Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm pleased to rise to take a call on the Education and Training Bill in its first reading which we are opposing as we have said on a number of occasions. Be we are reserving the right should this bill be tidied up in select committee to in fact support the bill because there are a number of things in the bill—I mean you would expect that with such a brick of a bill there are some things in there that we do support. I mean in essence it's a consolidation of a number of education Acts. It brings together early childhood primary and tertiary education into one single piece of legislation and there is merit in these ideas and we supports parts of the bill as you'd expect. But the bill also aims to implement some of the Government's response to the final report of the Tomorrow's Schools review by the independent task force into law. Now the Tomorrow's Schools task force had a number of very controversial recommendations. Nikki Kaye travelled the country. She talked to principals boards of trustees and chairs and she spoke to parents and she heard their feedback. She came to the East Coast Bays in fact and sat down with all my principals and chairs of boards of trustees. They gave their feedback loud and clear and we were able to put the kibosh on some of those very gnarly and backward-looking recommendations and they're off the table now—like the education hubs. But there were a number of proposed changes to boards of trustees' powers. Some of them again we managed to put the kibosh on because they were backward-looking but there are a few of those changes to boards of trustees' powers that have wound up seeping through and getting buried in this brick of a bill. I want to focus on zoning—like some of my colleagues have done today—with a particular emphasis on a case in my electorate. As has already been mentioned at present school boards are responsible for both developing and consulting on each enrolment scheme and under the Education Act 1989 the Secretary for Education can provide written notice to a school to say Hey there is some growth coming up." or "You're overcrowded at the moment and you need to change your enrolment zone." The board of trustees then have to go out and develop an enrolment scheme and undertake consultation in their area. So they gather evidence they undertake public meetings they do surveys and there's a formal consultation process. Now in the task force's opinion that we've read the board of trustees—in their opinion—jimmy things around to try and get better areas for their school they are not focused on the long term they're only focused on short-term trends and basically in a nutshell boards of trustees don't trust parents to know their own area because that's what it boils down to. In the local example of my primary school which is about to hit a thousand—by the by that's because the Minister has put on his wish list that there be a new school in Albany but he hasn't actually committed any funding or said it's going to go ahead. So it's just this sort of Santa list that might happen some day. So they're about to hit a thousand students and it had to change. They're having to go through a process of changing their enrolment zone—so I've been through this recently—and they've done a great job. The reason they've done such a great job is because that board of trustees made up of parents—local people—know their area. They know that the bit that the ministry wants to carve off on paper looks right. It's closer to another school which isn't full and that would make sense—you would take that bit out and you would put it over there. But there are so many local conditions that the ministry simply doesn't understand and in this case it was a cultural reason because there is one particular ethnicity that lives in that area that is very very much connected to the school that they're about to be kicked out of potentially.I do not believe these considerations will be taken into account by the ministry. It is this local knowledge that is so very important. I've been through this so many times with the ministry where they think they know where growth is happening but in fact it turns out to be completely wrong. I've got schools in my electorate with classrooms that are sitting empty and other schools that are begging for classrooms and can't get them because the ministry isn't able to account for growth properly. In this case the board of trustees knew exactly where the growth was. They knew and the ministry didn't even know where the new subdivision was about to go.The thing that I want to focus on though is that the Tomorrow's Schools report basically says "Look there's always a problem when the ministry and the school eventually come to a compromise over these zones and that's not good." Compromises aren't good. But remember "school" in this instance in this equation represents the community and their views so actually a compromise is a good thing.Now the regulatory impact statement says that they're trying to avoid this compromise which basically means—we can decipher this—that it's going to be the ministry's way or the highway. That's what it's going to be. It's not going to be about what the community what the teachers what the parents and what the local people want. I can tell you it's going to be the ministry's way. It's not going to be the highway because we know very well that this Government doesn't build roads. We back principals and parents over bureaucrats."