Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Chair. It's great to be back here in the land of the free after such a long time in Auckland. This is my first opportunity to speak in the House since returning and I'm very conscious of the many hundreds of thousands of people in the queen city who have been locked up for a very long period of time missing out on the opportunity to live their normal lives and for their children to be educated properly at school. So these are very sort of concerning times for many Aucklanders but it's good to be here back in the debating chamber talking about issues that matter. And this piece of legislation's quite a narrow one trying to deal with a particular set of circumstances that have occurred with the Teaching Council.Our fundamental point is—and the Minister has outlined the background to this—the new role of the Teaching Council from 2015 the setting up of the higher fees the challenge by the unions and the court ruling that has left them in a bit of a pickle. And ultimately the Government really had a couple of choices: they could ram through legislation to deal with the situation to keep the money flowing—which is what they've done under urgency with a very truncated select committee process—or they could have continued the additional funding that has been carried on for a number of years now to the council and given themselves more time to have a more fuller and proper process to work out how we can get this situation sorted out more effectively. So our opposition to this legislation is based on the fact that we don't automatically just give a tick to urgent legislation rammed through the House under a short process.It's been quite interesting because we've been left very much on the side of the PPTA which is not necessarily our usual position. And we've heard many many submissions of members coming in. The most notable being one teacher who said Well as far as I can see this bill has all come about because the Teaching Council is short of money—well I'm short of money and I'm a bit worried about how I'm paying my bills and I'm irritated by the fact that we're fixing their shortage of money but I'm short of money. And the bills are piling up the energy's more expensive my gas is taking more to get into the tank my broccoli is more expensive than it ever was before and lo and behold next thing these geezers want to put up the price of my teacher's registration and I'm annoyed about it. Why should this Government be ramming through under urgent legislation a fix to enable them to get away with their big spending ways?"Of course there seems to have been an enormous amount of confusion about just what the Teaching Council is funding and what they're paying for. And so quite naturally a lot of teachers have seen the enormous amount of energy effort and expense being led by the Teaching Council on unteaching racism and on leadership and they've naturally wondered "Well are my fees going to this?" And the Minister is quite correct in pointing out that it's important to separate those two but when we looked at the legislation that was introduced it didn't really separate it very carefully and the powers of the council were very broad and what they were looking at was very broad around leadership and in the sector as a whole. And so notwithstanding all the promises made that the council would be very focused on the registration matters which it is ultimately appropriate to be paid for by the profession it was extending more broadly and more broadly. And so teachers would look at the fact that the wage bill of the Teaching Council had gone from about $5 million a year to $8 million—so it had gone from about $5.3 million in 2016 to $8.2 million in 2020—and they're wondering to themselves "Well is this organisation is this council getting elephantiasis and are we having to pay for it?" And so that's where we've come from: a concern about the—[Bell rung] Sorry I was just getting into my rhythm and it all came to an end very quickly.So anyway as I was saying the functions of the Teaching Council are to provide leadership to the education profession and to enhance the status of education leaders and to identify and disseminate the best practices of educational leadership. Now that all sounds very good and everybody's pleased to see that and if we take a step back and ask ourselves "Well what are we trying to achieve here with the Teaching Council?" I think all New Zealand parents want to know—Hon Chris Hipkins: 10 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —that the teaching profession as a whole are drawing in the best people—the Minister made some comment; I didn't quite pick it up.Hon Chris Hipkins: I said this is 10 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Ah well and I'm sure the Minister could have put it to so much better use!Hon Chris Hipkins: Yes I really could have.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah yeah. And yet there is this messy irritating process called democracy whereby the Opposition of the day does get the opportunity to have a look at what the Government is proposing and asking ourselves "Have they got it right and have the proper processes been followed?"And what I think a lot of New Zealanders mightn't appreciate is the process that we generally have is that when Government wants to change the law it introduces a bill and then it sends it off to a select committee whereby the Parliament and members of the public can have their say about it—so just to remind people who are tuning into this debate and this conversation: what happened was that the Government rammed it through at very high speed and gave the profession and everybody involved very little time to actually sift through the issues properly. And the key issue at debate in this whole thing is: what should be paid for by teachers personally and what should be paid for by the State?Actually in the last campaign the National Party campaigned on the Government picking up the bill for the full registration which was a very generous policy. I think there is a reasonable argument that the profession the teachers should actually pay for the professional certification and qualification of teachers as many other professional bodies do. So ultimately we have no argument with that. Where the real argument is is how far that extends. And if it's coming to complicated public relations campaigns about unteaching racism or leadership and all those sorts of things then far fewer people agree with that.Now the issue is that the Government may fund these through the Teaching Council but the overheads and the apparatus continues to grow and gets bigger and more expensive. And so teachers are quite fairly and rightly concerned that the spending and the focus of the Teaching Council is properly narrow and focused on them and their requirements. What we saw through the whole select committee process and the submissions that we heard was a real absence of trust by many many teachers—and not just one or two; many many teachers—about how this has been carried out by the Government. And as I say referring to the young teacher out of frustration saying that this is all about dealing with the Teaching Council's shortage of money "Well I'm short of money and I don't want to have to pay higher fees than I need to. And I want to be reassured by this Minister and this Government that there will be proper arrangements in place."Now the Minister has admitted that it needs to be looked at more thoroughly and more legislation is going to be coming down the track so he had a simple choice: he could have done the job properly and extended transitional funding for a little bit longer so that the job could be done properly but instead he's just rammed through urgent legislation to deal with it in the short term without giving the profession the proper opportunity to have their say. And on that basis we're worried about that and we want to delve into the details over the next little while. Thank you Madam Chair."