Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you Madam Chair. I'll just respond to a few other issues that have been raised. With regard to the most recent contribution by Simeon Brown I have already spoken to that particular Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) SOP 96 and I don't intend to repeat myself on that. But in his earlier contribution he asked why representatives should not be elected at large. The bill makes it very clear that we're trying to get a representative balance of the teaching profession. That's what the Government's policy is designed to achieve and that's why it is structured in that way. That would not be assured through an at-large election process.Nicola Willis asked why elections should not be scrapped if turnout is low. Similar approaches could be tried in other areas where there is low turnout—for example local government where there is a persistently low turnout. I don't think that's a legitimate argument for scrapping local councils—because turnout is low. I'd like to see more people participating but the fact that the turnout is low is not necessarily a reason for scrapping an election. Nicola Willis also asked about speeding up applications. Well that's not relevant to the bill. I'm pleased to inform her that a new online services project by the council will certainly speed up the process of registrations.Erica Stanford argued that as long as people are competent then elections don't matter. Again the Government doesn't agree with that position. She did raise issues around why gender balance was not included in the criteria that a Minister would need to consider. The Government's already made commitments around gender balance across the Government in all of the appointments the Government makes and that is a commitment that has been opposed by the Opposition so I'm sure that they would be opposed to that being put into the legislation.Parmjeet Parmar raised that the Government—Andrew Bayly: Parmjeet who?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Parmjeet Parmar. Sorry have I got—I hope I haven't got that pronunciation wrong.Hon Member: Doctor.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Doctor—doctor—that the Government can't make laws based on—well she argued that we should make laws based on what a future Government might do that we should look into our crystal ball and decide what a future Government might do and make provision for it in legislation. I think that that would clearly be a nonsense. The remainder of the points that she was raising were largely relevant to the next education bill that the House will be debating.Nikki Kaye did ask some legitimate questions about future amendments that the Government might bring forward regarding the ability to issue a Government policy statement. That will be dealt with in a future bill and the House will have an opportunity to address that fully when that happens.Finally I'll just quickly run through the remaining amendments that have been tabled. Tabled amendment No. 17—I'm just going on the handwritten numbers in the corner there. It's already inherent in the overall nature of the council's legislative mandate that it needs to operate independently and therefore I don't see any need to support that amendment. No. 18—I'm not really sure that even the National Party would really support the idea that the Minister and the Government should have absolutely no ability to have any say over the activities of the council. I mean I think that completely contradicts what the National Party spent the last nine years trying to achieve so I have some difficulty in accepting the sincerity of that amendment. Tabled amendment No. 19 in the name of Andrew Bayly talks about once again concerns about the low turnout in elections and I would simply refer to the comment that I made in response to Nicola Willis.Finally tabled amendments Nos 15 and 16 are around the removal with just cause of somebody for neglect of duty or bringing the council into disrepute. I'm satisfied that the existing provisions in the bill are robust enough. Of course issues around neglect of duty or bringing the council into disrepute will be incredibly subjective and one of the things about elections is that there is an election process and if you create a subjective criteria that allows a Minister to override those elected results I think that you're somewhat contradicting the purpose of the overall intent of this legislation.