Bennett Paula: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett Paula: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19063. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 To my mind the best way to describe the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) is that it is the good the bad and the ugly and one starts with the good. The good in the bill has to be around the information-matching programme and the fact that we are finally getting to a stage where the Ministry of Education is talking to the Teachers Council. I have been on the Education and Science Committee for about 20 months now and I was absolutely astounded to hear that the Teachers Council teachers register was not in sync with the Ministry of Education’s register. That meant that teachers who were not registered were able to teach in schools and actually say that they were registered; when their registration was suspended obviously the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Council registers were not matching up. 
The good part of this bill has to be that finally after a long period of time changes are being made. Certainly in the time I was on the select committee I was astounded to hear from the officials that this sort of stuff was happening. The matter arose over a really serious issue: a teacher had been teaching in a school and there had been some inappropriate behaviour and it turned out that the teacher was not registered. But no one actually knew; none of the matching that was needed was going on. So if we were looking for the good in this bill then that would certainly be a small element of what we think is necessary and what we actually need to do. 
We then move to the bad—some of this stuff is just incredible. Really by reading this bill we are getting the sense that this is not currently happening in schools and that the only way the current Government has to make it happen is yet again to just legislate—legislate legislate and overlegislate. 
I want to give those who might be reading this debate later or listening to it a little example of what this bill proposes to do. The explanatory note states that the bill is “designed to improve accountability by—specifying the minimum steps that a school board of trustees must ensure are taken in situations of unexplained or unjustified student absence.” Are we saying that right now school boards of trustees and their principals are not stepping up when children are absent from school for an unexplained reason and are not doing something about it? Instead we should actually talk to those schools and identify where these pretty major problems are. If parents principals teachers and boards of trustees are not addressing truancy and problems with children being away we actually have more of an issue than a provision in this bill. The only way this Government has to address it is to put it in legislation and cross its fingers quite frankly. 
Anne Tolley 
: Put another rule in. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: It puts another piece of legislation in; it puts another law in place instead of actually addressing what is a very big problem and something that is critical. If it is not a critical part of the jobs of principals teachers and boards of trustees to make sure the children are at school then quite frankly this provision is just a waste of time. 
Another method listed in the explanatory note is: “amending the principal’s existing duty to ensure students get good guidance and counselling …”. Do we really need legislation to ensure that that sort of stuff is happening in our schools? We do not. 
Anne Tolley 
: What they need is the finance to do it. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: We need principals to have the resources and the finance to get on and do that job themselves. 
Let us talk a bit more about some of the bad things in this bill. The explanatory note talks about giving “the Minister the power to prescribe a date or range of possible dates for triennial elections:”. The Minister will get a little more Draconian deciding what is best for schools instead of schools and boards of trustees getting on and deciding what works for their communities and what works for them. I pick up on what the Maori Party was saying earlier about what is important to boards of trustees and what is important to schools—it is not about the dates and things; it is about how they are running and about the important stuff that is going on within them. 
It will not be a surprise to those who know of my interest in early childhood education that I certainly presume the ugly to be the stuff around police vetting. Let us not make light of it. Occasionally in certain circumstances some pretty ugly stuff is going on. If we thought for one moment that this legislation would curb some of the abuse of children that goes on then we would not waste an instant in stepping up to make sure it was happening. But this bill is not about that. This bill is about ill-thought-out and Draconian steps that will not take measures to ensure a child’s safety. 
The example that has been used in the cries I heard from the other side of the House earlier—and Mr Jones from New Zealand First raised it—is the safety of children and this issue was certainly raised around Playcentre. Let us think about this logically. I would like to think that maybe the Minister Chris Carter has not visited a Playcentre school and that is why he does not understand them. Actually the Minister likes to go on quite a lot about where he has visited who he has seen and how many schools he has been to. 
Anne Tolley 
: He doesn’t learn much! 
PAULA BENNETT 
: No and when one goes along afterwards and speaks to those schools one hears them say that he may have been there but he did not listen. This might be one of those cases where he did not listen. The bill talks about volunteers needing to be police-vetted but who are the volunteers in a playcentre? 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Parents. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Parents are the ones who volunteer in a playcentre. 
Allan Peachey 
: Mum and dad. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Mum and dad and often grandma and granddad are actually the ones who volunteer in playcentres. Under this legislation volunteers in all parent-led centres—such as kohanga reo some of our Pacific language centres and certainly Playcentre—will all have to be police-vetted. So parents who actually have their children with them pretty much 24/7 will now be considered a risk under this legislation and will be police-vetted. Not only is that not possible for playcentres because they do not have the resources and the funds but it is also off-putting for many volunteers to go through the process when a parent turns up to play with their child. 
Have we seen what actually goes on in a playcentre? More often than not when one goes in and speaks with a parent one sees that parent sitting in the sandpit and talking and playing with his or her own child. That parent will have to be police-vetted under this bill. I think the Labour Government is actually taking it far too lightly. We heard from New Zealand First the cries of outrage that all of a sudden we do not support police vetting but let us remember that police vetting is happening now. Police vetting is happening in our centres and in our services now. In fact from 2004 to 2006 35000 non-teacher police vettings were done—35000 police vettings were requested. 
Anne Tolley 
: And how many naughty people were found? 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Well only seven people out of the 35000 were actually identified as sensitive or with red stamps. That is seven out of 35000. Those seven were picked up by the current regulations around police vetting and by services and centres having the common sense to know what is best for their children because the parents know what is best for their children. 
Have members heard about National’s policy? Let us trumpet that. When we took on the 20 free hours’ early childhood education policy we said we trusted parents to make the best decisions for their children and as such we would bring Playcentre kohanga reo and parent-led services into the 20 free hours policy. Let us actually identify them as a quality option. Let us identify them and stand up and say that parents know what is best for their children and their families. There was not a peep from Labour. There were peeps on other stuff and there were squawks on other stuff around the policy but there was not a word from Labour members because they knew that this was what parents wanted. They knew that there would not be a big call to put us down for that one. 
Ideologically Labour stands against parents knowing what is best for their children and as a consequence it could not ideologically support Playcentre and parent-led services being counted in the 20 free hours policy. It was not about the money and it is not about the money. The Minister knows that—it is not about the money for Playcentre and kohanga reo. It is about being identified as a quality service. National will stand up proudly and say that we trust parents to make the best decisions for their children.