Turei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10551. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Tēnā koe e te Whare. I want to just follow on from Mr Mallard’s point because I think he raised some real concerns. It was great to hear in a bit more detail for the public’s knowledge the analysis as to how the impact of the provision in the Education Amendment Bill that prevents the Official Information Act from applying to charter schools really does play out. What I think I heard the Minister of Education say in her response was that in effect these charter schools will be able to establish for themselves the nature of their reporting that they will set their own process and procedures—Grant Robertson: No way.METIRIA TUREI: Well the Minister might want to take a call later to clarify it but she did say that they will decide essentially what and how they report on matters—[Interruption] That is right the confirmation is coming from this side of the Chamber. They will decide what and how they report. Any information that they choose not to report to the Ministry of Education is information that they will hold themselves and therefore it will not be open to any public scrutiny. The public are absolutely entitled to know what is happening with the money that is going to charter schools—what $19 million has been allocated in this Budget alone.Grant Robertson: Just the beginning.METIRIA TUREI: Just the beginning.So it is clear that not only does the Minister expect us to believe that the contracts that the ministry will have with these schools will be genuinely open and transparent—itcertainly has not been the case till now—but somehow we are expected to trust the cowboys who will be riding in to set up charter schools to make a private profit and to accept that they should be trusted with their own self-reporting and their own information and the holding of it. So it does beg the question—I agree with Mr Mallard—of why it is that this Government is so obsessed with hiding information about these charter schools. Why was it prepared to make this major constitutional breach that we heard about from Beverley Wakem in the Education and Science Committee of not having these entities which obtain public funding scrutinised through the Official Information Act? I think that the only real excuse that we can take out of this is that this Government wants to hide the financial information. Not only can it—Hon Trevor Mallard: Well no. I think they’re not confident about the results—I think they’re not confident about the results and they want to hide that too.METIRIA TUREI: Mr Mallard has another thesis. My thesis is that following on from John Banks and his obvious failures around disclosing financial information—Grant Robertson: Not good with transparency.METIRIA TUREI: —and transparency he is ensuring that these charter schools will not have to disclose financial information. Do not forget that these schools will be getting bulk funding in large part for their property and for other services. They will be getting money to provide for special-needs children but they will not be required to report if they choose not to on how that money is being used. That is just another example of that.John Banks himself has failed as we know. He cannot even fill out his own electoral finance forms accurately after standing for local government. This is a man who does not know how to fill out his own forms as required by the law. So you know he has an interest in keeping the information secret—does he not—on those donations that he received and the financial information that he received from his local government campaign.Chris Hipkins: That’s it. I’ve just got another 5-minute speech coming.METIRIA TUREI: Yes that is right and he is the only one who is in trouble for not filling out his own electoral and finance information forms accurately. He is the only one who has been held to account for trying to hide donations and financial information and he wants to make sure that charter schools have that same opportunity to keep their financial information secret just like he has been able to—well at least just like he has tried to do because of course John Banks was not quite as clever as the rest of the public and yes we have yet to see what the court thinks of this business.I think that is a major part of this deliberate intention to hide from the public gaze information that the school will hold about what it is doing. If that school does not report fully its financial information to the Government and Hekia Parata requires us to trust its contractual arrangements—well we have seen that fail before. Novopay might be one of those examples. We are expected to trust the contract but that just simply will not work. The schools can hide this financial information not make it available to the public not make it available to the parents of the kids who are affected by it and therefore will be able to hide the extent to which they are making a profit. I think that is where it comes down to too. At the end of the day this is only about setting up an institution that can suck money out of the public purse. That is the ultimate purpose behind this. There is no other—