Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:9820. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 At the outset of my contribution I would like to beg the Chair’s indulgence for 30 seconds. This is the first time I have spoken in the Chamber since the passing away of Lady Raiha Mahuta. I add my condolences to the words that were expressed earlier in the week in Parliament. Certainly in the Waikato Lady Raiha has been a taonga for our area. Every time that people take a walk along the banks of the Waikato River in the future they will know that they have Lady Mahuta amongst others to thank for what we think will be the improving condition of our river. It certainly was an issue that she fought very hard for and I am so pleased that she was still with us to see the final conclusion and settlement of the Waikato River claim. 
I will move on to the purpose of my contribution to the debate this evening on the Education Amendment Bill. Labour supports this amendment bill. Labour members did not support it at the first reading because we had some significant concerns certainly about Part 1. Many of the areas that we had concerns about in Part 1 have been amended already. I know that we are seeking further amendments which my colleague Grant Robertson has brought forward in his name. I look forward to his contribution on the further amendments that we seek to Part 1. 
With regard to the select committee process I reflect on the words that the chair of the Education and Science Committee just offered to the Committee. I support him in saying that it was a process where all parties—because the Labour Party the National Party and the Green Party are permanent members of that select committee— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: And ACT. 
SUE MORONEY 
: The ACT Party as well with Sir Roger who became very important in one of the major amendments that came through in this part of the bill which I will speak to later on in my contribution. 
We all applied ourselves to this bill because it is about the safety of our children. This bill deals with issues covering the vetting of the police records of people who have access to our children in the schoolyard and in early childhood education centres. It was an area that we all considered with a great deal of seriousness. It is true to say that although this bill and in particular Part 1 is modelled on amendments that were brought forward by Labour when in Government certainly the police-vetting parts of it have been watered down under the new Government. Labour members were concerned about that so we wanted to fully traverse those issues as submitters came before us in the select committee. I believe we arrived at a position where we felt some level of comfort but I really hope that the gap that is left which is not as strong as what Labour had proposed does not come back to haunt us. Labour certainly had much stronger legislation for the police vetting that we required for people who have access to our children. 
I turn to the issue in Part 1 of introducing information matching between the New Zealand Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education to identify individuals teaching in schools without being registered. I think the timing is quite interesting on this point. At the point in time when the select committee was deliberating on that issue and considering this bill and when submitters made their submissions on this bill the target of having a 100 percent rate of registered teaching staff in early childhood education centres was still in place. So I saw this feature of the bill as being very important for early childhood education in particular where we were going to be moving from an environment where not all staff were currently registered to a situation where the previous Labour Government had a target in place to have a 100 percent rate of qualified staff in early childhood education centres by the year 2012. 
As followers of debates in this House will know the Government recently ditched the commitment to have a 100 percent rate of fully qualified staff in early childhood education centres. Not only did it ditch the 100 percent target but it also ditched the 80 percent target that had been set for 2010.