Donnelly Brian: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Donnelly Brian: Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18516] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 After those accolades it is very difficult to make any negative comments about the Labour Government at the moment. There has been a whole lot of comment about how New Zealand First has not been very friendly towards National recently. But I have to tell a little story. Late last year when this bill was drawn from the ballot I received a phone call from the deputy leader of National. He said: “Hey Brian my bill has come out. Can you tell me what it’s about?”. We were able to explain it to him. It takes us back to the genesis of this particular bill that obviously the previous speaker was not fully aware of. It came about as a result of teachers at a school that I have close connections with coming to me during the 2001 elections. They said to me that in preparing for the board of trustees elections for that year it was brought to their attention that one of the candidates was a convicted paedophile. At the time the board of trustees felt it totally inappropriate to proceed with that person on the ballot paper. They then looked at the law as it stood and found that there were in fact no laws that could prevent somebody who was a convicted paedophile from standing for a board of trustees. 
At the time I raised the issue in the House and the Minister of Education the Hon Trevor Mallard was very much inclined to doing something about it and looked at the possibility of making an amendment to the amendment bill that we were putting through at that time so that we could address this particular situation. At the same time Mr Brownlee put his member’s bill in but we were trying to address this in another way. We had a briefing from the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education was not as keen to pursue any amendment to the law as the Minister had shown himself to be in the House. 
At this time the only people other than those who are not New Zealand citizens who cannot stand for membership of a board of trustees are non-discharged bankrupts but once one is a discharged bankrupt one can. But there are no provisions that prevent anybody else from standing as a member of a board of trustees. Some of the arguments put up by the Ministry of Education were issues around principles such as the principle of natural justice. At that time we were talking about anyone who might have been convicted of a sexual offence and the ministry pointed out that earlier on it had been illegal to be homosexual and people could have been prevented by such a law from becoming a member of a board of trustees. 
However on the whole the ministry tended to favour the notion—and I think it was the notion that was reflected when Lynne Pillay talked about the School Trustees Association—that communities would sort them out. I can only say that from the experience at the school that I was talking about it was not as simple as that. It was not public knowledge that this person had been convicted of this particular offence; therefore the board was not in a position to be able to broadcast that so that the voting public would have been able to say they did not want such a person on their board of trustees. 
The comments about members of boards of trustees not having much to do with children are possibly true for larger urban schools but even then not completely true. It has to be remembered that members of boards of trustees are often involved in things like school camps. But for the schoolteacher the complexity is that they are also the employers of the schoolteacher. If one is a schoolteacher on a camp and has his or her employer turning up to give support it puts one in an invidious position and so it puts the children at greater risk. We know that paedophiles are predatory. That is the very nature of the criminality. 
Therefore New Zealand First certainly will vote for this bill to go to select committee. We believe there is great merit in this legislation and unless something comes forward at the select committee to change our minds we will certainly vote for it all the way through. If for example there are additional criminal activities that have to be included then we would be open to including those. However we believe that our children deserve the highest level of protection under the law and at present it seems there is a minor loophole that needs to be closed.