Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill tonight and what a mammoth piece of work it is so I do commend the Minister of Education for shepherding this bill through the House and the Education and Workforce Committee including the chair of the committee that I have recently joined Parmjeet Parmar who has the mammoth task of shepherding bills like this regularly—it's a busy committee. This bill as others have said updates two bills that have been repeatedly amended over 55 years and we're now seeing something comprehensive that addresses the education journey from early childhood education into primary school secondary school tertiary and vocational training all in one piece of legislation.At last count for me—and it might have changed slightly but it's 578 pages so it is a dense piece of legislation. I won't be addressing all of its parts but—Chris Bishop: Oh come on!GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Ha ha! We can all take our share right? I would like to start with the aspects of the bill that address early learning and that the provisions of this bill essentially strengthen the community-based needs and actually in-home early childhood education. But one of the things that the committee has come out with and changed the bill I believe to improve it vastly is to include that the needs of children must be added to the list of considerations that the Minister must take into account in applying this bill to licence applications and considerations. We know that much of our law is outdated in the sense that we don't have things like the rights and interests and wellbeing of children and young people be mandatory considerations as they must be because New Zealand is a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child one of the most universal binding and enforceable pieces of human rights law that I've had the pleasure and displeasure sometimes of working on outside of this House in my previous life in trying to set measures and to apply that aspect of human rights law for children and young people. It does require us in our law to take their interests into account when we make decisions that affect them. So it is really nice to see and a bit of a shock that it wasn't already one of the mandatory considerations but we're at least updating our law in that way for the really young people that partake in our education system.One of the things that the Minister touched on and I really welcome in this bill is the amendments and changes around the transitional attendance plans. Again I think we were all a little bit shocked to find that some of our most vulnerable or systemically marginalised of students were being actually pressured not to attend school for the full number of days that they have a right to attend and they were being in different ways excluded. So this bill provides for plans to be set out and agreed upon between principals whānau teachers and the Secretary for Education so that children and young people who wish to attend school in different numbers of days than what is provided for in an ordinary education can at least be part of that decision making and all of the different parties can hear from each other. That plan takes into account that young person's wellbeing but also the teachers and principals and others who've come together and we know that in terms of due process people feeling heard always makes for better decision-making and better acceptance of decisions better understanding of why things are happening and that was missing.Along those lines in terms of due process and what this bill addresses we've also got the dispute resolution scheme improvements. That actually was a really really big issue when I worked in child rights for the Children's Commissioner Human Rights Commission for YouthLaw—all of the different sector-based organisations that looked after the rights of children and young people in education who consistently and repeatedly fought for children and young people who had been excluded from education for various reasons having a right to be heard and having a right to appeal those decisions. Because we know that the decision to exclude a young person from education can be one of the most damning one of the most profound things that actually happens to a young person—a person—in their life. You know it can really affect the entire course of a person's life—our livelihoods our ability to find dignity in the world—and to not be heard for whānau not to be able to participate in that process or be heard or to have a right to appeal was incredibly damaging.I know from the other end of the human rights spectrum that in terms of youth justice vast numbers of young people that we see come through that end of our system have been excluded from school have undiagnosed—you know what's described as serious learning disabilities cognitive diversity and none of that has been able to be heard or processed through something like a transparent and in this case free of charge process where those decisions can be made with the children and young person and their whānau being involved. This includes the right to be orally heard—we know that legal language and having to put things in writing is really exclusionary in a lot of ways.One of the other things that we really welcome in terms of the Green Party is the clarity around the right to opt in to religious instruction in schools. Having lived under a theocracy and having had religious instruction imposed upon me and the trauma of my family in trying to overcome that I know that there is no place for enforced religious instruction in our public schools unless a child the young person and their family want to opt in to that knowingly and voluntarily. This bill clarifies that so it is a step in both modernising our education system and also upholding the rights our fundamental rights to not only freedom of religion but freedom from religion if that's what the families wish. So that's something.But I do want to also and lastly address the issue that the Hon Tracey Martin and the honourable Minister have both raised and that is that on this side of the House we have heard from teachers we've heard from parents and children and young people on the issue of the use of restraint and the use of force that comes under this bill. We've heard the trauma that's been suffered on both sides. We know that teachers are anxious and distressed often about the way that they can execute their duty of care to the children in their classroom whether it's special needs whether it's something else that has caused a disruption in their classroom but also the other children and that they're nervous about that. They don't know where their rights and their duties lie. But we've also heard repeatedly from incredibly distressed parents whānau children and young people who have had different types of treatments and they don't know—there's no transparency and there's no standardised way that they can feel safe in those circumstances where there is some use of restraint or force. Those words being included in legislation makes everyone concerned—we understand—nervous and there's uncertainty around that.So we on this side of the House—and I do appreciate so much the Hon Tracey Martin and the Hon Chris Hipkins as Minister who've all come together with us as the Green Party to try and resolve this issue try and come to a place where there will be as the Minister has indicated a Supplementary Order Paper addressing this issue and the removal of words and phrases in this bill that may lend themselves to a situation where parents are uncertain about whether use of force may cross the line and teachers principals and other school caretakers are nervous about where their duties and obligations or restraints lie. So we're going to work together to change that—and that's our promise to this House—at committee stage. We're not going to leave any uncertainty around that and we are working together which is kind of the beauty of this MMP Government. But it's nice that we're all on the same page in terms of the wellbeing of children being absolutely paramount. So I commend this bill at this stage to the House.