Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10564. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): That is a popular call on this side of the Chamber. I am sure my colleague Tracey Martin who was on the Education and Science Committee will have an excellent contribution to make after I complete mine.Carol Beaumont: And other colleagues on the select committee.GRANT ROBERTSON: Along with my colleagues behind me here—Megan Woods Carol Beaumont. Are you offended Iain?Iain Lees-Galloway: No.GRANT ROBERTSON: No no. OK.Hon Trevor Mallard: I’m offended.GRANT ROBERTSON: I will leave you out. I want to speak briefly on a couple of the clauses we are dealing with here both clause 1 and clause 3 of the Education Amendment Bill. I want to start with clause 3 which is “Principal Act”. I do think that on this occasion it is relevant to spend a little bit of time thinking about exactly what it means to be amending the principal Act the Education Act 1989 in the way that this bill does.I want to start right at the beginning of the Education Act at section 3 which is titled “Right to free primary and secondary education”. It is interesting the way the principal Act defines this because it actually starts off saying: “Right to free primary and secondary education—Except as provided in this Act or the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975 every person who is not an international student is entitled to free enrolment and free education at any State school …” and then it carries on around the ages. What this bill does is amend that by including a reference to partnership schools after State schools. I think that is really interesting because the Act says that privateschools are separate. We are going to take private schools out of this and they are going to have their own legislation to govern them. But what is being done tonight is a very fundamental change to the principal Act which is the Education Act under section 3. It is changing what is a very clear statement there. I am not certain but I am pretty sure that that language in the 1989 Act comes from the original Education Act—the 1877 one or whatever it was—that actually made clear what a State school was. So that is the fundamental change that has been made tonight.Hon Steven Joyce: Bit of a trainspotter Grant.GRANT ROBERTSON: We have separated out—well Mr Joyce has obviously got great commitment to education interjecting away over there. It took him a little while to get his zoology degree but that is all right. The Education Act is now being fundamentally changed. So where previously we have been clear that we are talking about State schools and the State’s role in providing the vast majority of the public education in this country this bill amends that principal Act and just drops in partnership schools as the Minister likes to call them or charter schools as most people refer to them.That is a fundamental change. It is hugely disappointing to me that for the vast majority of tonight we have had no debate from the Government side on this. I give the Minister of Education credit that during Part 2 of the debate when she was here she was able to discuss some matters around the Official Information Act which we disagreed on. But in the earlier part of the debate we did not hear from the Government about why it wanted to make this fundamental change to the principal Act that we are debating under clause 3 here. It is a fundamental change to the New Zealand education system. Cam Calder yelled out earlier on that it is only four schools or five schools out of 2000. Dr Calder we know that the agenda of the ACT Party that has driven this legislation is for the widespread privatisation of education. We know that. So it is ridiculous to say that it is only three schools or four schools. It is a fundamentally different model from what we have ever had in the New Zealand education system.Dr Cam Calder: So why should it be a problem if it sits outside the public sector?GRANT ROBERTSON: Dr Calder is missing the point here. That is exactly the point I am making. We have that in section 3. We have got the integrated-school model. We have heard from Iain Lees-Galloway tonight about the kinds of schools that are available under our current model. There is no need for this legislation within the New Zealand system in order to have the kind of innovative collaborative response that we all want in terms of education for our children. That is the point of highlighting the fact that the principal Act talks about State schools and provides for integrated schools and provides for private schools. Yet tonight right alongside State schools we just say: “Oh and those partnership schools.” which completely changes the way in which we think of public education in New Zealand. The Government members have barely even debated tonight on why that happens. The problem we have on this side of the Chamber is that the fundamental change is about an ideological experiment that is a result of a political stitch-up between National and the ACT Party and that has been foisted upon the children of New Zealand.The Minister said earlier that parents who enrol their children in these schools will be doing so by choice. Well that is fine. Maybe that is true. Maybe they will be enrolling them. The point is: are they absolutely clear about what these schools are about? Are they absolutely clear that they will not have the right to find out information that is held by the school? If I had been able to take a call on Part 2—and I will just refer to it very briefly—in the latter part of that I would have looked at a change to the Health Act that no one else has talked about tonight which is actually about adding partnership schools to those that have the ability to allow nurses to come—Tracey Martin: Another free service from taxpayers for private business.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is exactly right. It will allow private businesses to become part of a service where nurses go into schools. There are two parts to that. The first is exactly as Tracey Martin is pointing out that that is a publicly funded service that these private entities will be part of but secondly parents whose children are visited by the nurse will not necessarily be able to find out any information about that. So the principal Act is being fundamentally amended here.That brings me to the title. The title of this bill is the innocuous Education Amendment Bill. That is all it says. It sounds like we are just making a few tweaks here and there. There are so many other things that this bill could have been called. The Minister wants to call them partnership schools. I appreciate that the bill has other matters in it such as the search requirements that Mr Hipkins was talking about before but fundamentally this is about charter schools and other matters.Hon Steven Joyce: Compared to the member for public sector unions.GRANT ROBERTSON: Those charter schools—a random interjection from Steven Joyce. He roused himself—roused himself. It is a pity that he did not decide to take a call and actually stand up and justify to New Zealand why it is that a flawed model like this is being imposed on New Zealand because John Banks and the ACT Party decided that they want it. Instead Mr Joyce would rather just chip across the Chamber. He could stand up and tell us about his great commitment to public education which is not really in evidence with the funding that he has decided to divert to private tertiary establishments and away from the public system because that is what this agenda is about. This bill could very easily be called the “National Party’s Privatisation Agenda Bill”—Hon Steven Joyce: Oh what a load of rubbish. Grow up Grant.GRANT ROBERTSON: —because that is exactly what it is. That is what it is. Steven Joyce does not think it is. That is exactly what this agenda is about. He should actually listen to what the ACT Party has been saying because at least the ACT Party has been honest about its intentions for the education system. At least it has been honest and said: “We want to privatise education.” I have been on election platforms for two elections in a row now with ACT candidates who have been absolutely upfront about their agenda for education and that is privatisation. They simply do not believe that it is the responsibility of the State to provide that. National is sitting here tonight going along with this mad ideological experiment from John Banks and the ACT Party and it is happy to do that. That is the thin end of the wedge and National is happy to see it happen. National needs to take some ownership of this bill and make sure that its name appears in the title of it.I want to refer to two other matters that I believe should be in the title of the bill. The first of those is the question around the non-registration of teachers. The non-registration of teachers should be mentioned because that is one of the fundamental changes we have had here. The Ministry of Education officials who tried to advise the Government that actually having unregistered teachers would lower the quality of education were ignored by this Government. That should be mentioned in the title of this bill because going against the advice of the experts and going in favour of John Banks and his merry but very small band of ACT people defies belief. It defies belief that we would have a situation like that around educational policy and a significant matter of whether or not we think all the students in New Zealand deserve to have trained and registered teachers in front of them.Tonight the National Government makes a fundamental change to what we expect from a Government when it is talking about education. [Interruption] Mr Joyce is bored. Mr Joyce is bored with talking about whether or not it is important to have trainedteachers in front of classrooms. He does not care whether or not students are safe in their classrooms because that is the end point Mr Joyce. Mr Joyce does not care whether the students in charter schools are safe—Hon Steven Joyce: What about the Teachers Council eh?GRANT ROBERTSON: —because without registered teachers in front of classrooms they simply will not be. He interjects on and on. If only he would take a call and justify this because he cannot do that. All students in New Zealand deserve to have registered teachers. This bill is a sham.