Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker for an opportunity to respond to some of those comments from the other side in particular. I think it is quite rich to talk about parents and their blood boiling when really I'm very sure that the teachers watching this debate tonight will have their blood boiling knowing that the National Party believes that schools basically should be babysitting services for children and that against all advice and all scientific evidence—as we have heard very eloquently explained by my colleague Jan Tinetti—they should not be starting school before their fifth birthday. But disregard all that and I'm sure that all the professors and esteemed academics will equally feel rather offended that you called them rubbish. Now it's actually a pleasure to be taking a call on the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). When this bill came through the House in its first reading this subject matter was quite new to me but it has been an absolute joy working with my colleagues on this committee and especially Jan Tinetti. So it is a real privilege after working on this bill for several months to share a few thoughts. I'd like to thank all the submitters who submitted on this bill who took time to share their views. There were 18 in total who came to talk on a few specific aspects of this bill which mostly we have heard about tonight. I'd like to make a couple of mentions of the main ones. I'd like to start with the cohort entry provisions. As I said the history to all this has been eloquently explained by Jan Tinetti but basically the change that this bill makes is it goes back to the situation prior to the change made by the National Government in 2017. So really all it does is it reinforces the idea that is underpinned by evidence that children should not be starting school until they actually have had their fifth birthday. So under new section 5 in clause 5 of the bill a five-year-old will have to wait to enrol and at most that will be six weeks. So it is not even earth-shattering—it's six weeks—and in fact I think some of the members on our Education and Workforce Committee may have missed it but we were given facts and data and numbers and figures that showed exactly how much it would cost the parents and how many children would be affected. If you look at the figures or well if the members of our committee or if the Opposition members had bothered opening the report rather than just looking at their lines they would have seen in the report that more than half of the children are not affected or are not starting school later by—goodness me!—a whole week. It might be a whole week after their fifth birthday that they're going to have to wait and do you know how many of the kids may have to wait five weeks? Five percent of all the children may have to wait up to five weeks. I'm sure their parents' blood will be boiling in that regard! We've heard about children being at the centre of learning and I thought that was a rather hypocritical comment considering the fact that my colleague Jan Tinetti had an excellent bill earlier—no actually it was late last year I believe—that put children at the centre of learning. Something that the Office of the Children's Commissioner agreed with was the National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP) bill which required the Minister to consult widely on the statement of NELP with children and guess what? Since the Opposition put children at the centre of the learning as they've just told us you'd think they would support that legislation. But no they voted against it. So the other thing I'd like to mention that has already been well traversed is that private schools should be safer places. A comment was made by the Waitakere Area Principals' Association. They said that the physical and emotional safety of all students irrespective of the nature of the school they attend should be paramount. The same arguments were used by New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Save the Children and the New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA). So really private schools are having the same standards as the State schools and State integrated schools. I am at a loss to understand the objections are to it and it has not been made very clear by the other side. The other thing that I have been confused about by comments from the other side is in regards to changes to the Teaching Council. Now both our chair—and this is quite disappointing—Parmjeet Parmar and also the member Simeon Brown must have completely missed the advice that we asked for which was to have it explained to us what having regard to" would actually mean in law. Some submitters—notably the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) and NZEI as has been mentioned—did make comments with regard to the importance of retaining the Teaching Council as an independent statutory body. We asked for some advice and the advice was—and the committee considered this—that the council's independence is safeguarded by the requirement that it must "have regard to" as opposed to being required to "giving effect to". So it has been explained to us—and it is even in all of our papers—that there is a very important distinction between "having regard to" and "giving effect to" because they have different meanings in law and what that means is that it's well-established in case law that it's completely two different things. So once again it is disappointing to hear that members of our committee and also the chair of our committee have completely missed or are disregarding that advice. Once again "having regard to" means genuine consideration but it means other factors can be considered to outweigh the thing that people are making a decision on. Lastly the repeal of the provisions for the community of online learning. Now Denise Lee mentioned the comment about "Nobody spoke to us." Well when it comes to a lack of consultation we heard it when it came to the community of online learning. NZEI NZSTA and PPTA all submitted that the communities of online learning legislation was developed hastily with a notable lack of consultation with the education sector. I'll read that NZEI mentioned "corporates driving what's best for children". NZEI called the legislation brought in by the previous Government "a flawed piece of legislation ill-thought-out and rushed" and the PPTA elaborated on that same theme. They said the legislation was "rushed un-consulted and poorly conceived with little awareness shown of the impact on the wider school sector or the students involved". They called it a "corporate entry point with New Zealand learners as guinea pigs" and "a lolly scramble hoping different providers may come up with something good". Now if you've ever wanted to hear from experts in our education sector that the communities of online learning were not a good thing then there it is.Lastly I would just like to say that it's really important to add that the repeal of this doesn't take anything away from the existing providers. The status quo will remain for online learning. The status quo will remain and will continue to operate—business-as-usual. The sky isn't falling in. This is making things better. It's putting children at the centre of learning. I support this bill and commend it to the House."