Lee DeniseDENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I don't want to delay things too long unlike the previous speaker Chris Hipkins. I know that we're very much looking forward to the debate on my colleague Simeon Brown's Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill.First I just want to say that I'm very surprised that this bill has reached its third reading and will be passed no doubt in a few speeches' time. This is one of the Government's ballot-stuffing bills that wasn't quite good enough for the Minister to get through on the Government Order Paper. The few changes that it did propose back at the beginning were interesting to say the least and focused on the National Education and Learning Priorities statement.So it did things like—this is back at the beginning of this bill—replacing the phrase good social skills and the ability to form good relationships" with "strong social skills and the ability to form positive relationships with others".Erica Stanford: Revolutionary!DENISE LEE: Absolutely revolutionary! So the slight rewording of a couple of paragraphs that explain the objective of the education system is not in our opinion a valuable use of Parliament's time. We've had a massive workload as the Education and Workforce Committee this past year—quite unparalleled I think. We've had employment relations pay equity bills Accident Compensation Corporation. We've had two education amendment bills—scrapping national standards scrapping partnership schools scrapping communities of online learning. A massive workload. And the amount of time that we've had to dedicate to this bill which has been severely gutted over the course of the passage of it has meant that we're just not focusing on the important issues of the day.Every clause of substance in this bill that we started with has now been removed and we're left with what is essentially a skeleton situation. In fact the only things left in this bill—and it's interesting that the Minister referred to this—are clauses that enshrine union consultation. It's interesting that he asked the question about why we think these people shouldn't be consulted—that's not at all where we're coming from. They already should be consulted in current law. The current law requires the Minister to consult with any stakeholders they see necessary. What we object to is this specific listing and taking up Parliament's time when we've got other far more pressing matters that we need to discuss. Now I'll just repeat again: it's already in law that the Minister must consult with any stakeholders that they see necessary.I'll just contrast a couple of bills and then I'm going to finish up. The Government members' bills so far on education have been this one which has been gutted and removes all substance and the other is the Education (Protecting Teacher Title) Amendment Bill and what happened to that? Gone; removed; zipped; hey presto totally out of this Parliament. So that's all that we've been given from the other side when it comes to education members' bills.On this side: Erica Stanford's bill on replacing the decile system with a risk index—an incredibly detailed massive piece of work. And then now we've got Nikki Kaye introducing multiple languages to schools. Contrast their Government members' bills with ours and you can see what you make of that.Jan Tinetti the sponsor of this bill said in the Bay of Plenty Times that this bill will start to return mana to the teaching profession of New Zealand. I wonder if she still stands by that statement on the bill in its current form and I would say that the Government needs to learn a valuable lesson around being careful with what you stuff in the ballot box."