Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): Tēnā koe. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. I want to take a moment to respond to members opposite and remind the people at home that National values teachers—absolutely. We value teachers such that on the Education Council which we put together six of the appointed people on that body were in fact registered teachers because they had the competencies the skills and the diversity of experience to make for a strong governance body.The argument we have against this piece of legislation is that the changes are unnecessary they are costly and they will not advance the ability of this organisation to fulfil its core functions. In fact at no stage during this debate have we had a speaker stand up and really present to us a case for change. We have never really had a speaker say This is what the current Education Council's getting wrong. Here is the decision that it shouldn't have made. Here is the process that could be improved. Here is the egregious error that it's made." No there has been no such example because the reality is that there is no case for change but it does come with a cost: $700000 that members opposite are quite happy to throw at a name change.But the item I want to turn to in this contribution relates to this very issue of independence which is the word that's been bandied about by both the Minister of Education and others this evening claiming that somehow by having an elected process this body will become more independent. I would like to point out that in fact the elected process does open up this body to potential politicisation which could be dangerous to its underlying mission. The reason I say that is because we only need to look to history to see how many people actually have voted in these elections.Simeon Brown: How many?NICOLA WILLIS: So in—that's a very good question Simeon Brown. How many registered teachers are there who were eligible to vote last time? There were 100953. Now of that hundred thousand how many do you think voted?Stuart Smith: 70000.NICOLA WILLIS: Seventy thousand someone says. No you'll have to go lower. What do you think it would've been?Hon Member: 50000.NICOLA WILLIS: I'm sorry you'll have to go lower again. Only 13865 people actually voted 13.7 percent. So then I ask the Minister who sits in the chair tonight Chris Hipkins: in that context where such a small proportion of people have shown willingness to vote for these members who is it that we expect will be elected? Because I would venture a guess that the people that are most likely to be elected are those that have access to the resources of a nationwide body that's used to running campaigns and used to doing a bit of advocacy and has access to a broad spectrum of membership. I would suggest that the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) and NZEI may be able to influence that election process unduly. I would ask the Minister whether this is something he has considered and whether he has any concern about that or is this not an issue that is of concern to the Minister?As we sat on the Education and Workforce Committee we did have some members submit and members opposite will remember Mr Chris Abercrombie who suggested explicitly that the change he would like to see is that there be specific representation for the Post Primary Teachers' Association as the voice for secondary teachers. I want to be very clear that I recognise the role of the PPTA which has a function that is important in terms of advancing its own members but the purpose of this council should not just be about the interests of teachers; it needs to be about the interests of children and of young people and it needs to be about advancing the interests of education. So what we do not want to see is a politicisation of who is appointed to that body and that is why it is very important that these elections are if they going to happen in some way accountable to some sort of process.So I have proposed Supplementary Order Paper 101 which would mean that the rules for elections made by the Teaching Council under amended section 388—after each election those rules would have to be reviewed. So you'd have to see how the election actually had gone. What members actually supported or suppressed voter turnout? Were there efforts by people to actually get out to vote or to suppress the vote? Were the rules actually appropriately enforced and how did those rules operate in practice? Because if the Minister wants to stand on the high horse of democracy accountability and independence he had better be prepared to stand also on the horse that says that those things have been delivered by the process that this bill sets up. I would venture to this House that as it is currently formulated we are not going to see the vast majority of teachers voting; we are going to see only a small group. I would therefore venture that it is a very large claim to make to say that this will be a democratically elected body."