Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Madam Chair. It's nice to be back and it's nice to see you in the Chair. This committee stage debate is put in place by the Standing Orders so that a committee might debate whether or not the bill as reported from the second reading actually aligns with the intention of the House at second reading and I intend of course Madam Chair to stick very closely to that brief.I'd like to draw your attention for instance to clause 21(9) which amends the treatment of a partnership school charter and effectively makes it the plan of a new special character or a new integrated school. I think that if someone was to ask themselves why exactly is this necessary you see the Government's intention and what it said it was trying to achieve in the second reading was actually the closure of partnership schools.The Minister's stated intent in public since he received his warrant has been that the partnership school model has no place in the New Zealand education system and yet we are now seeing a proposal in the text of this bill which tells us that actually it's all just exactly the same—that actually a charter school's philosophy and ethos will simply be brought on and turned into the strategic plan of a board. I make the case that actually this part of the legislation does not reflect the Minister's stated intentions. It does not reflect the agreement of the House at the second reading. What it does is it gives the lie to the rhetoric of the Minister and the Government who have told us at great length that these schools are a failure when they put in legislation clauses that are there to ensure the smoothest transition possible. What it shows is that actually the Government accepts—contrary to what they've brought to the House at second reading—that the partnership school model worked so much so that the provisions that were operating under a partnership school should be facilitated to continue as flawlessly as possible under new models be they special character or be they integrated.I go back one clause before that to clause 21(8) which says that the principal Act will say instead of for each 4-year period" that charters will be "for each 3-year period". Now at no time has it been made clear by the Government why a three-year period of planning for a school is better than a four-year period. We often have that debate in New Zealand politics about the term of this House and there are good arguments for why a longer term actually allows educators to plan with greater certainty. Bear in mind that some of these schools cover seven year levels of students so three years is nothing. Arguably they should be able to plan over longer periods than even four years but there's never been an expression from the Government of why it is necessary as clause 21(8) states to actually shorten the time horizon of planning in these schools. I would argue that that is something that should be struck out of this legislation. Our educators need less bureaucratic interference and longer time horizons over which to plan not shorter ones.I'd also take you to clause 22 which considers amendments to other enactments. We could go through a few of them. The State Sector Act amendment I think is absolutely critical to debate in this stage because it seems to reveal perhaps a political difficulty for the Government but also a contradiction in the direction of this bill. We've heard considerable debate about how the Minister has said that national standards were not national and they were not very standard. Well you know he's entitled to that view but I think what he was trying to express was that education workplaces are eroding the goodwill of teachers through a lack of autonomy—through a lack of choice about how they conduct themselves and how they educate students—and I'm a bit sympathetic to that view. I think the Minister may actually have a point on national standards.But we come to schedule 2 and amendments to other Acts—and in particular the State Sector Act—where we are going to remove the possibility of a State-funded school that is outside of the State Sector Act. You only have to look at the discussion and the debate over the last several weeks over teacher shortage and it is precisely the inflexibility and the frustration that teachers feel that is making it more difficult to have teachers.Now again I don't believe that the Minister and the Government have been clear in their intention with this legislation that the real objective of abolishing partnership schools was nothing to do with funding it was nothing to do with profit and it was nothing to do with teachers' registration status with the Teachers Council—no. This State Sector Act amendment tells us what it was really about and it was really about ensuring that teachers would have to be employed upon a collective agreement if they were to work for a State-funded school. That's what it was really about. It is incredibly pertinent to the political debate about schools and their teacher shortages today as well as to whether or not this Act truly fits the stated intentions of the Government and what was debated at second reading because we simply have not heard enough from the Minister about why it is that the State Sector Act must be amended so that all schools including partnership schools—or whatever form they take—become a part of the State sector and therefore are bound by collective agreements.Let me give an example of why this might be problematic. A well-circulated story in the New Zealand Herald just recently told the story of a woman from the Waikato who is about 60 years old. Her son is 30 years younger than her. They both have the same education. The only difference is that due to the grade inflation—which is another topic we could go into another time—her son was awarded a degree and she was awarded a diploma. Now under the State Sector Act that of course is what you expect. That is the result of decades of collective bargaining and one-size-fits-all agreements. In a partnership school that would not be a problem because being outside the State Sector Act it would be possible to negotiate a contract based on the sponsor's judgment or the principal's judgment of the value of that particular teacher.This part here amending the State Sector Act is going to take away that possibility and I don't think the Government has been remotely transparent in its public utterances or in its second reading speeches that the real intention of this legislation is not anything that they've talked about. It wasn't about funding it wasn't about teachers' class sizes it wasn't about registration and it wasn't about any of these other standards. It wasn't about the curriculum. It was fundamentally about whether or not people employed in schools funded by the State would have to have union contracts and ironically the Government is shooting itself in the foot because contrary to the assertions that it's made about national standards it's actually requiring teachers to work in a less flexible work environment. I would suggest that a good start to improving this bill before the third reading would actually be to remove that State sector—[Time expired]"