Simmonds Penny; Brown SimeonPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): How many times is the Minister of Education going to amend this education Act? He made a complete hash of it when he did the vocational education review. He then had to amend it for the early childhood education and now he's having to amend it because the Teaching Council lost their High Court case under the Education and Training Act 1989 for trying to increase fees for practising certificate renewals. He could have taken a leaf out of Sir Michael Cullen's book who said We won. You lost. Suck it up!" But no he puts retrospective legislation in place. What does this Government do in their spare time? Do they sit around looking at where all our essential workers for the health and wellbeing of society are? SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I'm going to make two points to the member. The first of all is that this is a very narrow bill—very narrow. She will address this bill. It's a first reading; it's not a wide-ranging debate. You don't go on to other things. The second point: the member is reading her speech; she may not.PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you Mr Speaker. Here are the facts—and I will read those because it comes from the facts of the court case if I may Mr Speaker. So the Post Primary Teachers' Association took the case to the High Court and it was lost. The fees and the annual certification decisions were quashed at the beginning. They failed on five counts: they failed to consult they failed to properly consider the merits of the annual certification they misconstrued and misapplied key elements of the statutory regime and it amounted to an unlawful tax. So they lost on five counts. The Minister could have at that stage sucked it up paid the money and then gone on and thanked the teachers. The teachers who have done such an amazing job over lockdown: Zooming in with kids bringing kids back up to speed—and we know that's been really tough. We could have thanked them for dealing with all the non-teaching issues that kids have been bringing to them and caring for our young people guiding them through these really challenging times and we could have thanked them for doing a good job. But no instead the Government is bringing in retrospective legislation to keep the fees that they had to pay unlawfully. So that court ruling quite clearly said that it was unlawful for those fees to have been taken. Now clearly the Teaching Council does a really important job and clearly they now have a funding shortfall. But the Government has been prepared to spend money in lots of other areas: $785 million on an on-again and off-again walking and cycling bridge half a billion on the first year of health reforms $120 million on failed vocational education reforms—SPEAKER: Order! Order! I'm just going to say "ditto" and it's the second warning.PENNY SIMMONDS: —thank you Mr Speaker—$20 million to develop new phonics early-reading books for teachers with not one language but two languages that nobody else in the world has done. So plenty of money to spend on education and other matters when the Minister has chosen to but not to pay the amount the shortfall that is needed for the Teaching Council. So I felt the Minister has had to spend a lot of money on consultants with all the changes he has brought in and I felt that it was my duty to give him some free advice on this. The amendment bill should be dropped. It is a waste of time and money. The Minister should do a Sir Michael Cullen—suck it up and pay the gap—because the Teaching Council has important work.SPEAKER: Right. Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I have warned her twice about reading her speech. She has continued to read it. This speech is terminated. I want to make it clear that I made it very clear earlier in the year that members are not to read their speeches and while I don't spend as much time possibly as I should during readings of the bill in the Chamber it is something which I am adamant about. The Standing Orders were changed very deliberately and I intend to enforce the rules. PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Point of order Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: Does the member want to table the rest of her speech?PENNY SIMMONDS: I want to table my notes so you can see they're just notes. I'm happy to table them for you to see. SPEAKER: Well the member wants the leave of the House to table her notes. Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none. Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Point of order Mr Speaker. SPEAKER: A point of order Simeon Brown. I hope the member is not going to make a rare misstep.SIMEON BROWN: Well no. I mean it's a pretty unreasonable thing for you to be saying that someone's reading their speech when clearly they have just got notes which they're referring to as they give a speech. I mean how are you—SPEAKER: The member is now arguing with a ruling that I have made. I'm just saying that I've been around long enough to know or to at least make a judgment that when a person is constantly looking down then that member gives the appearance of reading. People who refer to notes generally don't have six or seven pages of them and turn over one—[Interruption] No no the member's been shifting notes around. She knows. Next speech."