Kaye NikkiEDUCATION (TEACHING COUNCIL OF AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND) AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to principal ActHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Well look I am very pleased to be standing here in the Chamber having this opportunity to speak but I'm not actually pleased that this is the legislation in education that we are choosing to spend our time on. For people who are watching the television right now the Government has 19 reviews under way and it is choosing to spend the members in this House's time on a bill that effectively changes the name of the Education Council. It goes back and reverses changes that have been previously made around the institution—and I'm going to walk the committee through that—and it also costs the taxpayer about $700000. My colleagues here on this side we know the value of that: that is equivalent to tens of thousands of teacher-aide hours.Now let me talk you through a little bit of the history here. The original Teachers Council was set up in 2002. There was a very important review in 2010 and that came out of some very difficult circumstances that were recognised in terms of the ministerial inquiry into the employment of a convicted sex offender in the education sector. So that is the first thing for all members in this committee to acknowledge: that there were serious issues raised previously around the processes of the previous body.The second issue that members need to be very aware of is that there were financial issues—and I am getting to Part 1 and I want to talk about amending section 348. We know that it is the previous Government that had to effectively bail out the former Teachers Council which became the Education Council to the tune of about $21 million because of the financial difficulties. So to be standing in this Chamber—and my colleagues are going to talk about different aspects of the bill before us—and to recognise and respect the history of the change from the Teachers Council to the Education Council is to acknowledge there were serious issues around the processes but it is also to acknowledge there were serious issues from a financial perspective as well.The other point that we would make is: is this a great use of the House's time? We're going to talk through the difference between membership organisations versus a competency-based skilled organisation. When you have 19 reviews under way at the moment you have more than 18 broken promises in education that haven't been delivered—and that's in part because we've got $2.8 billion that's been spent on fees-free and students rather than the compulsory sector—instead this committee is here debating a bill that changes a name and potentially goes back in history to a structure that was rejected by multiple reviews in 2010 then also in 2012. So we do severely question the Government's priorities when not only are they not delivering fiscally in the education area—they have had bad priorities including fees-free—but that also they are ignoring history with regard to this bill. And then as I've said before they've got 19 reviews under way and this they consider is one of their greatest priorities.So we go to clause 4 amending section 348. It effectively changes the names. From our perspective we think at the very least—even if you were going to go and change this body how on earth can one justify $700000 of expenditure on this name change when we know that that is equivalent to tens of thousands of teacher-aide hours?Again I want to take members back to some of the submissions to the Education and Workforce Committee and some of the submissions that opposed the name change in particular and I want to acknowledge Yvonne Groot and the Waitakere Area Principals' Association. They made the point that the cost and the money could be spent on other priorities. Another point that they made was it would be unnecessarily disruptive for very little gain and it would not look good as the council had recently gone through a name change. So let's talk about that.We've gone through a review in 2010. We've gone through another report in 2012 which is what the Hon Hekia Parata considered then we had various announcements and the changes go through several years later. Now we're less than a couple of years in and as the submitters quite rightly point out with regard to section 348 it is disruptive and the money could be spent on other priorities. Also the other point that they raised was there is a risk of diluting the council's identity which could negatively impact on its important mahi.