Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm not on the Education and Workforce Committee although I occasionally get whipped on.Hon Member: You should be.ERICA STANFORD: I should be. I'd like to be. It's a great committee. I occasionally get whipped on—I wasn't in any of the sessions where this was discussed but I spoke on this bill in its first reading and second reading.Jamie Strange: Strong start.ERICA STANFORD: Yeah thank you. I'm feeling positive about it. What we have is a body of competent well-respected people with a great deal of knowledge and ability to govern. What we're trying to do with this is go back to something that we had that was broken. We know that what we had before wasn't working—they weren't able to self-regulate they had financial difficulties which is why we made the change. Jamie Strange got up here tonight and tried to tell us that there weren't many teachers on the Education Council. We know that's not true—Simeon Brown: He can't count.ERICA STANFORD: —because we know that there are six of them. He had trouble counting. Although Mark Patterson redeemed members on that side of the Chamber by saying 13 percent is 13 percent." so that was good. But what Jamie Strange doesn't seem to understand is that there is a majority of teachers on the Education Council. In fact one of them is from my electorate from Albany Senior High School—a wonderful competent woman on a body that is full of good competent people. I would like to point out that at no point in the proceedings did any of the submitters or anyone ever say that any decision that was made by the current Education Council was in any way a bad decision or that anyone was unhappy with any of the work that they'd done.I would like to speak tonight about one of the submissions that I'm particularly interested in the Graduate Women New Zealand submission. Hon Member: Good submission.ERICA STANFORD: It is. It's relating to Part 1 of the bill. I want to speak to this as it relates to Part 1 of the bill and I'm particularly interested in the views of Graduate Women New Zealand because of their work in creating positive differences to education and employment outcomes for women and girls in New Zealand. They made a really detailed and interesting submission in which they made a number of suggestions that are worthy of note and that I'd like to bring to the Minister of Education's attention. I'd like to hear from the Minister as to why some of the suggestions were not included or were not fully included in the bill as it is now. I do acknowledge that for the most part of this submission they did agree with many of the parts and they supported the bill but their detailed submission did centre around diversity. They talked in great detail about wanting a range of diversity. They say they believe "diversity on governance councils is beneficial for functioning. Therefore the guidelines directing the Minister and Councils to have regard for ethnic and socio-economic diversity gender balance and to include at least one Maori member [should be] encouraged."I note from the part of the bill where the Minister's obligations are laid out for the members that he selects they include things like education governance leadership experience and skills financial skills—which is good given the problem with the financial irregularities of the old Teachers Council—and understanding of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Minister must consider the candidate's ability to carry out the duties as a member of the Teaching Council and represent the public interest. So that's all great but there is no requirement to consider the things that are important to Graduate Women New Zealand—no requirement to consider socio-economic diversity gender balance ethnicity or with a view to including one Māori representative.The Government talks about gender balance all the time. It's something that they have a very strong opinion on. I'm not saying that I particularly agree with this submission—I want to make that very clear Mr Hipkins. I don't agree with it but what I am interested in is hearing from the Minister as to why these considerations weren't taken into consideration as per the requests from Graduate Women New Zealand in their very detailed submission.One of the other issues that they brought up was the issue of international students. There aren't a huge amount of international students in New Zealand but they deserve to have their voice heard as well. Their concern it seems from their submission is around the fact that there may not be someone on this body who is able to represent their views. Look I know that we're not going to win this argument overall—the Government are eventually going to get their way on this—but I think what is important is that we make sure that the bill is as good as it's going to get. If we are talking about representation then we need to take all the submissions into account and have a look at what they think. There were a number of views that did think that there could be better representation."