Martin TraceyTRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much to the Minister for the contribution there. I agree with my colleagues and say that New Zealand First will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 308 from Catherine Delahunty. We will be doing so because this must end but it cannot end without that gap being filled. What is happening with regard to professional development at the moment is that the School Trustees Association certainly has been given funding to better invest in upskilling our boards of trustees. This particular issue has not been an issue high on the agenda of that training at this time. But also if the professional development for staff is not funded by the Secretary for Education—and we have had it in numeracy and we have had it in national standards and so on and so forth—from a central fund then this will have to come out of the operations grant and that is just another stretch on the operations grant.So New Zealand First will definitely be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 308 because it must end but if I understood the Minister correctly—and I absolutely believe that if I am right—then what we are saying is that a teacher can place a student inside a time-out zone and make a statement like: When you've calmed down you can come and see Mrs Kelly at reception." That is a different way of saying "You may not leave this room."—do you see what I mean? That is the sort of professional development—I know it might seem minor but it may not occur to a person in the instance of aggression or the high tension of when you know the teacher has got 30 other students over there and is trying to deal with this. So if we can give guidance and give professional development around this concept to teachers then we need to do so rather than just remove what has been a terrible practice to date.Also the boards of trustees—this would come under their discipline policy. This is part of the area where boards of trustees need to be upskilled around their own policy around discipline because the seclusion laws that are here now should be included in the discipline policy so that it makes it clear that that is not available. But it outlines clearly how time out as opposed to a Kiwi suspension—because now what we have got is we have got those two things working in parallel. We all know that a Kiwi suspension is not appropriate and that is outlined in the YouthLaw discipline procedures booklet but we are talking about time out. How do boards of trustees—particularly new boards of trustees—understand that to be the case? How are they going to recognise the difference and how do they realise their responsibility about professionally developing their staff? So we support that SOP.I am now going to come back to SOP 298 which is an SOP in my name that removes the capacity of the Minister to appoint a trustee as a presiding trustee. So I come back to the question that I was asking previously—wrongly—in the last theme. New Zealand First has no argument whatsoever about the ability of the Minister to appoint a trustee on to the board of trustees as an early intervention model. We understand that—absolutely get it.But why as the chair—as I mentioned before I was the chair of Mahurangi College for many many years. As the chair I had no greater status than any other member of the board. I had only one vote. It was my job to make sure that the roles and responsibility of the board were met. I certainly had to sign off on all the documentation that had to be filed with the Government with the Ministry of Education but there were two things that were my role more than anyone else's role.The first was one of the most important relationships in the school and that is the relationship between the chair and the principal. The concern is that the reason why the Minister or her officials have suggested that the Minister be able to appoint the chair is to take control of that relationship. If that is not the case then that is great but if we could have an explanation as to why the chair as opposed to a member of the board of trustees who has the capacity to vote like everybody else and can put it there already—I would suggest that if the Minister has chosen an appointee they carry status. They carry status. They would have an effect on the conversations around the table.The other thing that the chair is the voice to the media. They actually then when an incident happens in the school—the general practice is that the principal is the day-to-day manager of the school and normally would be the first to comment to the media. But it is the role of the chairperson of the board of trustees to then be the face of the parental organisation that actually speaks to the media next. So "Why the chair?" is the question.Can I ask the Minister also around—and we are now talking about clause 81 and it is inserting new section 98A "Minister may approve alternative constitution in certain cases". This is around combining boards of State schools. One of the suggestions in one of the regulatory impact statements on this particular clause was that when boards are combined by the Minister the make-up of the boards will become too unwieldy. They suggested that the principal who is a trustee by right; the staff trustee; and the student trustees for secondary schools be removed to actually make any combined board more workable. Can I ask the Minister around this capacity to create alternative constitutions what she sees that that means for four schools or two schools or whatever. Has she taken on board those statements in the regulatory impact statement that suggest that the staff principal and student voice should be removed to make these combined boards more workable? That would be of extreme concern to New Zealand First. Thank you."