Tinetti Jan; Tolley AnneJAN TINETTI (Labour): I'm delighted to have the opportunity here to talk to Part 1 of the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Part 1 deals with clauses 4A and 5 through to 8 and I'm particularly interested in talking to this part. I've got a few points that I want to make and I do have a few questions that I would like to ask the Minister. This part of the bill is a really important part. It's not the tertiary part even though that's really important too but this is the term Other Matters". It deals with the international students and our care of international students and schools' management of the misconduct of these students. The reason I'm so passionate about this and have become so in the last few weeks is that I have been on the select committee—the Education and Workforce Committee—that took over this bill from the last Education and Science Committee in the 51st Parliament. It's well-known in this House that I've got a strong education background and have been a principal but one area that I had—up until I had taken and worked through this bill—very little knowledge of was international students. Some of the work that came from this bill—and because of the amendments that we're making through here—has actually surprised me and that's one of the reasons why I want to focus on this area and make sure that we get it right. We have this one opportunity now to make certain that we are not only protecting the students but protecting the schools as well. In the past schools have recognised the limitation of the Education Act 1989 and have created a second line of enrolment contract to supervise students' conduct in other areas. This was recommended by the Ministry of Education in guidelines that were set out in the code of practice. But incidents happened in schools where the students showed misconduct out of school time and their enrolment in schools was ended. Schools were then taken through to the High Court and at that point it was shown that just having the enrolment guidelines as related to the code of practice wasn't enough. So we have to therefore address that here at this level. It's really important that schools are able to maintain the responsibility for international students outside of schools but at the same time the code of practice is important to outline protections for international students. So my first question to the Minister relates to the code of practice in relationship to the definition of enrolment that we have put into this Act. With the changes through the bill I'm presuming that the code of practice will need reviewing and as the time frame of this bill coming into effect is quite tight what will the time frame be around reviewing the code of practice if that's the case? I believe that the code of practice is still a really really important part of this piece of legislation because the code of practice gives both the school and the international students surety around the fact that for the schools they can protect themselves around the misconduct of the student and for the student they've got due process in any issues that they may face. I guess another question that I have on that is that if that's the case and you've got students whose enrolment has been stopped is there going to be a pathway for those students to question the decisions made about their enrolment? So that is looking into what future pathways going forward will they have in those areas.When this part of the bill came before the select committee there were only two submissions that were made on it. One was from the Nurses Organisation but the other one was from the Schools International Education Business Association—or as I've already said in the House the acronym is SIEBA. Now SIEBA works on behalf of those schools and is supporting the schools in those situations. SIEBA questioned why there wasn't a definition of the enrolment contract in the Education Act—which was why this was amended going forward to put that definition into the Education Act. So I do have another question for the Minister going forward here because SIEBA said that it wasn't just important to deal with the misconduct of students outside of school; the changes were also needed to support schools with their decision to return students if they found out that there were non-disclosed conditions when those students turned up at the school. Now one thing that was a surprise to me was that those non-disclosed conditions are actually quite common or as they said not uncommon. Often that was made because parents back in the home country were scared that if they did disclose those conditions those students wouldn't be accepted for enrolment. So SIEBA believed that the changes needed to be made to support the schools' decision to return those students to their home countries as well if those non-disclosed conditions were found out. I guess my question here is: does this definition of enrolment contract that we're putting into this Act ensure that schools have that ability as well going forward? On that the last question that I have on this is on the distinction between the international students living here with their parents and international students living with a host family and just ensuring that we have that covered in the Act. Being someone that has had many—I think I counted five international students myself over the years. So having been a host mum to five international students there is quite a big distinction even though the same conditions exist for those students when they are in enrolment in schools and I'm wanting to make sure that this is dealing with the students who don't have their parents here and are not living with their parents. We're actually looking at the distinctions there for the overseas students living with host families. I think that's about it that I have on that particular clause so I'll be interested to hear what the Minister has to say around those. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call Erica Stanford—no sorry. I beg your pardon. I should know my own—Denise Lee."