Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Mr Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak on this. Well my comments in a previous debate on this bill have been borne out by the Minister's speech. It took eight minutes before she mentioned the wānanga. My point is that the wānanga is not first and foremost in this legislation. The Minister has got a piece of legislation here that tidies up data sharing timing of school boards elections secondments to school boards police vetting of early childhood education (ECE)—but in the gallery we have people who came here to hear about the groundbreaking change for the wānanga. The importance of this for the wānanga has been completely undermined by sandwiching it in with other bits and pieces of legislation. It has been disrespectful and it has not enabled a full process to ensure that the implementation of this legislation for the wānanga can go ahead.I am delighted for the wānanga that they have had success in achieving Crown or non-Crown entities. But I am sure they are not delighted to be called category A wānanga" "category B wānanga" "category C wānanga"—they should have had the full concentration of this Government and of the ministry officials in getting this legislation right. The wānanga have been asked to compromise and they have done that graciously but they should not have been asked to make that compromise and I apologise to them that they have been sandwiched in with data sharing timing of school boards secondments to school boards ECE and police vetting. You should not have been put in that position. You should not have been pushed to the eighth minute of discussion in this.It is important that we recognise why this legislation needed to come into play. And again it's about the proud history of the three wānanga dating back to 1981. Each of the three wānanga have quite different historical evolution some by iwi: Te Wānanga o Raukawa in 1981 arose from their very strong iwi base. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa which I had the privilege of working alongside for over two decades: pan-iwi and it had a different history driven out of the passion and the innovation of Rongo Wetere and his family who again I make the point put not only finance into this but also put his time and his reputation and his family's efforts into this as well because of his concern about the number of young Māori that were being excluded from their schools. And so he started in Te Awamutu and it was a real privilege to see that wānanga go from about 1400 fulltime-equivalent students up to at one point over 3000 fulltime-equivalent students—bar none the biggest tertiary entity in this country. I know now they have settled down to around 19000 or 20000 but that is still a very large important entity in our tertiary education space and I recognise the solid leadership of my friend and colleague Nepia Winiata and his team with Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.Awanuiārangi had another slightly different proud history to it that was started by the very respected Tā Hirini Moko Mead who decided in the late 1980s that he should establish a wānanga and for six or seven years he and his passionate group of people pushed this concept and opened in Whakatāne with their very modest wānanga at that time their very modest campus—just a couple of transportable classrooms. But that campus today is a very beautiful campus with a very beautiful set of buildings and a very strong set of particularly post-graduate qualifications that enable people to flow through from a lower level of qualifications right through to post-graduate.To me the wānanga are the hub of developing and educating young Māori leaders of the future. And so I thank them for the work that they do in that space but I also thank them for their generosity of spirit in extending that out well beyond Māori. In our space in Southland we have worked in partnership with the wānanga to ensure that we have one of the highest uptakes per head of population of people learning te reo Māori and that is only because it was enabled by partnership. So I thank them for their generosity of spirit of taking it beyond young Māori but extending it to people of all ethnicities and all ages. So not only do the wānanga have a proud history but they also have a very important part to play in our society going forward and I thank them for their willingness to do that.I want to talk a little bit about the protected terms because again people may not understand how important it is not only to recognise the past and the history and the development and the evolution of the wānanga but also the need to protect the term "wānanga". So the polytechnics the universities have absolute protection of their term; nobody else no entities in this country can use those terms "university" or "polytechnic" but any entity that wants to can tack wānanga on to their title. So you will see a number of other organisations that put a translation into their title of wānanga; there is no protection whatsoever and so the three wānanga that are sitting here represented today have no protection of that term and it puts them out of kilter with the other players in the tertiary sector the polytechnics and the universities. And that is not acceptable and that is why we keep saying this legislation should have been solely focused on the wānanga and getting the legislation right to ensure the implementation is right.So we are opposing the legislation not because we oppose the ability for the wānanga to be Crown or non-Crown entities but because we oppose the secondment part for the boards of the schools and we oppose the fact that this legislation has required the wānanga to compromise and accept that they are not getting the full package that they should have in this legislation. So with that Mr Speaker I thank you for the opportunity."