Coddington Deborah: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13249] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 Once again we see why the Minister of Education the Hon Trevor Mallard is an absolute disgrace to education in this country. We stand to debate the report on the Teachers Council and because this Minister has repeatedly pushed unnecessary and superfluous legislation through the Education— 
Hon Bill English 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt my colleague but I just want to clarify the process. I was asked whether we would agree to take the education reports that are relevant to the Minister in the chair now and was told that Mr Mallard would be here later to debate the reports— 
Darren Hughes 
: No but— 
Hon Bill English 
: If that is the case then we were misled and that is a serious problem. I was advised that Mr Mallard would be in the Chamber later to deal with—[ 
Interruption 
] The whips had better clarify that because that is the agreement I signed up to. If that had not been the case I would not have agreed to it. We will have to change the course of this debate so that we know what is happening and all opportunities are available. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Can I suggest the two whips sort out the order of the debates. As Chairperson I cannot be expected to know that. If they could sort that out I would appreciate it. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: The Teachers Council is an absolute disgrace. It does not even report to the House—it is only by leave that we can even debate it. The Teachers Council has been in operation for 29 months in some form or another. It was set up as a push from the teacher unions to take over from the Teacher Registration Board because the teacher unions did not have representation. In those 29 months it has managed to breach the Public Finance Act; it has not issued a statement of intent so we cannot even measure how well it has done; and it has managed to issue only a draft code of ethics. We heard in an open session at the Education and Science Committee that the excuse was that it was still having teething problems. It spat out its director Margaret Kouvelis amid great secrecy. Then what did the Minister do? I think it is bizarre that he is not going to take a call to explain why every one of the entities in his portfolio—the Teachers Council Learning Media the New Zealand Qualifications Authority Career Services—is in total disarray and disorder. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not doing what it is meant to do. Learning Media is pouring money down the drain. It was once a profitable company but now is spending money hand over and fist. 
So what did the Minister do? On 1 July 2003 he appointed Joanna Beresford as the chair of the Teachers Council. The council was set up to provide a leadership role in the teaching profession and it has done nothing of the sort. How could the Minister of Education appoint as the chair of the council a person who had been working with the teacher unions since the 1980s a person who actually said: “We must actively promote trade unions as at the very core of a democratic and participatory society.”? Well someone tell the band to strike up the “Internationale” because that is nothing to do with promoting leadership in the teaching profession. 
It is a disgrace that we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money on this Teachers Council but we are in a worse state than we were before. What does the annual report state? Well as I said earlier one of the most important things it states is that the council had not complied with the Public Finance Act. It had breached that Act in that the audited financial statements were not available within 120 days after 30 June 2003. We are now almost into June 2004 and it still has not even brought them back to the House. How are the taxpayers the parents of children at schools around New Zealand expected to have confidence in what their children are being taught how they are being taught and whom they are being taught by when the Teachers Council—much-vaunted by the Hon Trevor Mallard when he was just in Opposition and who in an article I wrote for  
North and South 
 magazine hailed his vision of the new Teachers Council as something that would replace the Teacher Registration Board do away with all the nonsense being taught in colleges of education and make teacher registration compulsory—still does not even know although it is compulsory for teachers to be registered how many teachers are teaching in New Zealand? How can we know how many are not registered if we do not even know how many are teaching? 
What are we paying these people on the Teachers Council? We have four people who are paid over $100000 a year. As I have said it is a disgrace.