to its parental body.It shocks me and disappoints me that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education and the chair of the Education and Science Committee do not know these things and that they stand and say these things at the same time as they denigrate the State system of this country. It is a shame and they should be ashamed that they stand in this House and speak of education when they know so little about it.With regard to why New Zealand First will support the overview of the Ombudsman and the application of the Official Information Act Mr Hipkins referred to the negotiations that took place in the last Parliament in the 50th Parliament when Nikki Kaye—no it was not. It was Cam Calder who was the chair of the Education and Science Committee when the Government had cocked up a—or stuffed up. I beg your pardon. The Government had stuffed up the search and seizure part of an education amendment bill and it required a majority vote to get the bill out of the House so that it did not have to do something like 53 Supplementary Order Papers to actually fix what was a complete stuff-up around those search and seizure regulations in the Education Act 1989.So I negotiated with Cam Calder supported by the other members of the Opposition and I was able to get section 158E which gave oversight of the Ombudsman around the discipline process for expulsion and exclusion. So at least parents if their children were excluded from a charter school—which is required supposedly to have an open-door policy like any State school—it could not push them out the back door.What we did not foresee of course was that the charter schools would not use the expulsion method they would not use the exclusion or expulsion method—they have decided to dissuade. Charter schools—at least two of them—have decided to dissuade parents when they come inside the front door to not stay inside their school. They have decided that it would be better to use methods that are abhorrent inside the State education system particularly for students who have high needs or special needs—the very students whom supposedly this was supposed to support. They have decided to put pressure on their parents to remove them.It might be that the State decides that that is voting with your feet but I can tell you that considering that those are taxpayers and it is their dollars that are funding these organisations that are using this method of dissuasion so that it cannot be recorded and the parents have no opportunity to complain to the Ombudsman—we cannot allow this to stand. If this bill fails can I suggest to the parents whom I am talking to who contact members of the Opposition—I suggest you go public if you have no other way. If this Government will not give you the opportunity to use the system that was put in place to protect you and to protect your children I suggest you go to the media.I suggest that Mr Seymour should be made to stand up in this House with a glossy brochure of one charter school and then have to hold up a newspaper article about another charter school that outlines how these parents are being treated because Mr Seymour refuses to give them an option by which to complain. Mr Seymour refuses to allow them to have the right to complain as they do inside a State system. We are not sure what Mr Seymour is afraid of but we know that Mr Seymour is afraid.