Duncan Helen: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Duncan Helen: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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HELEN DUNCAN (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise and speak to this bill which I do think has a great deal of merit. It is important that we provide a really safe environment for the children in our schools. This Government has put in place police checks on staff in schools and that goes a long way towards covering most of the instances that could put children at risk. People employed around the school—contractors and those sorts of people—can also be subject to those checks if they work regularly at the school. However there is still the possibility of risk with regard to school trustees and I agree with Brian Donnelly that although it may be a reasonably remote possibility any possibility at all needs to be closed off because we cannot let that happen. In the environment of the elections for school trustees I think it is entirely possible that someone who is quite new to a community—his or her past history may not be known to the members of that community—could stand in the board of trustees elections and may possibly be elected simply because nobody knew about his or her past. In large urban areas people get elected on to boards of trustees and the people who elect them have very little knowledge about them except for what goes out in the curriculum vitae that accompanies their election nomination. 
I realise that there are some deficiencies in the bill as it has been presented. That is often the case with members’ bills because we do not have the same specialised knowledge that goes into Government bills. People draw them up and there needs to be a lot of work put into them. But I think the Education and Science Committee is a very good select committee. It is one of the hard-working committees and in all the time I have been on that committee—under the chairmanship of Tony Steel originally then of Liz Gordon and now of Brian Donnelly—I have thoroughly enjoyed being on the committee because its members always seem to have a real commitment to the principles of education. We work really well on legislation wherever it comes from. We do our best to work together. I know that sometimes Opposition members will say they actually disagree with a bill and are going to vote against it. But they will still have a constructive discussion about the legislation as it is going through the select committee so that we all arrive at the best possible outcome. I want to say that I do appreciate the work that all members of that committee put in— 
Lynne Pillay 
: I was there as well! 
HELEN DUNCAN 
: —and I would like to add my accolades to Lynne Pillay. I think that Brian Donnelly does a wonderful job of chairing the committee. Whatever flaws there are in this bill and I acknowledge that there are some I am sure that we will be able to correct them in the course of the select committee consideration of it. 
I did not have Brian Donnelly’s knowledge that Gerry Brownlee had forgotten what this bill was about but I say it is a very useful bill. I think it will add something to our education legislation. Whatever problems the bill has at the moment I am sure that the select committee will correct. If those corrections are made the bill will come back to the House in a form that will I hope enable it to be supported by everybody.