Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Mr Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak to this motion. The reason I am speaking is because I want to urge the Associate Minister of Education to consider a later report-back date. That's for two reasons: one is the ability of the Education and Workforce Committee to use its financial scrutiny functions for this bill and the second is for its consultative functions and some assistance for the Minister in what will be a contentious piece of this legislation. Given that it is a closer report back one of the risks open here that the Government will be weighing out is its consultation responsibilities with Māori groups and so I'll speak to that in the second half of this contribution.But firstly to those financial scrutiny functions it's really important for the Education and Workforce Committee to actually have a longer extension date than would be normal because this is pretty unique in what this legislation would empower. You've got a use of a public asset here which has been public before and open to the scrutiny of something like the Office of the Auditor-General and subject to those provisions which apply to the use of public funds then moving into a system where it would not be subject to that level of scrutiny. So what's going to be really important here is for the Education and Workforce Committee to be able to not only hear from members of the public but also hear well-prepared work from the Public Service on what those new financial oversight arrangements should be because this is the use of public funds moving to private benefit. It is almost unique in the sense that only this select committee is going to perform those functions which makes sure those governance arrangements are appropriate for what had been sort of a public asset in public ownership.The questions that the select committee will need to consider—and it will need a proper briefing from the Office of the Auditor-General on this—are whether those financial oversight provisions which have been performed by the Public Service in the past should be performed by some other independent entity or should be performed in a way which is then publicly available and if so what checks and balances there are on that.They will also need to consider who the appropriate auditor is for a situation like this because we've already seen that the use of public funds by charter schools has been widely debated. That was one of the things we heard from the Minister. When the Minister provided his commentary on this motion which he had introduced just moments ago he said that the pilot had been successful. But you've also heard from the Hon Jan Tinetti that the average annual operating cost per student across all charter schools was over $18000 which was almost triple the average of the $6600 for public schools over the same—she was quoting there the researcher Dr Shannon Walsh. So what we see here is a select committee which will be presented with basically alternate facts about what the financial implications of this are and how that money has been spent in the past compared to now.The reason why I bring up the pilot and what the Minister said about that is actually the pilot presents the select committee with more financial information than it had in the past. It needs to scrutinise that information. That's the reason why we do pilots in the education and the health system: so that we have robust financial information in the first place which we can then make good governance decisions about. When the Minister brings up the fact that he has a pilot here and that he alleges that it is successful that select committee's job is then to go away and make sure for that Minister that he is correct about that. We need in this House to come back to the next reading of this bill in a way that we can be sure that actually the financial arrangements do have the right level of oversight and are as the Minister said being done in a way which has been successful in the past. That's really worthy of the House's time because this is quite a unique situation where we have public assets going into what will then be used for private benefit.We also have heard the New Zealand Institute Te Riu Roa say that the cost is up to $48000 for $121 per student annually which is more than six times the average funding for students in State schools. So the reason I bring that up is actually I would propose to the Minister that what would be useful here is to not only instruct the select committee to spend more time but to seek that further analysis by not only the Office of the Auditor-General but also by Treasury who are the only kind of policy shop that we have to be able to make these kinds of decisions so we're not using alternative facts.I then turn to the issue of consultation. The motion has been made to the Education and Workforce Committee—that is useful—but under the new Standing Orders provisions following the review in 2020 there are also provisions for that committee to work with other committees on particular parts of legislation and particular topics of inquiry. It would be really useful—and I urge the Minister to consider this—to ask for the Education and Workforce Committee to also work with the Māori Affairs Committee to consider this particular piece of consultation and to drill into the details here. If the Māori Affairs Committee is able to then consider what the Crown's duty of active protection is in working with Māori in the education sector then that would be a useful thing to be able to report back to the House.The duty also owed is one of consultation. As I said before this bill opens up some new risk for the Government—it's a new legal risk. If consultation isn't properly conducted with Māori interest groups there is a risk here that it will create ongoing litigation ongoing lack of trust between those people and the Crown. It's something that all members of this House should be interested in because as parliamentarians we really are stewards of the Crown's relationship there which is created by those principles of the Treaty and by obligations under the Treaty. So it would be useful for that Minister to consider the role of the Māori Affairs Committee here to consider the role that that bipartisan cross-partisan committee can play in our Parliament to open up space for what is essentially playing out the duty of good faith owed by the Crown here to Māori who want to participate in it.Those are the two points I have. I look forward to hearing from another Minister of the House about the reason why there is urgency required and another one of my colleagues then can speak to that point.