Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION AND TRAINING (TEACHING COUNCIL FEES AND COSTS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill.SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2021 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 193 195 and 196.A brief background of why we're here with this bill. The Teaching Council as it is now known was established by the last National Government under the name of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. It replaced a body what was then called the Teachers Council. It had an expanded range of functions from the previous Teachers Council and it was expected to move to a position where it would become self-sustaining through member contributions through the contributions of the teaching profession. The last National Government expanded the functions of the council and also put additional funding in to manage the transition to those expanded functions but with an expectation that over time the council would set new fees that would mean that it would be self-sustaining. Those subsidies from Government were due to come to an end shortly after this Government took office. We increased those subsidies to increase that transition time for the new council and particularly in recognition of some of the changes that we made including reinstating elections to that council. Therefore those subsidies were due to be phasing out last year. The council went through the fee-setting consultation. They decided that they wanted to affix a new fee that was based on a one-year fee rather than a three-year fee and that they would adjust teacher registration to a one-year cycle rather than a three-year cycle in order to achieve that. That was then challenged by the Post Primary Teachers' Association—the PPTA—who took that through court. What the court found was an anomaly in the legislation that was never intended by the last Government who established the council or by this Government who transferred those provisions from the previous Education Act into the new Education and Training Act. The court found that the council was not able to affix a fee that covered all of its functions. It was only by law authorised to affix a fee that covered some of its functions. That was never Parliament's intention. However the court found that the new fee that the council had been intending to introduce the one-year fee was overturned.The challenge that we were then faced with was that the fee that the council had to revert back to had also been established under the very same law that the new fee had been established by. Therefore there was a question as to whether or not that existing fee was also established legitimately. So this bill first of all validates the previously collected fees the fees that were collected under the National Government and the fees that have been collected under this Government up and to the point where the higher fee was introduced. It also allows the council to keep the fees that it collected the one-year fees that it collected and offset those fees against the three-year cost of registration for those teachers who had gone through the one-year registration process during that intervening period otherwise the council would be in a position where it would have to refund someone the one-year fee and then reinvoice them effectively for the three-year fee. It would potentially also lead to a position where most teachers in the country if we didn't pass this bill were not currently registered and that is something that I think we would all want to avoid.The other thing that the bill does is it allows the council to move to an annual fee without having to change to a three-year registration. So they can retain the status quo of a three-year registration meaning teachers won't have to reregister every three years but will effectively allow teachers to pay their fee in one-year instalments which I think is something I hope the teaching profession will welcome.I acknowledge that there are different views amongst the teaching profession about the council itself and the scope and functions of the council. Primary teachers are quite supportive of the current scope and function of the council if we are to accept what their advocates and their representatives tell us. Secondary teachers are more sceptical. I want to indicate that the Government will be making other changes to the council in future legislation that responds to some of those concerns. One of the concerns is that the disciplinary functions that the council has are overly onerous that there are matters going to the council's full disciplinary tribunal process that could be dealt with through the complaints assessment committee in a more efficient way—still transparent still robust but more efficient—and thereby reducing the overall cost of the running of the council. We will be bringing some proposals forward to the Parliament in due course that will deal with that issue because I think the teachers do have a legitimate point there.We are also in conversations with the council about their leadership function and who should ultimately pay what burden of that leadership function should sit with teacher registration fees versus whether Government should make a contribution to that and we'll continue to talk to them about that. So the council will now have an opportunity to set a new fee to cover their full costs the costs of operating the council. They will in the meantime revert to the fee that existed before the court case before the new one-year fee was overturned by the courts. That will be the fee that applies in the intervening period and fees collected under that previous regime will all be validated by this legislation.So it is an undesirable position for the Parliament to find itself in. It dates back prior to this Government to the previous Government. I don't think they intended this situation to emerge nor did this Government. We have a responsibility I think as a Parliament to fix it and to fix it quickly so that the public parents students and teachers can be confident that we've got a robust teacher registration regime in New Zealand teachers can be confident that they are registered and that their registration fees that they've previously paid are valid and also that those who are caught during this period the one-year period don't have to go through the process of getting their money back and then paying more in order to get the three-year registration. So I commend the bill to the House.SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.