Martin Tracey; Borrows ChesterTRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): It will be no surprise to anybody in this Committee that New Zealand First stands to oppose this bill. I will tell you what is interesting; I will tell you what is surprising is the fact that it is obvious that the Government members have no intention of taking a call. I think it should be noted by the New Zealand public that the Government members have no intention of interacting with the Opposition around dialogue justifying the steps it is taking in this piece of legislation in any way shape or form. One might call it ignorance another might call it arrogance but that is something that should be noted by the New Zealand public—all the parents out there the children who are going to school the secondary school students and the sector itself. It would appear that the Government members have absolutely no intention of taking a call and justifying themselves in terms of this bill. With regard to Part 1 of this bill it does several things. First of all it enables the principal to manage more than one school. What is interesting is that a principal can if there is a combined board—and you have probably heard this already—actually work across at least two schools possibly three schools. I am not aware that it can only be the combination of two school boards of trustees. I am not aware that the legislation restricts it any way to just two school boards of trustees. So if you had communities of online learning (COOLs) in a cluster and they decided to amalgamate their boards of trustees it is already possible under the current legislation for the boards to agree that there could be one principal across all the boards. The Minister might like to correct me if I am wrong about the current legislation. However what this piece of legislation outlines is that it is changing the way that that can be done and in our view what that does is turn principals from being the leaders of education and learning inside secondary schools—with recognition that they are the leaders of that learning—into chief executive officers (CEOs). There is no way that the ministry was able to explain to us how the employment relationship would work in this instance. So it is not a combined board. We have got individual boards but we have got a principal who is contracted—and I think contracted" is a very important word—to several different boards. That is what this change to the legislation allows. That turns the principal into a self-contracting CEO. That removes the accountability from a single board it places it inside a contract and then each board will have to have a contract with that CEO. I have heard this before. I heard this in the digital literacy inquiry. I heard this 3 years ago when a gentleman came to present at the digital literacy inquiry and said there is no need for a principal to even be in the same country as the schools that they are "managing". He said it is quite feasible in the digital age for them to be in Australia and be the CEO of several schools. That gentleman did not get the relationship—and I am not going to hesitate to say that that Government does not get the relationship—of the principal to the community the link that the principal has between the teaching staff the support staff the students and the community and the vital link and the vital contribution that a principal inside that learning community makes. So that is the first thing that this bill does that we oppose. There are changes to school opening hours. Let us be clear: boards of trustees have been able to change school opening hours for 27 years—for 27 years—as long as they consult with their community and as long as they are open 2 hours either side of midday. There has been a change of a single word around that word "midday" which I find very interesting but boards of trustees have had the opportunity to change their opening hours in consultation with their community and Matakana School would be a perfect example of that. What this bill does however is it inserts another body inside the community that must be consulted and that is business. So what this does is it inserts a single entity inside the consultation bodies that must be talked to and that is business. That is very interesting to us. There was no explanation why business needed to be consulted. It has not had to be consulted for 27 years. No business has come to me and no school has gone to an extreme that has affected its employees and their ability to go to work but now this Government is saying that business must be consulted by boards of trustees as part of that organisation. The next thing the bill does is it enables tertiary institutions to sponsor partnership schools. I think that the most interesting thing about this is that every university that came to present on the second part of this bill said: "We are not interested. We are not interested in having a charter school. We don't want to know. We didn't ask for this." There was one tertiary provider that did and that was Mr Stuart Middleton from the Manukau Institute of Technology. So one institution—one gentleman—showed up to submit that this was a good idea. It is interesting. So where is this push that led to the Government finding that this is what was needed? If for example this was a tertiary provider that was able to provide a charter school—something like what happens in Finland where they are the trainers of teachers and parents know that it is a teaching school attached to a university—that might be another topic that might be innovation and that might be something that this Parliament could support but it is not. All this is doing is allowing a tertiary institution—and we know they are fighting for numbers at the moment. We know that their finances are under the gun because population-wise the number of students that are going to tertiary institutions is dropping.David Seymour: Oh there's a conspiracy around every corner.TRACEY MARTIN: They need another funding stream and Mr Seymour and the ACT Party have given them another funding stream. Not only will this Government allow them to stretch the number of students inside their tertiary institutions from 5-year-olds all the way to 100-year-olds or whatever; the taxpayer is going to fund every piece of property. The taxpayer is now going to fund every piece of property that that tertiary institution that becomes a sponsor of a charter school creates to deliver what is inside this bill. So that is the other reason. Partnership schools dual provision—David Seymour: What's the member been reading?TRACEY MARTIN: Here you go—boards of trustees can already do this now but they will not. Boards of trustees could already allow charter schools to come inside and use their technology rooms but they will not—they will not for many reasons. Mr Seymour will tell you it is because the unions have somehow blackmailed all the elected officials of the boards of trustees; I can tell you that is untrue. As the chairman of a board of trustees I have not had one single member of any union come to me and actually say: "We're going to walk out if you are going to discuss this." Let us talk about this. Charter schools do not come under the discipline process of State schools. There is only one form of complaint for charter schools and that is to the Ombudsman after a child has been removed from the school. [Interruption] The reason it is important Mr Bennett if you would like to be educated is that if a mainstream school—Carmel Sepuloni: Good luck with that.TRACEY MARTIN: I know. It was a long shot but you have got to try. If a mainstream school opens up its technology rooms to charter school students which is what this dual provision is the discipline process of the State school does not apply to the students of the charter school. If the charter school student causes some form of damage attack or assault—look it happens—there is no facility for the board of trustees of the State school to implement its discipline process over that student. They are a student of another organisation and that organisation does not have to follow the discipline process. There are reasons why State schools do not want charter school students in their technology rooms. The fact that the charter schools get the dollar to build the technology rooms do not do it and then want to go and use the ones that the State schools have built is one of the other reasons. In terms of the early childhood education services there were changes made at the Education and Science Committee and quite frankly although we are not that thrilled with home-based learning and the coverage of home-based learning at the moment the changes made were positive. With regard to Teach First NZ and the new category of teaching positions I have a Supplementary Order Paper—and I doubt very much whether Mr Chair is going to extend my call 1 minute longer. But seeing as the Government members are not taking calls I am sure that the Opposition is going to have lots of opportunities before Part 1 is voted on to discuss my Supplementary Order Paper 214 which would restrict Teach First NZ - style apprentices—because that is what they are; they are apprentices in front of our students—to secondary schools only which is how Teach First NZ has been operating under the current pilot. So I will leave it there Mr Chair because I have no doubt that although you are a fair man you are unlikely to give me another call. But I am hoping that my Opposition colleagues will stand. Maybe—just maybe—we will get a member of the Government to stand. Oh! It does not look like it—a signal from the other side there. But maybe just maybe at some stage the Government members might think that this is important enough to stand up—[Interruption] Mr Bennett stand up and show people you have not read this. Go on stand up and show the New Zealand public that you are sitting there merely to warm a seat because you do not know what it is that you are voting on. Kia ora.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Let us change the channel—Jenny Salesa."