Donnelly Brian: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Donnelly Brian: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12175] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 I want to bring in a new point that has not been raised yet. However I will start by responding to a question put by Gerry Brownlee who asked why teachers could not negotiate directly with their employers. The answer is quite simple: for the 9 years National was in Government it never gave teachers the opportunity to do so. The system was not in place for the Labour Government to take away because it was not there in the first place. 
Stephen Franks says that teachers are getting a reward. Some reward I have to say! This legislation actually reduces the powers through collective negotiations of the teachers associations or unions. Some reward! It is National and ACT that want to retain the powers that the unions now have. The point is this: why do we have to put this through under urgency? Why are we putting this through in this timely fashion? The public needs to know the Parliament should know and Annette King and Gerry Brownlee might like to know too that we have collective negotiations coming up very very soon. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: What for? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: For secondary primary and area school contracts. I ask members to remember that we have a situation that is chaotic as a leftover from the last set of negotiations with the secondary school teachers. The Government has a mess of the Minister’s own making. This bill tries to make sure that the Post Primary Teachers Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute do not have those extraordinary powers to utilise when those negotiations come about. 
Do people want to see another round such as we saw prior to the last election? Do we want the sorts of decision-making processes where they had to go to an arbitration panel and the Minister gave them an open cheque? It created more problems for the future as well as costing the taxpayer a lot more money than the Post Primary Teachers Association would have settled for. If that is what we want members should vote against this legislation. This is what I am asking ACT and National to consider because what they are doing is saying that they would continue to allow the Post Primary Teachers Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute to have extraordinary powers to withdraw their labour and still get paid for it. 
In this respect New Zealand First is saying that those collective negotiations have to be done between now and the next election so why should the taxpayers’ representatives go in with their hands tied behind their backs? That is an issue that does not seem to strike home to the ideologues from National and ACT who in their 9 years did not do anything about this issue anyhow. 
The point is that we need to be worried that we have some untidy negotiations coming up. For the good of our children and education I hope that is not the case. I hope the Minister has learnt a whole lot of lessons from last time around but I do not think that is the case because he is starting off behind the eightball with a very untidy situation around the G3s. Unless that can be resolved it will not be only the Post Primary Teachers Association that is going on strike it will be the New Zealand Educational Institute as well. Therefore it seems to me that it is responsible to ensure that the negotiating teams—the State Services Commission or by delegation the Ministry of Education—have this legislation passed so that they can negotiate on behalf of taxpayers on a level playing field. I put that to both the ACT and the National parties to consider very seriously.