Baillie ChrisCHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of ACT to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I like to also thank all the submitters—almost 1200 submitters—who often submitted with a lot of passion and personal contributions. There were many parts to the bill covering all sorts of areas of the education system. And there were a number of the parts of the bill that ACT initially did oppose that have been clarified and improved.Looking at just a couple of parts of the bill that have been already mentioned the eligibility criteria of school board members all sounds good—if you are convicted of a specified offence you're ineligible to serve on a school board unless an exemption has been approved. That sounds pretty reasonable. There is a potential for abuse of that clause I think and we sort of have to ask whether we believe in rehabilitation or not but for the safety of the kids we certainly agree with that addition.The early childhood education equity index data which will enable the ministry to collect accurate information to make further recommendations sounds a great idea. Police vets for non-teaching employees and contractors—that just really makes sense; nothing can be more important than the safety of our kids. Certainly it's paramount and as long as common sense is used with that.There has been clarification around the accountability with changes to the wānanga and it's been explained a bit further this morning already. Well the structures and funding—both have been strengthened and are a bit more transparent. We think that all education facilities should be under the same umbrella and accountable to the taxpayers who fund them and we do still think that a number of the changes aren't necessary.I listened to the wānanga submitters and fully understand the reasons they gave for the changes that they supported and I think the advent of the wānanga was very well explained by Penny Simmonds earlier on. But the success of the wānanga is undeniable and if it ain't broke why fix it? They are a great entity and you just wonder whether all of these changes are necessary.Listening to a number of the submitters did also make me feel a little bit sad: the idea that young people are identified first by their race and then as individual people capable of doing what they want and being who they want to be sort of seems to come a distant second. I just think that's wrong. In my 22 years of classroom teaching coaching school sport taking school orchestras the idea of treating students differently because of their race never crossed my mind. And my 14 years of being a police officer with many of those years working in youth aid dealing with all sorts of young people and their whānau—the idea of treating those kids differently I find abhorrent and that may be laughable to those people across the other side. Culture is of course always important but it always has been and it's not just suddenly been invented by this Government and separatism we don't believe is the way forward; it'll only end in more divisiveness.But the reason we cannot support the bill is the proposed change to the school board election process and the clause that reads updating the criteria for co-opting and appointing board members to reflect today's school communities by adding the genders sexualities and sexes of the school's students and of the school community and disabled students at the school and the school's disability community." Once again we have the desire of this Government for more control over how a school is governed and it's just not right. The lack of trust in principals and boards of trustees is a common thread in most of this Government's thinking. ACT trusts principals and boards because they are the ones that know their community know the people they're dealing with. Submitters overwhelmingly rejected this proposed change and their concerns must be listened to. That's what happens in a democracy. The inclusion of this clause is unnecessary virtue-signalling and it's one we cannot support.The bill has some parts that are good some that are unnecessary and some that are controversial—certainly not scared of the controversial ones. There are many other things in education we should be working on and this is more about ideologies and agendas where we should be thinking about the kids we teach. This isn't best for our kids and we cannot support the bill."