Shearer David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Shearer David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:15631] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 First of all I will say a few words on the cooperation that happened at the Education and Science Committee in respect of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). We have voiced some of our real opposition to the bill but at the select committee itself there was some reasoned and good discussion around the some of the issues. But ultimately they went to the Minister of Education and were turned down and I think that is very sad. I am pleased that the Minister Anne Tolley is in the House because in a minute I will talk about limited-attendance centres which are an appalling part of this legislation. 
This bill is a mixed bag. There is the good the bad and the downright ugly. I will go through a couple of the bill’s provisions that are reasonably good. One of them—some members have already spoken about this; Louise Upston talked about it as well—is the interface between secondary and tertiary. I am not 100 percent sure that this needed to be legislated for in the way that it was. Nevertheless it does provide some opportunities for kids particularly as they progress through secondary school and it helps them transition into tertiary education in a way that will help them and ensure that some them stay at school longer continue on to acquire more and better skills and therefore move into tertiary education. 
New Zealands needs perhaps more than anything else well trained and well-educated young people coming into the workforce to upskill it and this bill will help in that regard. I acknowledge Colin King’s mention of Stuart Middleton who was a former teacher of mine when I was in the seventh form and who is still going strong with passion and zeal at the Manukau Institute of Technology. 
The bill will enable the Minister to approve a board of trustees a registered private school a tertiary institution or an industry training organisation as a lead provider of a secondary-tertiary programme and then they can enter into a partnership or an agreement. The agreement or partnership is specified in the legislation. It will help 11 to 13-year-old students in particular to continue on. Some parts of this legislation are useful but it is basically housekeeping. There is a tightening up in the international education area. Growth in the international education sector happened largely under the Labour Government. It is now a $2 billion industry. It needs to be well legislated for in order to ensure as this bill does that there is no waka jumping between various institutions and that the international education arena maintains standards and stability. That is a useful tightening of the legislation and it needed to happen. 
Members have spoken about hereditary entitlements to attend schools. I am of the opinion that schools should be of excellent quality no matter where they are and that if an element of competition is introduced all that happens is the school that is most favoured—the best school of the day—gets bigger and bigger at the expense of the school down the road. As Mr Peachey knows that can reverse when there is a change in the economic status of a particular area. When that happens immediately people start flowing out of that school and into another school which then gets bigger and bigger and the first school is left with empty classrooms. It is inefficient in a State education system. What we have at the moment works. Although we do not necessarily agree with the provisions in this bill it not necessarily something that would cause us to oppose it. 
What causes us to oppose it more than anything else is the provision that brings in limited-attendance facilities. I will refer to two of best submissions the select committee had on this particular subject. Sue Moroney has mentioned the submission made by the Human Rights Commission. The submission mentions of course that the bill proposes to amend section 310(2) of the Education Act 1989 so that the limited-attendance centres would no longer be regulated as early childhood education centres. Labour does not have any problems with the education element of this but it does have a problem with the lack of safety and care for children. 
This is what the Human Rights Commission said: “The Commission understands there is doubt to as to whether staff in LACs would be required to undergo a police vetting check. We welcomed the Minister’s reassurance during the Bill’s First Reading that it was not the Bill’s intention to remove vetting and we strongly recommended that such checks remain mandatory”. That did not happen. The Human Rights Commission was warning us. We had solid evidence from the Human Rights Commission and the New Zealand Educational Institute which said more or less the same thing—that it was a cause for worry. 
Louise Upston mentioned that she is OK about it because she goes to a gym and her gym has a glass panel. There is no requirement in the legislation for children to be visible from a gym. There are lots of gyms and lots of shopping centres that do not have that facility. The person responsible for the children is not required to have a police check. Would that not be the first thing that we would want to do if we had someone looking after our children? Would we not like to know that that person is not a child abuser? I would like to know that. I would like to think that I could leave my children at a gym and not have to ask about that. I would like to think I would not have to ask whether the person who is looking after my child has been vetted and is OK to look after my child. 
Let us look at it another way. Why do we not have a sign outside all of these limited attendance centres saying: “Please note that the Government accepts no responsibility.”? Why do we not have a sign saying: “This person not been vetted for child abuse. This person does not necessarily have a first aid certificate. This person may leave children unattended while they go to the bathroom. This person does not necessarily have any qualifications or any knowledge about children and childcare.”? Let us have a sign outside every limited attendance centre saying that. 
This legislation is effectively saying that this Government accepts no responsibility. This bill is an appalling bill. It goes backwards. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to Louise Upston that it has nothing to do with over-regulation. That is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with over-regulation but it has everything to do with the safety of young people in this country. In a country that has some of the highest levels of child abuse in the world we are enabling child abusers to go into these sorts of centres and wreak havoc. I do not believe that Louise Upston actually wants that to happen but that is what this bill will do. That is what the Minister of Education is allowing to happen. 
When the first instance of child abuse happens I wonder what the Minister will say. It will be very interesting to hear what the Minister will say. She will say: “It is not my fault. It is the parents’ fault. They knew that nobody there knew how to look after children. The parents knew that nobody there was trained. The parents should have known that nobody there knew anything about first aid.” That is what will happen. 
As Mr Mallard said with this legislation we are opening the doors for child abusers and rapists to be in places like this and to abuse our children. I do not think it is good enough. It is kind of ironic that this Government has also brought in national standards—uselessly I would argue. My child’s report arrived the other day under the new national standards reporting facility. It is incomprehensible. I have no idea what it says compared with what it said a year ago—absolutely no idea. The Government is bullying schools to bring in national standards but it is completely leaving out the most important thing which is the safety of our children. It is absolutely appalling.