Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Firstly can I just start for those New Zealanders who are watching question time with the quite extraordinary statement that we just had by the Minister: if we ever have one"—in terms of a National Government. In terms of a Government that has been in power for 18 months—a year and a half—we already have a Minister saying there may never be another National Government. That is extraordinary arrogance and it represents in my view how far existing Ministers have got in terms of their egos and I would encourage all New Zealanders to replay that clip to understand the extraordinary arrogance.Now just in terms of the substance of what the Minister was actually talking about let's go to the issue of independence of the teaching profession. I'm not going to quote myself or my colleagues on this issue; I'm going to quote back to the Minister people who have hardly necessarily been seen as bastions of the centre-right. I'm going to quote for you the submissions by the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) and NZEI. Here we go: "There's a dangerous lack of specificity." "We've got low trust by this Government." "We've got the Government putting training wheels on the profession." So for the Minister to stand there and somehow assume that there's nothing going on here in terms of independence but have the PPTA and NZEI expressing extreme concern about the fact that he's put this other bill through that indicates there's going to be some high trust and independence and then to throw in something like this whereby there is excessive State control—and while I'm there can I just deal with the previous speech by Clare Curran where she indicated that I was somehow making stuff up when it comes to this bill.Well I'll tell you what I'm not making up. Here's what I'm not making up: I'm getting emails and texts from people at paid union meetings and the Minister's getting the same messages that I'm getting whereby they're saying "We're really disappointed with the many promises that Labour gave us not the least of which was around pay and workload but a whole lot of other broken promises." Then also the nerve of the party that said they were going to stand up for the profession and give independence and then they put through a bill that says "By the way we want to completely control you." So I'll tell you what: we're quite happy to stand in this House and repeat back to members the submissions by the PPTA of which they represent thousands and thousands of teachers whereby the PPTA said "Furthermore we believe that changing the Act undermines the Teaching Council's independent status." So those are the words of the PPTA not the National Party and so we won't take any lectures on this side of the House about what this bill is actually doing for the profession.The other issue that I do want to cover is this issue of cohort entry. I want to make it absolutely and very clear the reality is that it has been the case in New Zealand that many parents have wanted their children to start on their fifth birthday. The whole reason that we previously designed the cohort entry in the way that we did was to preserve that ability for those schools—and of course it is those schools that adopt cohort entry—to enable those parents to have the ability for their child to sit on that side of the ledger. We stand by that and we think that it is intense ideology in terms of what we've seen in this bill. I've acknowledged previously that there are some aspects that make sense but we do think that what this cuts to the heart of—and we see it in many other areas of Government policy at the moment—is backing working parents and enabling those parents to be able to do what's right for their families and trusting parents to make that decision.Just to make a brief comment in the last 37 seconds of my contribution although I think I might stand again we do certainly and we are putting up provisions around the independence of the council and I want to give you a bit of broader public policy on this. It is correct that National previously stood for a competency-based body for the Teaching Council. The Government obviously put through legislation that moved towards a model that was more about elected representatives. Again our major concern with this is that there are situations where the profession does want to stand up and have a different view from the Government. So the question that I have for the Minister is: what does it actually mean when we talk about "must have regard to"? We know that the bill has been improved in terms of having a statement to the House which gives greater transparency about that Government policy and exactly what this council must now do as a result of it but we do think it is reasonable—and that's why we've got a Supplementary Order Paper tabled here in the House today—to actually be very specific about where there may be a disagreement.That's important actually because the reality is whether it's in our Education Committee whether we're out in public meetings that we are having some pretty significant debates actually at the moment about the employment of teachers and principals and National's concern is not just about this bill; we're concerned about this bill combined with potentially some of the proposals that are up in terms of Tomorrow's Schools around the employment of the profession where you may have officials who in the future are able to tell teachers where to go where they're able to put principals on five-year contracts. What exactly does this legislation mean in the context of what could be very significant changes in the employment relationships of principals and teachers? I would love the Minister to give us a view on that because I think it does matter. It does matter in the broader picture if I'm a person who's about to turn up for teacher training and I want to know who my employer will be in the future and I'll also want to know whether I am going to be subject to a National or Labour Minister in the future around policy because that matters in terms of my autonomy. It matters in terms of potentially my integrity if I completely disagree with the policy of a future Government. So I think the Minister does need to explain how he would see potentially proposals that are on the table—you know it is an independent task force—around something like Tomorrow's Schools. What does this mean in the context of that?The other thing that I do want to acknowledge as well in committee is that there is a fear—and I think it was expressed pretty eloquently by NZEI and the PPTA. I think it was Paul Goulter who said "Look the concern is that this really does undermine the independence of the profession." So I guess this question is actually what does this mean if a Government comes out with policy—they have regard to it they disagree; you know they say "Actually look we don't agree with you that we now need to have all teachers having a postgraduate qualification." What actually will occur as a result of that? What we know as a result of this bill is there's going to be a report in Parliament. I think that there is real concern about this soft hand of the Government coming down on the profession. Look people are raising the irony of this Minister. Surely the Minister can understand this. I mean this was a Minister that spent many many speeches in Parliament rallying against my colleague the Hon Hekia Parata on issues of the independence of the profession. So I do have a legitimate question for the Minister: where did this come from—where did this come from? It wasn't in the Labour Party manifesto. He says "Look it wasn't in Jan Tinetti's bill because her bill came through prior to the election." Was this something that the Minister dreamed up or are there some reports that we're going to find at a later stage that indicate there was some big driver within the Public Service in the Ministry of Education—they're very very concerned about you know the Education Council now the Teaching Council going off and doing things that are contrary to Government policy. I think we do deserve to know that because this is a bill that is affecting tens of thousands of people.You know the final thing that I just want to end with is this stuff is real. At the moment you've got a situation and I know the Minister just stands up and tries to blame the previous National Government but what I can say to you is the emails that are coming into my in-box—we've got strikes coming down the line we've got people saying to me that they expected a lot more on pay and workload and now we have things like excessive control potentially of the profession. People are saying that they don't believe this is what they voted for with the phrase "Let's do this." They believe that actually it's time to potentially "Let's change this.""