Faafoi KrisKRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Let us forget the arguments about the merits or not of charter schools. That has already been well fleshed out within this debate. Let us look at the issue that this bill actually looks at. The question I want to ask both the ACT Party and the National Party is: what is wrong with sunlight? What is wrong with sunlight? Why is it that these two parties do not want that torch to shine on those charter schools which they set up over a cup of tea during the 2011 election? I do not think I have heard a decent answer. Melissa Lee in her contribution on this bill said that there already is accountability—that charter schools are accountable to a Minister and also that there is some accountability around an oversight board—but Melissa Lee forgets the ultimate accountability that we have in this Parliament and that is to the public. It is the public who put us here. It is the public who vote Governments in. Governments make decisions as to whether they establish charter schools. They are the ones that in their Budgets are putting money towards funding charter schools and yet with the ACT Party and the National Party charter schools seem to be exempt from scrutiny not by the Minister and by an oversight group but by the New Zealand public who do not have the ability to have a look into those organisations whereas they would with nearly any other Government-funded entity because the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act do not apply to this piece of legislation. We want to know why. Why does the ACT Party which wants this Government to be held accountable for every dollar that it spends—if you follow the logic of ACT it does not want any taxpayer money spent. So why does it not want to have the scrutiny of the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act applied to charter schools which are organisations that the ACT Party—Clayton Mitchell: It's not a party. You've got to have more than one person to have a party.KRIS FAAFOI: —I think it was more than a party of one at that stage—set up in its little sweetheart deal in the 2011 election?Hon Member: The tape.KRIS FAAFOI: I am not sure whether that level of detail was discussed when John Banks and John Key had that cup of tea. I do not recall it in the teapot tapes. They said other things during that negotiation—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will come back to the bill.KRIS FAAFOI: —and whether or not this level of scrutiny was mentioned in that discussion I do not know. From memory I do not recall it being part of the transcript. But why does the ACT Party which says that we should have open and honest Government not want to have open and honest governance and insight and that sunlight when it comes to charter schools? I do not know. I do not know. It is a mystery to me why someone like Mr Seymour who talks about his liberal values and who talks about making sure we have accountability when Government money is spent does not want to have this accountability for charter schools. It is a mystery because this goes against what I believe Mr Seymour's ideological bent is. I am not questioning—he is entitled to his beliefs. But in this case in a big way and in a fundamental way he is going against those beliefs by saying Well there is Government expenditure here but in this case we will not have any public scrutiny." Well on this side of the House we think having an organisation like a charter school which does get taxpayer money to operate does need more scrutiny than that of a Minister who has helped to set it up and an oversight board that may not have the ability to look at everything and it does need the scrutiny from those people who put us here. They are the people who trusted those guys on that side of the room to be in charge of the purse strings—to spend the money that they go out to work hard every day to earn and that they give and entrust to this House. I sound like David Seymour but why is it that Mr Seymour does not want any of those schools that his Government and his party set up to have the accountability of the Official Information Act? That is a rather large question which Mr Seymour has failed to answer during this debate. He has failed to answer it during this whole debate around charter schools and it is his Achilles heel when it comes to charter schools."