Smith Lockwood: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Smith Lockwood: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12162] 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) 
: 
 If it were not so sad to hear Mr Peck trying to climb into Deborah Coddington over her speech a few minutes ago it would be amusing. Deborah Coddington is known up and down this country as someone who stands for principle. I do not think that Mr Peck is known for anything. Mr Peck is so bitter and twisted because even Mr Benson-Pope was promoted into Cabinet over him. Mr Peck has been here for quite a few years and is so bitter that he has not made it into the Labour Cabinet. If he chooses to attack someone of principle like Deborah Coddington he is making a grave mistake. 
I now come to the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3). This is a very important issue. No one can pretend that the arrangements for negotiating our teachers’ salaries and the authority of boards of trustees with respect to their employment have been satisfactory for a number of years. No one can claim that the way the system worked in the past has been totally satisfactory. 
When I was Minister the way the system worked caused me a lot of concern. However to hear Mr Ogilvy from United Future—is that who it was? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Dr Ogilvy. 
Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH 
: Dr Ogilvy from United Future said that this bill sorted things out. The problem is that a party like United Future in this Parliament has no knowledge of the background to the payment of teachers’ salaries the role of the States Services Commissioner or the reforms of  
Tomorrow’s Schools 
. To pretend that this bill sorts things out satisfactorily is a travesty. If this bill is passed the losers will be our children and families—the people United Future claims it cares about. This bill causes children to be the losers. I invite Dr Ogilvy to think about the issue a bit more and about what goes on in the schooling system in this country. 
There is an issue around the role of boards of trustees as employers and the role of the State Services Commissioner as a negotiator of collective contracts. But to re-empower the centre—to empower the State Services Commissioner more—is not the way to solve our problems. The big problem in schooling today is that our best people do not go into teaching because our best teachers are not rewarded. The great collective contract means that our poorer teachers are paid far more than they are worth and our best teachers are not paid anything like what they are worth—and everyone knows it. 
That is the problem of the big collective contract when employing our teachers. When the State Services Commissioner is negotiating employment arrangements the big State-sector union will always be on the other side. The Government had the opportunity to do something for the schoolchildren of this country and make the amendments needed. 
I accept that the status quo was not satisfactory. School boards of trustees are officially the employers yet the State Services Commissioner negotiates the collective contract on their behalf. This Labour-led Government has progressively pulled power back from boards of trustees and recentralised it and this is just another step in that process. However boards of trustees should have been empowered to become full employers as they have now had the experience. 
When  
Tomorrow’s Schools 
 was established in 1989-90—in fact the previous Labour Government put it in place but as Minister I had to start making it work—maybe it could have been argued that the new boards of trustees new in those roles needed a period of time before they acquired the full role of employer including employment negotiations. It was always intended that ultimately boards of trustees would have the role of running their schools. 
If we go back to the origin of the whole  
Tomorrow’s Schools 
 reform the Picot task force recommended that all our schools be bulk funded. One of the reasons the task force recommended that was that ultimately it made sense for our schools to employ their staff so that they could reward outstanding teachers and manage their schools in the interests of the children of their schools. This legislation is just another step back from what the Picot task force recommended. It is a step back from the  
Tomorrow’s Schools 
 reforms. It is all part of the recentralisation of education under this Labour-led Government. 
United Future of all parties should not be endorsing that. Recentralisation and bureaucratic control of schooling is not in the interests of our children. United Future stands in this House and parrots on about the importance of families and children and has the chance to vote against regressive legislation that takes that away. Clause 6 states that our teachers come first and our children last. If the teachers go on strike the union comes first and children come last. If the union goes on strike the children miss out. 
At least we should give Trevor Mallard some credit. He wanted to make sure that children did not miss out. But Mr Donnelly from New Zealand First and his select committee said: “No we can’t have a situation where the children come first. The union must come first so they can take as many days on strike as they like”—and children will miss out on their education. This country has had enough of that. This country has to start standing up for children and not for the big teacher unions. That is what this is all about. Far from recentralising the whole negotiation of employment arrangements for teachers this legislation should be all about giving schools the opportunity to reward outstanding teachers because we have great teachers. 
Every bit of research done on schooling shows that an important element making for a successful school is an outstanding principal. Schools used to be able to sack bad principals when their contracts expired. They cannot do that any more. This Labour-led Government has stopped that with its Employment Relations Act. Schools cannot have fixed-term contracts any more and they cannot get rid of bad principals. The other bit of research shows us that outstanding teachers make a difference. 
This bill will make it even harder. It is another step away from enabling schools to employ their teachers in ways that enable them to reward outstanding teachers and deal with teachers who under-perform. When a school has an under-performing teacher—and we have plenty of them—again it is the children who suffer. Labour and United Future claim they care about children yet every time a legislative issue comes up they take the union side; they do not take the children’s side. This bill was a chance to demonstrate that the children actually matter to United Future. 
There is no need for this bureaucratic nonsense. It would have been very possible to give greater power to school boards of trustees. We could have had legislation by which boards ceded that power if they wished to the State Services Commissioner but at least put in place a mechanism that was originally envisaged by Picot and the whole schools reform process to really enable schools to do something for their children. The principal and the teachers are the most important bit. The skill of those teachers matters and this bill takes it all away from our boards of trustees the parents the community and the teachers involved who want to make our schools a better place. This bill just recentralises power in the State Services Commissioner. 
No one can say that I do not know what I am talking about because I was Minister for almost 6 years and Opposition spokesperson for 3 years. No one else in this House has been involved in the politics of education longer than I have. Those comments are made from hard experience.