Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I'm sure I'm not the only member of the Education and Workforce Committee that was looking forward to reading the odd novel over the Christmas break but didn't quite envisage it would be this potboiler: the Education and Training Bill all 578 pages of it. Thank you Minister Hipkins. He's got a bit of previous here I might add too: we've got the massive State sector bill that he just put forward the other day the vocational training reforms and a number of other reforms that are coming through our select committee. I often think when I'm hearing about the non-delivery from this Government that you couldn't get a more reforming Minister of the education sector. Of course we're looking at overhauling the Education Act 1989—that seminal Act that brought in Tomorrow's Schools which really did revolutionise the way that education was governed and delivered.I would say just from my cursory reading of the bill and the feedback I've had from the task force and the initial report that the Minister has actually listened to a lot of the wider concerns there were around maybe some of the more radical parts of the reform and has listened and has pulled back from some of that. So he is to be commended.Of course there's the 1989 Act and some of that was the 1964 Act and there are parts of the State Sector Act of 1988 and the vocational training legislation of 1992. So there's a lot to tidy up in here and it has been noted. It's hard to see how it's simplified when it's 578 pages but apparently it's going to be simpler and more flexible. At least it'll be in one statute but it does take—one of the good things it'll probably do in terms of flexibility—some out of core policy or legislation and into regulations to add some flexibility.There are a number of issues. There's new licensing for early childhood education. Jo Luxton I'm sure will be able to tell us a bit about that with her background and there are new measures in respect of the Education Review Office to oversee home-schooling. Some of the stuff is around the NCEA qualifications and protecting the quality of those qualifications and how they're administered so that'll be worth looking through in the select committee just to see how that plays out.It'll be easier for teachers to re-enter the profession under that and I think this is an absolutely outstanding initiative because we have got a teacher shortage and we will have a number of previous teachers that would possibly like to re-enter the workforce. Of course they've had a significant wage rise after having a decade of stagnation and all of a sudden it'll be quite an appealing profession again for a number of those perhaps former teachers that would like to get back in. Any way we can remove the barrier to getting more teachers in front of our kids is great because we know that we had a shortage—I think we had a drop of 40 percent in the number of trainee teachers under the previous Government. So we've got a lot of catching up to do there. So this will be good—anything that can improve the pathway there—and of course the classrooms will be all sparkly and new with the new R & M funding that got announced the other day in that $1.2 billion of capital expenditure that Minister Hipkins has recently announced as well. There are new schools and new classrooms going up all around the country including actually at my children's school the Lawrence Area School which is getting quite a major rebuild.There's all sorts of other stuff as well around the election process. There's some stuff there in terms of if there is an invalidated election. It does streamline a process for the Government to appoint a commissioner. There was a bit of a grey area there apparently earlier where the only real method was to put the old board back in. So it makes it a bit easier to put a commissioner in.Religious studies—opt in. I think it'll be interesting to see when we get the submissions come through to the select committee that religious studies will now be an opt-in proposal as opposed to as it is now an opt-out. You know we have a much more diverse population now. We are not the statistics would say as heavily religious as previously and we're following different religions as well. So it'll be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out. I would expect the select committee to get a lot of feedback through that submission process.Tertiary and vocational—there's some stuff around the student loans and the interaction with the Ministry of Social Development. Again the select committee I guess will look at the sharing of that information and how that process works and whether that's an appropriate measure—if there's anything that can streamline that situation and make it a bit simpler for those students going to university to get their student loans.Governance—there's been a bit referenced a little bit around governance. There are some references to the Treaty being more appropriately recognised a minimum code of conduct for board members and a disputes resolution process. I actually think that's a really good one because they can be very very difficult. A small school like Lawrence would be a good example. The teachers and the principal all live in a very small community. Everyone's interacting with each other all the time and it can be quite hard to differentiate the personal and professional life and put another hat on. There are lots of other pressures. So I think a disputes panel of some sort would be quite handy. And you know we've got some social issues out there. There are students at schools who have got a lot of issues that they bring to school. I think that disputes resolution process and having an independent process is a very good one.The other thing I noted—and I think it will get some mention—is the discipline and the physical restraint and where that lies. As I said just previously not all kids at school are angels; they're troubled. The teachers often these days I believe are under a bit of threat and they do need to know where that line is and we do have to show them where that line is and decide where that is appropriate. I would imagine there'll be a lot of feedback on that through the select committee process.I go back actually to the days before Tomorrow's Schools—that's actually making me feel a bit old—when you got corporal punishment the strap. I don't think I was a bad kid but I did get the strap a few times. I did famously get the cane once and it was actually a travesty of justice. It was a travesty of justice. I was fiddling the screwdriver in an already countersunk hole and my woodwork teacher at the time who must have been giving us a bit of a final warning—I was marched outside and given the cane at Ellesmere College. That woodwork teacher rather famously was one Gerry Brownlee.Matt King: He reckons that's not true.MARK PATTERSON: I bet I remember it better than he does. I do remember it because he may be a halfway decent shadow Leader of the House but he was rat shit with the cane because the first strike was round the hamstrings and I think I can still feel it. I was going to reference that in my maiden speech but I thought I would keep it for another day and they do say that revenge is best served cold.So with that said this is a substantive piece of legislation. The select committee has got a task at hand wading through this and New Zealand First will look forward—and I will look forward to sitting on that select committee—to working through this very important piece of legislation. Thank you Madam Speaker.