Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It's a pleasure to speak to this bill the Education (Pastoral Care) Amendment Bill and I want to acknowledge the Minister of Education for bringing this bill to the House—a bill that the National Party will support to select committee. The circumstances that create this bill are tragic and we extend our condolences to the affected family as well. Now this bill is substantially the same as that previously enacted under a National Government the Education (Pastoral Care of International Students) Code of Practice 2016. A large part of it is a copy-paste which is fine. The international student code effectively did four things. It established the code of practice for pastoral care for international students. It set an expectation that education providers would take reasonable steps to protect the safety of students and to enable a good student journey experience. Thirdly it introduced the contract disputes resolution process—that contract including the accommodation contract between students and the provider. Fourthly it established a code administrator who monitors the compliance of the code and who in this instance is NZQA. So these features are carried across from that code but what this bill adds is the accommodation component. The two parts to that that this bill adds that interest me particularly are the code administrator being able to enter student accommodation to monitor the code of practice—and many of the criterion and restrictions around that are similar to the requirements for a landlord under the Residential Tenancies Act. The second thing I think that the code administrator can do under this Act which is useful is that they can inquire about student safety from students while they're in the institution and clearly that will be important also. Now I mentioned the Residential Tenancies Act and as we've heard student accommodation under section 5B of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 is exempted from the other provisions. We've heard the explanation why and indeed looking back it was quite an interesting discovery through various pieces of legislation and discussion as to why that was. The conclusion that we came to—or that was stated on the record anyway—was that to be exempt from section 5B of the Residential Tenancies Act the premise must be used exclusively to accommodate tertiary students it must provide a dispute relation process and importantly here is the pastoral care part that allowed the exemption: in order to meet the requirements of section 5B accommodation providers must also supply services to student tenants over and above the services otherwise required under the Act. That's the pastoral care part; that was the expectation for the exemption. And the fourth expectation was accommodation providers must additionally establish house rules that meet certain criteria. I think at the time—2010—Te Ururoa Flavell spoke to it just to add some clarity as to what this exemption was about and he said The bill also introduces provisions to better protect tertiary student tenants in student accommodation". This bill therefore provides a better level of protection for tertiary students staying in student accommodation. So that's the section 5B exemption from the Residential Tenancies Act. So carryover from the 2016 international students code of practice we bolt on a couple of requirements that we want to particularly focus on for accommodation and then I think another part that's also being carried in the media is the offences and penalties for lack of compliance with the code of practice and the figure of up to $100000 dollars. Look I think that's something that can be discussed by select committee. There's some sort of surprise at the number and we can validate the number but that's why we have a select committee; they can talk to that. And let's be clear the violation of the code is for serious harm or the death of a student. Serious harm is qualified as "seriously and detrimentally affecting the safety or well-being of the student including … physical injury or illness [requiring more than just first aid] hospitalisation or medical psychological or psychiatric intervention". Now some of those may need to be tightened up and again the select committee can do the work on that. So a couple of things there—there's the $100000 figure well validated and are those still the best criterion—and we'll pass that to select committee.Now this bill establishes a code of practice for domestic students. So we'll have a code of practice for international students code of practice for domestic students and you know it's not inconceivable—indeed there's been some writing—that there'll be a code of practice maybe for children. I think we should reflect on whether there is this necessity for these three codes of practice or more than one code of practice. Part of the argument being made is that the international code of practice has a requirement for the providers to actually sign on to the code of practice. They are signatory providers whereas under this code the domestic code of practice is by default. If you're a tertiary education organisation providing accommodation by default you'll be applicable to that. We just have to think for a minute whether there's still the value in having these two codes just so that one can be signatory. Again the select committee can look at that. Now we share some of the concerns that Treasury have noted in their Cabinet paper. They've expressed concerns and again this is due to the shortness of time so we understand that. But regardless they've expressed concerns that there's no risk impact analysis and that the paper may not adequately describe the scope and size of the problem or present options that may be the best. There's some interesting thinking around the duty of pastoral care to a small section of the community and that maybe this bill just addresses that when in fact maybe most students—the majority—may also need some reflection around pastoral care. There's a comment that costs need to be further addressed unintended consequences—could we set something up here that has such a compliance cost that providers will say "Oh that's just too hard. I'm just going to withdraw my accommodation."? The other unintended consequence that's being mentioned is could there be some cream-skimming—some risk analysis where providers say "High-maintenance student—I might be more likely to breach the code of practice with this student. I'll just quietly say no to them because I've got more students wanting accommodation than I can provide and make sure that I just bring in low-maintenance students that are never going to give me an issue under the code of practice." I think all of these can be well-thought-out through the select committee process. I think they are concerns to raise but that we can address them. I think nearly all of those arise just due to the compression of the time frame which we have. We were able to lobby and work with the Minister to extend the time frame from the three weeks it was to six weeks and push out the enactment from the end of November to the end of December. In collaboration with the Minister we've been able to effect this extension and we thank the Minister for doing this. I think this also sends a message: you know we'll fight door to door over the road but something as important as this we'll collaborate and help however we can. So I think with that we're broadly in support of this bill. We'll support it to select committee and we commend this bill to the House. Thank you."