Hipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10561. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Can I just clarify that we are debating clauses 1 2 and 3 together—or are you debating them separately? Can I just clarify that?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): It is all together.CHRIS HIPKINS: It is all being debated together?The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It is all together.CHRIS HIPKINS: You called only clause 1.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry. I actually said clauses 1 to 3 and then I called clause 1 but in reality of course it is clauses 1 to 3 but there are three separate votes.CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you Mr Chair.Hon Trevor Mallard: Can we have three separate debates?CHRIS HIPKINS: I would be very happy to have three separate debates on this. What I do want to talk about is the commencement clause of this legislation which is clause 2 in this particular piece of legislation the Education Amendment Bill.Grant Robertson: Your favourite topic.CHRIS HIPKINS: It is one of my favourite topics Mr Robertson but I am not going to talk today about the meaning of the Royal assent. I am actually going to talk about the reason why clause 28 comes into force some time after the rest of the legislation comes into force because when these clauses should come into effect was actually an issue that was debated quite significantly and considerably at the Education and Science Committee.Clause 28 in this legislation deals with the surrender and retention of property and searches. That is not a topic that we have canvassed significantly in this debate but I can assure the Committee and members of the public that it was canvassed extensively during the select committee process. The decision to amend the commencement so that this particular clause would come into force after the rest of the legislation was actually made after some quite considered discussion.To canvass what those discussions were at the select committee the main points that we were talking about relevant to the commencement were which parts of this should be covered by legislation and which parts should be covered by the guidelines that the Secretary for Education is to be tasked with putting in place. That was always going to be the very difficult balance that the committee had to reach because what we are dealing with here are issues to do with individual students’ rights—the rights of individual pupils. Quite a lot of the advice that we had was that the more specific the legislation the better because it gave schools certainty and it gave the Secretary for Education certainty and therefore the legislation should be as specific as possible. However other advice that we received said that we actually do need to allow some flexibility for those working in education to have quite a lot of say in how the rules around these provisions are going to be implemented.Where the committee got to was that the Secretary for Education is now going to be required to produce a set of very clear rules and guidance for schools on how these provisions will apply and what they are and are not allowed to do in terms of the surrender and retention of student property. So the reason that the committee got to for setting a later commencement date for this part of the legislation is that we need to allow the Secretary for Education time to develop all of those guidelines. The development of those guidelines should be a very considered and collaborative process.We as a committee were able to consider quite a wide range of advice. We did in fact and the significant changes made to this clause within the legislation reflect what I think was a very considered debate within the committee but also reflect the calibre of submissions we received on this. People thought about it very carefully and members thought very carefully about the changes that we wanted to make here. We did not think that the legislation as drafted provided sufficient power for schools to do what they have always done in terms of the surrender and retention of student property so we wanted changes to be made and we have made changes to that.However what we concluded in those debates was that we could never in legislation get it absolutely 100 percent right and some aspects of the rules around this will have to be determined by the Secretary for Education. The only way that they can do that is probably by getting in a room the people who are going to have knowledge and expertise. The sorts of people whom we are talking about—and obviously school leaders are critical—are school principals who deal with this issue every day; thepolice; and agencies that advocate for children and for the rights of children. That is going to take a bit of time.If we had gone with the original commencement date in this bill these new rules would have come into force probably within the next week or two when this bill is given the Royal assent. But that would be completely unacceptable because these new rules would be coming into force before firstly the rules that they require had been established and secondly schools had even actually had the time to get their heads around the changes that are being proposed. These are quite significant changes and they will have a big impact on what schools are and are not allowed to do in terms of the surrender and retention of an individual student’s property. It is controversial.We had conflicting advice some of which suggested that what we were looking at doing might infringe on the rights of individual children or students in the schools. That was something that the committee did not take lightly. But we ultimately recognised that schools have got a really difficult balance to reach here in weighing the rights of each individual student to their privacy and to have their personal property kept secure and the rights of all students and staff within a school to work in a safe and secure environment and in an environment that is free particularly of drugs and weapons.So a lot of the debate around this particular clause in the legislation centred on what schools should and should not be allowed to do with regard to those issues—for example drug dogs and whether schools should be allowed to bring drug dogs in as they have in the past to do what are effectively random searches of student property to see whether there are drugs within that property.Hon Trevor Mallard: Of course they should.CHRIS HIPKINS: Well Trevor Mallard says: “Of course they should.” But the select committee reached a point where it decided that schools should be allowed to bring drug dogs into schools to search student property but not to search students.Hon Trevor Mallard: Why?CHRIS HIPKINS: Trevor Mallard says: “Why?” and I am sure that he may well have a contribution to make on that.Hon Trevor Mallard: You know I’ve spent a lot of time on “stuffers and swallowers”.CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes. I do not want to get into that. I will just keep going. Trevor Mallard has thrown me right off my train of thought with that particular unhelpful contribution. I really do not think it would be helpful—[Interruption] That is right. We are talking about children here Trevor. The issue that we have is around the use of drug dogs. We had some advice from agencies like the police for example on what they do with regard to drug dogs. The police are going to be a critical agency to have input into how these rules and guidelines are developed.Coming back to the commencement clause I think it is important that the Committee understands why the commencement date for this part of the bill is different from the commencement date for the rest of the bill. It is because the rules are going to be quite difficult to put together. Issues around drug dogs and the appropriate use of drug dogs in schools are going to be very critical. The police certainly have engaged with these issues—and with schools I think—very constructively and carefully.There is probably a bigger issue than the police use of drug dogs. Of course the police have a lot of powers already to use drug dogs within schools because a school is no different from any other area where a police officer could use a drug dog. The bigger issue really is around the use of contractors and contractors’ drug dogs. There are of course a lot of safeguards in place around the use of police drug dogs so to some extent the select committee was less concerned about that because police drug dogs are governed by the Policing Act. There are a lot of safeguards in place so therefore therules that we put in place here—and we actually made specific mention of that in the bill—will not have any impact on the Policing Act. I think it was important that we were clear about that. But it will certainly have an impact on the use of drug dogs by contractors. That is probably where most of the schools are at at the moment. Most of the schools that do it are using contractors. If we introduced this provision immediately so that it came into effect within the next week or two they would be prevented from doing what they have been doing without really knowing what they were allowed to do. I think that is really important. What we do not want to do is pass new legislation that creates confusion and therefore creates if you like a window of opportunity for drugs and weapons to end up in our schools.Where we got to with the committee was that by bringing this part of the legislation into force on 1 January next year it will allow the Ministry of Education or the Secretary for Education time to develop some really robust guidelines in consultation with all of the people who are involved. But then there is also a bit of a professional development requirement I guess for schools because this information about what those rules and guidelines are going to be will need to be communicated to those schools. They will need to have a chance to understand it and of course the schools themselves will need an opportunity to adapt their individual policies.Achieving all of those things if you think about it even with this time frame that we have set 1 January 2014 is still quite ambitious. The Secretary for Education—knowing how efficient he is—I am sure has already started the development of these rules but there is going to have to be a consultation process. Assuming that it is a thorough consultation process we are looking at a couple of months for that. We are then looking at a period of time for those rules to be set and then for the schools to implement them and adjust their own guidelines. So 1 January for clause 28—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am going to call the honourable member Grant Robertson.