Turner Judy: Education Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Turner Judy: Education Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak for United Future on the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill and I want to focus briefly in this reading on two significant parts of the bill. Although the bill covers a lot of issues in the commentary two are identified as being of the greatest significance. 
The first is the new regulatory regime for the early childhood sector. As United Future does not have anybody on the Education and Science Committee we were very much guided by the summaries provided of the submissions and by our talking to members of the committee. At this stage I want to thank that committee because I do not think I have ever experienced a situation with a bill where we did not have ready information. But we were really given a huge amount of help from a variety of members including early advice on Supplementary Order Papers that gave us plenty of time to consider those papers to ring and consult with key stakeholders in the education sector and to get their advice and opinions on those matters. It was really helpful and I thank them for that. 
There were certainly some early concerns with the regulatory regime for the early childhood sector from stakeholders within that sector. They were concerned that regulations would be made in a way that seemed to be very unaccountable. Concern was also expressed that that lack of accountability would mean that bureaucrats would go wild and become very zealous and that the outcome would be threatening to the financial survival of some centres. So we had a talk with members of the committee we had a look at some of the issues that had been raised by submitters and we looked at the Supplementary Order Papers that had been tabled by the Maori Party the National Party and the Hon Brian Donnelly. 
It became clear it was very important that one of our intentions should be to differentiate between regulations that are prescriptive and those that are descriptive. The example that was given to me when I talked to members of the committee was that a regulation for instance that requires the gate to an early childhood centre to be self-locking needs to be clearly prescriptive. However the provision of a sickbay or sickroom for children who are off colour during the day may be able to be made and meet the requirements in a variety of ways that prescriptive regulations could make unnecessarily expensive and that could also restrict a centre from finding the innovative solutions that would meet with parental approval. Whether or not it was intentional many efforts to correct the concerns failed to take into account the fact that some regulations can and should be prescriptive regardless of the cost and that others should allow for the variety of interpretations that can be applied. So for that reason United Future chose to support an amendment put forward by the Hon Brian Donnelly to see the Regulations Review Committee properly engaged with the monitoring of developments in that regard. 
The second issue that we think is of importance is the extension of the National Student Number system to the compulsory and the early childhood education sectors. First of all we think that that is a very good idea for all the reasons that people who have spoken so far have outlined. But I personally wrestled with the opportunity to table a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage because I had some concerns when I read about the proposal. I have a tendency if I am honest to be a little bit twitchy about Order in Council provisions when they appear in legislation. I understand their usefulness but in this particular case the Governor-General can make regulations that identify any agency or body as an authorised user of the National Student Number system and all that the legislation requires is that the Governor-General must consult the Privacy Commissioner. Having consulted and met that obligation the Governor-General is under no obligation under this legislation to actually do anything with the Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations before making an Order in Council. The Governor-General just has to say that he or she has consulted—and I think that is dangerous. 
I want to thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office for putting up with me because we went backwards and forwards on that matter a number of times as I tried to design a Supplementary Order Paper that would take into account situations where the Privacy Commissioner might say not to do something yet the Governor-General would be able by Order in Council to go ahead anyway. We wanted to know whether there was any way we could tie the actions of the Governor-General to I guess permission from the Privacy Commissioner. The advice I received no matter which way we worded it was that we could not actually do that and to try to do so would have created some legal problems. So after wrestling with the problem I came to the conclusion that rather than put up with something flawed and unworkable it was better if I dropped the issue and let it proceed as it was written in the legislation. 
I am mentioning that because I have some ongoing concerns that we need to keep a close watch on this legislation as it is rolled out and put into practice. I think that situations could arise where interests groups might apply to be allowed to have access to the information contained on that database where those groups should not have that information and the reasons why they want it might not be in the best interests of the students whose numbers are represented. I have concerns that under this current legislation that issue has not been properly scrutinised. I would like to ensure that we keep a close eye on that issue and do not let it get away on us like a horse that has bolted out of the starting gate. So I signal our concern about that matter. It does not affect our support of the bill overall but I am concerned about that issue. I could not find a way of appropriately addressing it through a Supplementary Order Paper so we will have to watch that situation; certainly we may need to revisit it at some time. 
I will leave it at that and just say that we are happy to support this amendment bill. We look forward to seeing its implementation.