Shearer David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16345. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 It is extraordinary that that member Louise Upston cannot pass up the opportunity to put the boot into teachers. There is such an enormously long queue of people waiting to become teachers just to enjoy their 14 weeks’ holiday! I am sure that the teachers who are listening to the debate will be saying: “Oh goodness me! Not again. This National Government does not understand what we do and the importance of our role.” 
One really interesting point in the OECD report that came out in the last few days is that it put New Zealand very high on the educational ladder but behind Finland. The Finnish society values its teachers much much more than we do here in New Zealand. They are paid more they have better conditions there is a queue of people waiting to become teachers and schools choose from many more people who apply than are actually selected to be teachers. As a result needless to say no surprise Finland has a better-performing education system than we do. We could take a leaf out of Finland’s books in order to improve our education system. I think the member Louise Upston has got it dead wrong. 
As has been said Labour is not supporting this legislation but it does do a number of things in terms of tidying thing up. I have mentioned in an earlier speech that there are the good the bad and what I would describe as the ugly parts of this legislation. I think the ugly parts have been removed but there are some parts of the legislation that are not so good. 
As I said in the Committee stage I believe that the secondary-tertiary partnership option that has been selected is a good one. I think it provides more opportunities—particularly as it has been trialled in South Auckland—for Pasifika and Maori kids to go on to tertiary education. Many of those kids may not have performed so well in a secondary environment and this provision might provide a more amenable environment for them to be able to take on trades particularly in the industry and manufacturing sectors. 
The legislation also makes some changes to international students and their obligations towards institutions here in New Zealand. By notice the  
Gazette 
 sets the period during which international students on courses of 3 months’ duration or longer can withdraw from their course and receive a refund on their course fees. Basically that means that private training establishments will be able to retain more money and to recoup more money that has been sunk into recruiting an international student if the student pulls out of the course much earlier than he or she would have. It means that the students will face higher financial costs if they want to pull out of the course. That amount has not been reviewed since the early 1990s and I think it is overdue for change. It will mean that there will be a lot less of the waka-jumping that we have seen up until now and it will possibly also have the effect of deterring students from coming to New Zealand on the pretence of joining an educational institution and then leaving their course shortly after they arrive here and staying on in New Zealand. This is a tidying-up part of the legislation but I think it is a useful and good part of it. 
I turn to the aspect of private schools that both Mr Mallard and David Clendon have spoken about. I think it was 90 years ago that this legislation was last looked at. The Law Commission has made a number of recommendations and most of them are very sensible. Some of the recommendations have been taken up and others have not— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No good reasons given as to why not. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: I think the point I say to Mr Mallard is that many of the Law Commission’s recommendations were pretty sensible. I do think that the commission could have tightened up a lot of the regulations around private schools but that will not happen. Our disappointment on this side of the House is that there could have been a more rigorous examination of some of those recommendations and a fuller uptake of them in this legislation. 
I will also mention Labour’s position in terms of the enrolment scheme priorities. Again David Clendon and my colleague Trevor Mallard talked about this. I think what we will end up doing with this type of legislation if we are not careful is rewarding continuing privilege. I would like to think that all children have an equal opportunity to go to a school in their area rather than if their father or mother is on a board or their parents attended the school some time previously. I would like to think that we have a system whereby children are able to attend a school on the basis of merit and geography rather than on privilege. That is something that I believe pretty much all New Zealanders other than the ones who have attended schools of privilege would agree with as well. 
I spoke on the issue of limited-attendance centres in the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I thought this was an anomaly—and more than an anomaly. It could have ended up being something that we as members of Parliament would want very much to distance ourselves from. There was a lot of empty reasoning for why we could not put police checks into limited-attendance centres. I could not for the life of me understand that reasoning other than that it was bureaucratic and there was always some way around it. We have found a way around it. We will now have police checks for those people who are involved with creches gymnasiums and shopping centres etc. It means that the parents who bring their children into a shopping centre and decide to leave them in a creche for a couple of hours can have some confidence that the person working in the creche is not a paedophile. That was the real issue we were facing before this amendment was agreed to. It shocked me that we could not come to an agreement on that point because it was so obviously in the interests of both children and their parents that that should be the case. 
I do not think the provision gives 100 percent protection for kids—we are always going to have exceptions—but it goes some way along the road. I remember that in some of the submissions that we looked at there were recommendations for example that children should be able to be seen in creches that they are open and that if the person in charge of those children has to go to the bathroom for example there is some means by which they would be supervised. Also basic first-aid treatment should perhaps be available. I thought that was a pretty obvious feature that should be an obligation. We will not be arguing for that. We recognise that this is a lighter hand of regulation but I think the most important point is that making sure that the police checks are now mandatory is a real step forward. 
A number of speakers tonight have spoken on the fact that they believe that a lot of this legislation is unnecessary. If Paul Quinn wakes up he will recognise— 
Hon Simon Power 
: What is the member doing to assist him to wake up? 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Well I would like the camera to focus on Paul Quinn and his enthusiastic participation in this debate. I have to say that in some ways I am starting to miss Mr Quinn. I am starting to miss his random interjections those volcanic eruptions that happen from time to time—thoughtless and meaningless but nevertheless loud. I have not heard them for some time. A number of members who have contributed tonight have talked about the fact that this legislation is not addressing the real issues. I acknowledge RichiePoulton from Otago University in Dunedin who is head of the longitudinal study. He picked up the Frank Josef prize of 1 million Swiss francs in Zurich last week. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Mr Quinn can multitask. He does show he has a softer side.