Mallard Trevor: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:664;Page:12330] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 It is the intention of the Labour Opposition to support the referral of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to a select committee as long as—I say in brackets—we can get a referral motion that we agree with. Members of the House know that the Education and Science Committee generally works on a pretty much bipartisan basis on technical legislation although we have our differences every now and again. We have a strong preference for not sitting during the sitting times of the House and we generally either arrange our business in the adjournment breaks or deal with things expeditiously as we are doing with Sir Roger Douglas’ bill at the moment. There is an offer to get the bill back by 1 November and we certainly will support a motion to do that but we will not support a motion that requires the select committee to sit during the sitting times of the House. 
This bill is a mixture of technical and political matters. We disagree with some of the things in here and we want to try to sort them out at the select committee but on balance there are some things including things in the private school area that are travelling in the right direction so it would be petty of us not to support sending the bill off. I apologise to a certain extent for focusing on some of the things on which we will seek clarification or will want to oppose. 
One of the areas we want to sort out is the limited attendance centres; I think a couple of points are pretty important. One is that where children are being kept within a gymnasium a shopping mall or a similar type of arrangement there should be some line of sight from the public area to where the children are being kept. I think it is a dangerous situation to have children in a room away from their parents and away from where anyone else can see what is going on in the room with someone who is supervising them especially when that person is not qualified. A lot of centres are set up with a clear line of sight and have windows or other arrangements where the public who are passing by can see in or the centres are in a gymnasium where the children can be seen by the parents who are exercising at the gym. If that is the case I think it is good. 
I have another question in that area that I think needs to be sorted out. I think it is fair to say that I am not quite as anxious about this area as some of the members who were Ministers of Education before me or in between me and the current Minister of Education but I think it is absolutely vital that anyone who is working in one of these centres has a police check. The changes that the Minister has made appear to remove the requirement for the person who is involved to have had a police clearance. The Minister says that it does not. I have read it and I think that it does. We will have that clarified at the select committee. If it is not the intention— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It’s not intended. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am pleased to hear it. We can check that and correct it if it is a problem and if it is not a problem we will not need to do so. 
Some of my colleagues will talk a little bit about the area of secondary-tertiary programmes. I prefer to have less legislation rather than more and my view is that in this area the Government is able to do what it wants to do without legislation. If legislation is blocking it we are actually better to take it out and give a more general power to approve programmes or to fund particular policies rather than try to do it area by area as it appears to be done now. The ability of the Government to spend money in areas in which it has policy should be pretty much untrammelled. We can argue about the policies. In fact I think in this we might be going back and getting closer to some of the work that the previous Labour Government was doing before the election. Of course we cannot criticise the Minister for seeing the light but the real question I have and I will be interested— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It was all clear daylight. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No the trouble is that when one clarifies and clarifies within the law one keeps making it really hard to do innovative things and one runs up against it. I will be interested in the contribution at the select committee of the Hon Sir Roger Douglas as to whether he thinks that this provision is necessary or whether a more general empowering provision would be more appropriate. 
Another area that I will comment on is the enrolment provisions. I think that two loopholes are being opened up in this area by this bill. Mr Peachey and I have had discussions about enrolment legislation in the past. I think it is fair to say that we have different points of view. I will not say that he as a principal was the worst rorter in the system but I would say that every now and again he used to push the limits test the procedures and sometimes use some of the better ideas some of the loopholes and some of the back alleys that some of his colleagues who were principals taught him. That is what happens when legislation has loopholes: it tends to be exploited. 
I think this bill establishes a couple of loopholes. One is the right of a child of a member of a board of trustees to be enrolled notwithstanding where the child lives. I know that this is sometimes a worst-case scenario but when I think about these things my default position is to ask how John Morris would deal with this. He is the principal of Auckland Grammar School. It is fair to say that I actually quite like John. I respect some of his views; I disagree with some of them. I think his students are missing the boat a bit through the overemphasis on foreign exams and their relatively poor performance in Scholarship and I think that they could be doing better. But the point that I go back to is to ask how John would use this legislation. I know what he would do. He would see a good boy in form 2 who he thought could be an important part of his first XV going forward so he would second the kid’s parent on to the board of trustees for a few weeks. That would let the boy into the school and then of course there would be no requirement for the parent to be on the board of trustees. That can happen. Co-options to boards of trustees can happen. I wonder whether as we go forward we will put some requirement that the person has to have been on the board for a number of years. Maybe that should be a requirement. 
I get most interested when I see National tending back to its British Tory ways of inherited rights. Instead of inherited seats in the House of Lords National is promoting in this bill the right to pass on to one’s children the right to go to a school and to one’s grandchildren through one’s children the right to go to that school. Despite the fact that a family might not have lived in the zone for many generations if this system is adopted it could well result in generation after generation of kids having the right to go to a school of their parents’ choice over and above the kids who live in the school’s neighbourhood. Clearly there is still a zone but again we know what happens to zones when there is a favourable system. I think it is fair to say that the Auckland Grammar School zone before the tight legislation was where the headmaster thought it was. That was effectively the way the zone was designed. Zones will shrink in order to create more places for the inherited nobles or the good football players whom people want to import into their schools. I think that area has to be sorted out. 
In summary Labour will support this bill and if we can sort out the referral motion we will support it going to the select committee as well.