Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look I rise to speak to support this legislation. Firstly I want to acknowledge the way that members have worked in terms of the Environment Committee to get what I think is an improved law. Can I acknowledge the Minister of Education on this issue. While I will address shortly some of the process concerns that we've had I think that parties across this House have worked constructively on this legislation. Dr Parmjeet Parmar who chairs our select committee can I take a moment to acknowledge you as well—it's been a big year in education—and all of those members on the select committee that have contributed to this legislation.Look I think in terms of the purpose of what this is about we all have already acknowledged Mason and his family. I think when the news of this situation became very apparent that a young person had lay deceased and undiscovered for nearly eight weeks it was with absolute sadness and concern that not only parliamentarians wanted to act but also people across New Zealand have been really concerned about the situation. So National absolutely supports the objective of improving student safety which is what we think will be the outcome of this legislation.However it is upon us to raise some of the issues of process and it wasn't just us who were saying that look we know we need to move reasonably quickly but several weeks compared to six months we were concerned about; it was also the Law Society who raised that. We also saw Treasury raise these issues of haste. Treasury went quite far in terms of their comments. The Law Society obviously raised those issues publicly but Treasury went very far in terms of the unintended consequences that can occur when you move at haste at pace in terms of select committee. So we did have some concerns about process.In terms of the content and the improvement to the bill I think it is important to acknowledge—and we had this discussion at select committee—that these are young adults. So this ability to move to create a safer environment via a code that can be enforced and with penalties was obviously at the front of mind for select committee members but we were also aware of that balance of as well student privacy. So I want to address some of the amendments that we made at select committee. We obviously made an amendment to the original definition of serious harm. We made amendments around the reference to safety and wellbeing of students we clarified the single pastoral care code but this amendment was actually I think one of the most important and that was where we were considering this issue of code administrators seeking consent of students and providing 24 hours' notice before inspecting rooms. That was about actually saying look we want a situation where every young person is safe. We absolutely understand it's a really tough time for many students. When they leave home they may be more vulnerable. We know of some of the issues whether it's alcohol or potentially people get bullied or they feel uncomfortable because they're out of their normal comfort zone.However we do see the need to balance what are serious issues of safety and standards of tertiary accommodation with that issue of student privacy and we on this side of the House really wanted to emphasise that. We heard some very powerful submissions from some people including the Privacy Commissioner and I want to acknowledge the excellent submission that he gave. I do want to acknowledge that on this side of the House we did want him to be formally consulted. We were not successful in achieving this as part of the legislative process and I'm sure Clare Curran will have something to say about that but we were really really keen to make that happen. We also made a range of changes including the reasonable excuse defence around penalty provisions.So again I want to acknowledge everybody who's been involved in this piece of legislation including Ministry of Education officials. We do support the overall objective. We understand the process in terms of the interim code. I assume that the code has gone to my colleague Dr Shane Reti so I too will be having a look at that and there is a transition that needs to occur.But I think at the heart of this what we supported on this side of the House was this ability to say to all of the parents in New Zealand that actually we can do better as a country in terms of tertiary accommodation. We can give you greater guarantees that we will never have a situation like what occurred to Mason Pendrous. Again that is the purpose of this legislation: to lift the safety of tertiary accommodation but also to ensure that we have some basic accountability while balancing those real issues of privacy of students.Can I just again finish by acknowledging my parliamentary colleagues for your contribution to this piece of legislation. It is great that we can be putting a piece of legislation to the House that has cross-party support in education. Thank you.