Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak in opposition to the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill. There's a number of ironies to this bill which people have already alluded to but the irony for me is that this bill has come about because the Teaching Council didn't consult sufficiently with teachers. So what was the Government's response to that? Well they rushed through with only a handful of weeks for consultation for the poor teachers this bill during term time while most teachers were teaching remotely in lockdown conditions. So they were adding insult to injury in terms of the amount of consultation with the teaching profession.The Teaching Council is an important body and we recognise that it has an important role in regulating the teaching profession and in the certification of the teaching profession. But when they moved outside the scope that the teachers had given them into professional development that the teachers had not asked for and increased their fees because of that and moved to annual registration the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) felt forced to take this case to the High Court. The teachers were quite rightly incensed by this. They would have been very pleased that the High Court found in their favour and on five counts thought the Teaching Council had failed. They had failed as I said in their consultation with the teachers. They had failed to consider the merits of annual certification. They had misconstrued key elements of the statutory regime that they were operating under and their fees therefore amounted to unlawful taxes on the teachers.So the teachers could have at that stage expected: Right we've stood up we've been counted we've been heard it's going to be fixed." The Government had two options at that stage: they could have taken it on the chin and they could have funded the shortfall or they could have asked the council to do what most businesses have to do across this land and that is to cut their cloth to the budget that they have. But instead the Government decided to rewrite an Act of Parliament to change this. Now that's an amazing signal that this Government is giving to the teachers.There have been a number of people that have said there's some irony in having the National Party stand alongside the PPTA; actually I don't find any irony in that at all. I'm very comfortable standing beside our teachers. I've spent the last two decades working productively with the Tertiary Education Union and I know that when you walk alongside unions you may have different points of view on a number of things but actually you have a lot of similar aims and objectives. So this signal that this Government—this Labour Government—have given to their teachers is absolutely astonishing.I'd like to go back to what the teachers said. As my colleagues have noted there were 1033 submissions and 112 of those submitters asked to be heard and like my Green Party and ACT Party colleagues I didn't hear one teacher in support of this bill. So every MP on the Government side who has stood up and said how this is a wonderful positive bill and such a good thing for teachers must have been listening to different submissions than I heard because not one teacher agreed with this. They were incensed they were furious and they were angry and I think my Green Party colleague noted that he was surprised at the level of anger from the teachers.But they noted quite sensible things like they never asked the Teaching Council to expand into professional development. They want to do the professional development with their colleagues in the same discipline so the music teacher explained in her submission that her professional development is with the music teachers of New Zealand and the science teacher talked about how their professional development needs to be in the science field with their science colleagues. But we saw within the Teaching Council that actually what they were doing with an amount of their professional development was actually following indications from Government about some ideological changes that they wanted to see in the teaching profession. Now this is astonishing that then the Government has refused to pay for that given they were expanding the scope of what the Teaching Council was doing to cover their ideology—but they wouldn't pay for it.I think the teachers of New Zealand should be able to expect from their Minister that he would be interested in the big issues for their sector. A teacher could expect that their Minister would be worried about truancy levels which were horrendous even before COVID and are going to be a nightmare for schools and teachers and they will need support and resources to bring those truancy levels down. Teachers should be able to expect that the Minister would be absolutely focused on what is happening with our maths and our science in schools and how our levels are dropping against peer jurisdictions across the world. They should be able to expect that that's exactly what the Minister is focused on. They should be able to expect that this Minister is concerned about the resources and the equipment and the facilities that they have to teach our young people. But instead of these very big important issues for our education sector the Minister is fiddling while Rome burns by putting through bills like this to impose more costs on teachers.Now we shouldn't have been surprised when we saw the anger and the frustration from these teachers. No wonder they are angry when this is what their Minister is worried about: getting more costs on to our teachers taking away their ability to meaningfully be in consultation with the Teaching Council and with this Government. It is an insult to those teachers that the Government rushed this through at a time when teachers were absolutely pushing to the limit to look after young people remotely in lockdown and all the issues that they have to deal with with those young people—to push this through and expect them to make submissions at that time. Many of the submissions spoke to that and spoke to how angry they were about how the Government had treated them so arrogantly.So I can absolutely sympathise and understand and I'm happy to walk alongside the PPTA and other teaching unions because they are seeing—exactly as our ACT colleague has pointed out—that this Government does not support our teachers our teachers that have done amazing work over these last two years when students have been in lockdown. They have done amazing work trying to keep their home lives going while they are teaching and then they are being asked to put submissions in and go in front of select committees remotely to try and get heard by this Government that has purported to be the Government of the teachers. Well I think that façade is slipping very fast and teachers will understand that there is very little empathy and very little support coming from this Government for our teachers.So the National Party is standing in opposition to this education and training amendment bill. Thank you."