Mapp Wayne: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12149] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This is the title of the bill. It reads: “This Act is the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Act 2003.” In fact we know that this bill is being passed into law in 2004 more than 12 months after the board’s disestablishment. This is a wide-ranging debate under the new rules and I want to draw attention back directly to Part 2. Clause 5 states: “On the effective date—(a) the Board ceases to exist;” and the effective date is the date on which the bill comes into force. We have the extraordinary situation whereby the bill declares that the board ceases to exist at the time the bill becomes law but the board has already ceased to exist. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No it hasn’t. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: In practical terms it has ceased to exist and the Minister knows that. We are in the amazing situation whereby the Government months after the board has been disestablished wishes to address its constitutional errors retrospectively. They are taking the attitude—[ 
Interruption 
]—and the Minister in a cavalier kind of way through interjections—and are being completely indifferent callous and careless about the constitutional process that is occurring here. What would one wonders their former hero Sir Geoffrey Palmer think of this? Would he applaud that paragon of constitutionalism Trevor Mallard? I suspect that no he would not. Will this lead to a footnote in  
Bridled Power 
—the later version of  
Unbridled Power 
—to show that unfortunately even his former colleagues have not learnt basic constitutional lessons? 
National will vote against the bill on the principle that we are opposed to retrospective legislation—legislation that is intended to perfect errors. The reality is that there was a different way of doing this. The Government could have introduced legislation and passed it into law then gone about the disestablishment in a procedural sense. 
That brings us to the second objection to the bill in the first place. Unlike New Zealand First we are opposed to the centralisation of power into the ministry in order to obscure the way that the sector can interact. That reduces transparency and largely takes away the autonomous entity that was the direct conduit for the sector—in short its own board. It has been buried in the ministry. 
We had to listen to the extraordinary contribution earlier in the Committee stage by Dr Ogilvy who seemed to be of the view that that was inappropriate and wrong. Yet I would suggest that notwithstanding that United Future speech its members will be voting for the very thing that he spoke against. I know that the Deputy Prime Minister is looking puzzled. He is wondering whether he has United Future under control in the way that he would like to have. The reality is that it seems not. But on the votes I can assure him he has United Future members under control. They are his willing lapdogs on all issues even if in a mild kind of way they kick from time to time through their speeches. The reality is that they are willing cohorts of the Government in that process.