Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you Madam Chair Williams. I just want to comment briefly on the Meetings of councils" clause clause 27 which the Hon Tracey Martin just mentioned because this is something that was discussed in the Education and Workforce Committee at great length and actually something that I spent a little bit of time on once I became the Minister familiarising myself with the rules around that. It seems to me that we've got two pieces of legislation. One is the Education Act which we're amending here and the other is the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act the LGOIM Act which have some conflicting provisions. I think at some point the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act also needs to be updated to reflect the fact that there's now a whole range of technology available to allow meetings to be conducted more efficiently for it to allow business to be conducted more efficiently and I'm not convinced that that Act is actually enabling enough to allow all those bodies that are subject to it to do the things that they could do.But anyway moving to the specific provisions that we're doing here we're basically bringing this Act into the 21st century by allowing meetings to take place through audio audiovisual or other electronic communication but there are some safeguards in place and those are that they can do so provided that each member who wishes to participate has access to technology that will allow them to do so—and that's very important—and a quorum of members can simultaneously communicate with each other throughout the meeting. So it's not removing the requirement for people to actually meet; it's just meaning they don't have to physically be in the same place.What the committee did stop short of was the written resolution alternative which would be that a meeting would not need to be convened in any way that a council could simply pass a resolution say via email for example in a written form without actually meeting. The general view and the advice that we received was that this would actually be in conflict with the requirement for meetings to be held in public for the public to be able to follow what was going on and therefore a closed-shop email loop for example to pass a resolution would not be in accordance with that. Now somebody—I can't remember who—then raised the question "Well what about a teleconference for example—is that open to the public? Or a video conference?" and the answer to that question is yes it does need to be. And the provisions in this bill make it very clear that that needs to be done in a way that is publicly transparent as well. So there isn't actually a conflict between removing the ability to pass a written resolution and still allowing a council to meet using digital meeting technology because the digital meeting technology would still have to allow for that public transparency.So the Minister of Local Government has been participating in this debate and I hope that at some point the relevant provisions in the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act will be updated because to some extent what we were trying to achieve here which was a more efficient and streamlined way for the councils of tertiary institutions to conduct their business is to some extent limited by our desire not to create inconsistencies between the two Acts. I think that that's something that in time I'm sure the Parliament will be wanting to address."