Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm going to take this opportunity to correct the previous speaker the Hon Kelvin Davis in his characterisation of what I was saying during his speech. I certainly would not be disrespecting any of the three wānanga and I want to acknowledge Te Wānanga o Raukawa who are here today. I haven't had the pleasure of working with them but I certainly had the pleasure for two decades of working with Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and also Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. Both organisations I had extensive years of working with and I have nothing but admiration and respect for the work they are doing. I think back to my time working with Rongo Wetere and his start-up and working also with his family of Sue Cullen and Kingi and the amazing work that they did in establishing their wānanga. So I acknowledge and respect the incredible work that they have done over many years—Hon Kelvin Davis: So support this bill.PENNY SIMMONDS: I support the component of this bill regarding the wānanga and absolutely—Hon Kelvin Davis: But not the whole thing—you won't support the whole thing.PENNY SIMMONDS: —but I don't support the whole bill because it does not have the same depth of need that this component about the wānanga does. So absolutely the wānanga have been working with the ministry for some time to get this in place and I acknowledge that it is work that the three wānanga want to have in the legislation and I absolutely respect the work that they have done.Can I just also clarify that what I was trying to point out to the previous speaker was the damage that Te Pūkenga is doing to the three wānanga. The damage that is occurring is that they are moving into the space of the three wānanga and if he was speaking to the wānanga he would be aware of the concerns that they have. So it is certainly not the three wānanga; it is Te Pūkenga that I have enormous concerns about. So thank you Mr Speaker for giving me the opportunity to clarify that.The rest of this bill is bits and pieces. It is as my colleague Paul Goldsmith said fiddling while Rome burns. It is not addressing the real issues right across the education sector whether it is in the early childhood education (ECE) sector the compulsory sector or the tertiary sector. It is mind-boggling that this piece of legislation is what this House is consuming its time on when we have got real issues across all three sectors of education that should be being considered.So let's have a look at the ECE sector and at whether police-vets for non-teaching employees and contractors are necessary. Can I tell you from experience in an ECE sector that if your toilet is blocked you need a plumber; you don't need to wait for days to get a plumber police vetted to see if they can come in to unblock the toilet. Can I tell you there are a number of issues that the ECE sector is worried about: pay parity ratios and things like compliance with food costs and compliance that they have to spend money on every three years. They are not worried about whether their police vetting is done for their plumber or their electrician that they have to get in at speed; they are worried about the practicalities of being able to run an ECE centre at a cost with fees that parents can pay. So that's what they are worried about. Let's have a think about what school boards might be being kept awake about overnight. Are they worried about the sexuality of their board members? Well Marama Davidson might be—she might be worried about whether it's all cis white males. But I can tell you the things that are keeping board members awake at night are not that; they are whether they can get enough teachers and whether they have got a curriculum that supports their teachers. They are worried about what they are able to teach in their classrooms and thank goodness—thank goodness—the National Party has come up with a policy to be able to help them with that. So when you have a look at the other concerns in this piece of legislation about the tertiary sector do you really think the tertiary sector are tossing and turning all night worried about the terms of office for the board of Te Pūkenga?Shanan Halbert: Point of order Mr Speaker. I'm just concerned that the relevancy of the member's contribution today isn't actually relevant to the bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a question for the Chair and the Chair is following it very closely but thank you for your advice. Carry on. PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you Mr Speaker. So the terms of office for the Te Pūkenga Board there are so many issues: $200 million already spent; $63 million deficit projected for last year; heaven knows how much for this year another $330 million is going to be needed over the next four years and a leaked document that showed it was closer to $1 billion that would be needed over the next 10 years. So what is this piece of legislation concerned about? The terms of the office for the board members of Te Pūkenga. This entity Te Pūkenga has got a whole lot more to be worried about and this House has got a whole lot more it should be addressing around Te Pūkenga than the terms of office for its board members. How about starting to have a look at the number of redundancies that are being made the number of courses that are being cancelled or the number of campuses that are being considered for being closed? How about having a look at the real issues that are there concerning people in the tertiary sector?Let's go back to the police vetting of the ECE sector and let's go back to the appointments of the boards for the compulsory sector. Just how do you think boards are going to find out about the sexuality of the board and their school community? Are they going to go out and ask all parents what their sexuality is to make sure that they're represented on the board and then how are they going to store that documentation? Have you had a look at the concerns about privacy breaches of storing that information? So how about a bit of common sense and practicality around what the real issues are for these sectors and not some kind of made-up concerns that are sitting here in front of us today? How about some real concerns—some really meaty issues like the one that is being addressed for the wānanga? I acknowledge that is a very real and very useful part of this legislation. But for goodness' sake why in all the other areas that we are looking at—ECE compulsory sector and tertiary sector—are we fiddling round with silly little bits of changes to legislation and none of the very big issues of student achievement of students turning up to school or of a tertiary sector that is serving their students their staff and their industries? How about this House starts debating what are the real big issues in the education sector instead of wasting time and diverting attention into silly little bits like this that keep you nice and busy—keep you nice and busy—and detract from the issues of real concern? Let's talk about instead how we can have dropped out of the top 10 on all the areas that we should be concerned about: maths science English. How about showing some concern about that? That is where we will be facing social issues in the future and that's where our tertiary sector will be having to pick up the pieces with second-chance learning. Let's talk about some real education issues in this House.