Maharey Steve: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Maharey Steve: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5241] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I thank Gerry Brownlee—the member in charge of the bill who has just sat down—for his kind introduction. I thought that Mr Brownlee being a schoolteacher would probably want us to go to our references first of all. He would say as he has probably done with his classes: “Before you take the test please read the question.” So I thought it might be important for us to go back to what the Education and Science Committee said in the light of his comments at the end of his speech where he said that the New Zealand First people were a species of dog and that his own people had somehow supported it. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s not true. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: He said they were poodles. What is a poodle? The member does not know species of dogs now? 
Gerry Brownlee 
: No no. The member would understand the analogious— 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: I think the member meant to say analogous. “Analogious” is not a word. As a university lecturer I know “analogous” is a word and “analogious” is not. 
I go back to the select committee report: “We are unanimous in our recommendation that this bill not proceed.” My understanding is that the word “unanimous” means everyone—everyone who was at the committee everyone who went along—which includes National Party members. They also voted against the bill. I will not spend my time being hard on the member because I know he wanted to do something productive for schools; I know that. He is a former schoolteacher and he is probably worried about the issue and thought it was a good idea. But the problem is that everyone came to the conclusion that it was a great idea in theory but it was a bad idea in practice. That is what I think it boils down to. 
There is no need for this. There is no need to introduce something that would not actually do anything. Aspiration fine—top marks for that! As for actual practicality it is not so good. So having this discussion here where everyone is labelled as a poodle or people are PC because they did not agree with the member means that his own members came to the same conclusion that everybody else did; it is OK as an aspiration but not a great idea for putting into our schools. So those are the comments that I think get to the heart of the matter. 
At the time of the first reading of the bill it was agreed by people across the House that it was a narrow bill and probably flawed. The member should not take too much umbrage at that. We all know that writing our own member’s bill is hard. I can imagine the member toiling away there at 12 o’clock at night hunched over his laptop saying to himself “Let me tap out the next part.” The task of writing this bill is analogous to quite hard work. We have to excuse it first of all in that it is a member’s bill. The member was doing his best—he had to tap it out on his laptop by himself late at night. That is hard work and it probably led to this bill being a bit narrow and a bit flawed. 
The bill seeks to “ensure that persons convicted of sex offences”—as listed in the bill—“against children or young persons are not eligible to stand for school boards of trustees.” The heart of the matter is that the Education and Science Committee concluded that it did not think that the bill as drafted would make anybody safer. The reason of course is that there are already a large number of rules in place in the Act that control people who have been convicted of offences with regard to getting on to school boards of trustees. As the current incumbent Minister of Education I have the right to remove people if I do not like them being on a board; if it is brought to my attention that they are the wrong kinds of people. The member needs to understand that his own National Party compatriots said that he had not added anything to what already goes on. 
Let me go back to the select committee report itself—because as I say Mr Brownlee as a former teacher knows that it is always important to go back to the text and look at what is in there. The report states that the School Trustees Association—made up of the tens of thousands of people across the country who are on the boards of our schools—was not satisfied that it would “contribute to the safety of students.” I think that is an important point. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Read the submissions. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Well they are summarised here. The report states: “The School Trustees Association told us that the bill did not contribute to the safety of students.” I know it is hard for the member to take when this bill is his own baby. He has put it together tapping on the old laptop late at night; he has been wanting to do something. But it is the view of the people who actually run the schools that this bill will not do the job. It will not make children safer than they already are. 
We also know that the bill could place on potential school trustees tighter restrictions than apply to applicants for employment as teachers even though in many schools trustees have little or no contact with students. Trustees of the board usually meet at a school at night-time when no one is there except other adults like them. Under this bill trustees would be more constrained than someone who is in the classroom with the children every day—day after day hour after hour. As a former teacher the member was in a classroom with kids so he will know what the vetting procedures are for teachers. They do have to be quite tight. This bill was going to introduce even tighter restrictions for people who were going to be on a board of trustees. 
The select committee report goes on to state in respect of qualifying offences: “The bill lists a number of sex offences conviction for which would lead to permanent ineligibility to be a trustee. We considered amending the bill so that the offences leading to permanent ineligibility to be a trustee would be either those listed as ‘relevant offences’ ”—under the relevant section of the Act—“or those listed as ‘specified offences’ … While the list of ‘relevant offences’ is more comprehensive some of those offences could be ‘clean-slated’ which would (at least to some extent) defeat the purpose of the bill. The list of ‘specified offences’ does not include some serious offences …”. 
So once again it is the lack of practicality that I think people were getting at. They were saying that they know it is hard—the member was up there typing late at night. He had spent the whole day trying to defend his party against corruption charges of policy for money and all those kinds of things. He took the brunt because the leader was not able to do that for himself so the member was up on his feet. It was hard work. It was tiring. Then he had to go home sit in his flat and tap out the bill himself so it is no wonder he forgot that there are not the right references in his bill to the kinds of things he was actually trying to prevent in the first place. 
Listed under the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act is a whole lot of material that cannot be watched by a person—an individual could be prosecuted for that—but because that offence is not listed in this bill that person could get on to a board. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Put it in there then. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Well let us come to that in a second. The report goes on to state: “The use of either list would require complicated cross-referencing by returning officers to determine the eligibility …” and that might lead to the kind of anomalous—the word “anomalous” is in there—results “particularly in relation to offences which could be ‘clean-slated’. To achieve its intention the bill would have to provide for the relevant provisions of the principal Act to override Section 21 of the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004 which requires that provisions of other enactments that refer to a person’s criminal record must be interpreted in a way that is consistent with this Act. We are advised that this would be unprecedented.” The member was not thinking small. He was determined to override section 21 of the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004. That has never been done before so I give him top marks for aspiration. 
Once again people were saying that they had traversed all legislative possibilities with serious intent but were unable to find provisions more satisfactory than those that exist. The provisions are already there so what are we doing passing this law? In relation to police vetting the Education and Science Committee stated in its report: “Candidates for election as trustees are not required to undergo police vetting. We considered adding such a requirement to the bill but were advised that this would place a strain on the vetting system. We believe that because each school is responsible for conducting its own election the information produced by such a requirement could be used inconsistently.” In other words there would once again be a practical problem. 
I think everybody in the House admires the member as someone who is a committed teacher and who works extremely hard on behalf of his party. He is one of the few who is able to give National a kind of warm caring concerned face against the harshness that is being projected by his party these days. I have to say that he is a kind of beacon of hope—a beacon of civilisation—who sits across on the Opposition benches. He is a kind of warm glow in the National Party against the cold backdrop of the other members who are so driven by the kinds of things that have come out today. Bob Clarkson would be another warm human individual and that is probably why he has popped down to support the member. 
Excepting all of that we have to say in the end that the committee was unanimous—to a person every single one of them—in its recommendation. The word “unanimous” is analogous to the word “universal” for example. Virtually everybody was agreed—the police the School Trustees Association the National Party and New Zealand First. Probably even the Exclusive Brethren would agree with the select committee I would imagine. They would say: “Good try.” In the end this bill is not workable so we will vote it down.