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:10556. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I will not take too long a call because I know that other colleagues are also very keen to continue the debate on Part 2. In an earlier contribution I made I sought an assurance from the Minister who was in the chair then the Hon Nikki Kaye as to whether or not school property in schools that hadbeen closed would be used by or provided to sponsors for use as charter schools. She gave a categorical assurance that no school property that was closed by this Minister or during this term of Government would be used for the purposes of a charter school. That was great. It was great to get that clarification.I have two further questions for this Minister in the chair the Minister of Education. The first is related to the issue that my colleague Tracey Martin has raised around the tracking numbers that are provided for in this Education Amendment Bill: the National Student Numbers and the information provided. What we have seen with previous legislation from Paula Bennett and the Ministry of Social Development is that the tracking numbers for 16 and 17-year-olds and the information that is gathered using those tracking numbers the National Student Numbers are being passed on directly to the Ministry of Social Development for its use. For what purpose we can only guess. But what is really concerning here with this bill before us today is that it provides for exactly that same process for very young children—for any child who has a National Student Number including young children in early childhood education in primary school and in secondary school who are much younger than 16 and 17-year-olds. So I would like to ask this Minister whether she too could clarify for the Committee what provisions there are in the law that prevent the sharing of that information about a young child who may or may not be in early childhood education with the Ministry of Social Development because what it does is provide a direct link that allows the Ministry of Social Development to punish parents on the basis of their educational decisions.We know that this Government is committed to punishing the families of very vulnerable children through its welfare reforms. We know that it has a particularly bad attitude towards sole parents and has identified them as being targets of very punitive rules. And now we have in this bill provisions that will allow for their children to be used against them by the provision of tracking information of information about their education through the National Student Numbers. Is there any protection for those families? We would like to know that Minister because that is a crucial part of this legislation that has not been made public—that families will be tracked and potentially not just those who are reliant on benefits frankly but maybe those getting Working for Families. Who knows? They are also in the public system getting some kind of public support. They too may be subject to some kind of punitive or other action depending on the decisions that they make about their children or even on how well their children might be doing at school.The second issue that I have for the Minister is whether given her assurance that all the financial information about these profit-making charter schools is going to be made public she can guarantee that not a single decision—that no information sought under the Official Information Act will be ruled out on the basis of commercial sensitivity. Can she guarantee that every single piece of financial information that this Minister and ministry will hold will be made available and that the commercial sensitivity rules that allow information to be kept secret will never be used for charter schools? If she can give us that guarantee well then that does provide us with a little bit of certainty at least that the information they have will be made available to the public. That would be a great way to give some indication of certainty to the public. If she does not give that guarantee it just goes to show again that there is a deliberate attempt here to keep financial information secret. So my question to the Minister for the purposes of the public and their right to know is whether she will guarantee that commercial sensitivity will never be used as an excuse to keep financial information about these charter schools from the public. I certainly hope that she is able to give that guarantee tonight.