Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeEducation Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:952. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Education Amendment Bill (No 2)In CommitteePart 1 Amendments to principal ActThe CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): This is debate on clauses 4 to 39 and schedules 1 to 3.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):I am very happy to take a call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2)—Grant Robertson: One of many.CHRIS HIPKINS:—one of many; one of the first of what I am sure will be many—and say that we will be wholeheartedly opposing this legislation. I am intending to go through clause by clause in fact and explain why that is.I want to turn my comments first of all to the clauses of the bill that establish the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand—EDUCANZ as it is to be known. I want to start by talking about the first amendment that I have put forward in my own name which would ensure that this new regulatory body for the teaching profession may in fact be able to develop the confidence of the profession by giving it some democratic oversight of that body. As it stands at the moment the New Zealand Teachers Council which this body replaces has members who are drawn from the sector and there is a democratic process for doing so. This new bill removes that entire democratic process and allows the Minister of Education to simply hand-pick the full membership of the board. That is not going to engender the confidence of the teaching profession and that is why the amendment that I have put forward restores democratic representation to the governing body of EDUCANZ and I think that is very important if the sector is going to support it.The Minister has indicated that she will be appointing at least five registered teachers. It is important to note that the original drafting of the bill allowed for only up to five of the nine members to be registered teachers. The Education and Science Committee has changed that to be that at least five of the nine members must be registered teachers. However they are still going to be hand-picked by the Minister. I think that that is going to be one of the things that creates resentment within the sector and that prevents the new EDUCANZ body from achieving the objective it is there to achieve. So if the objective is as the Government has indicated to raise the status of the teaching profession to provide leadership to the profession and to be an independent voice for teachers how can the body do that if the teachers themselves do not have any say over who represents them? If it is a representative body then where else would we say that a body is representative if the people whom it represents do not actually have any say over who makes it up? It is just a nonsense and therefore the amendment to restore a democratic process which I have put forward is a very important one.The second thing that I think we need to consider in light of that is some of the new powers that this legislation confers on the new body EDUCANZ. One of the things it will do and one of the things that I think is important—and I support the introduction of it but I think it needs to be jealously safeguarded—is the power for EDUCANZ to conduct what you could call own motion investigations. At the moment the existing Teachers Council can investigate the conduct of a teacher only where it receives a formal complaint. If it becomes aware in the process of investigating one formal complaint that there is another issue involving another teacher or even another issue involving the same teacher the council cannot investigate that unless someone then subsequently makes an additional complaint. So there is no provision in the existing legislation for the council to launch an own motion investigation.This bill changes that and I welcome that. I think that is important because we have had a bizarre situation where in order to investigate some complaints the director of the Teachers Council was the complainant. This was because actually the council would become aware of an issue in the process of investigating something it would not have the power to launch another investigation into that additional matter so therefore the director would be the person who made the complaint to the body that he—it was a he—was responsible for the oversight of. I think that that was a nonsense and therefore this new own motion investigation provision makes that clear.But there has to be some safeguard about this. One of the anxieties that we will hear back from the subjects of this legislation the teaching profession throughout the country is that if the Government is going to have the power to completely hand-pick who is on this body and the Government is giving them the power to conduct investigations on whatever they want to at their own instigation that is an awful lot of power that the Minister effectively is going to have. It is not actually going to make this body more independent; it is going to make it less independent and it is going to result in the profession having less confidence in it. So I think those two things together—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to give the call to Chris Hipkins but just before I do these microphones—oh it is working.CHRIS HIPKINS: I think we are having microphone issues all over the Chamber at the moment Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I was told it was not working so my apologies.CHRIS HIPKINS: That is all right—it seems to be working. I am happy to continue my comments. I am very happy to talk louder if that would be desirable to the Committee of course. So to return back to the comments that I was making—Grant Robertson: Stay on track.CHRIS HIPKINS: —to stay on track—that unlike the current Government the issue we are dealing with here in this legislation is around whether the teaching profession can have confidence in the regulatory body that is going to have oversight of the profession given its lack of direct representation on that body and the increased powers that that body is going to have. I think it cannot and that is one of the reasons that I have put forward the amendment that I have.I want to then turn to some of the additional powers in addition to the own motion investigations which I have mentioned. EDUCANZ is going to have responsibilities for the leadership of the profession for raising the status of the profession. I want to be clear here that there were 1032 submissions dealing with this particular part of the bill. So 1032 submissions dealt with the creation of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and there were fewer than a dozen of those that actually supported it. So there was overwhelming feedback from the people who are covered by EDUCANZ that they do not want it and they do not support it and that has fallen completely on deaf ears when it comes to the current Government. So having overwhelmingly rejected it they are still going to be subject to it.This body is supposed to raise the status of teaching. Well there are some interesting aspects to that the first of which is obviously that the profession clearly does not support it. The second is that if it is going to raise the status of the teaching profession why has the word “teaching” been banished from the name of the organisation? That was something that a lot of submitters commented on. They said that actually they wanted to see “teaching” back in the title of the organisation and I think that is fair. The third point—I think; I am up to about three now—that many submitters raised amongst the additional responsibilities the organisation is going to have is around the dissemination of best practice. The overwhelming feedback was that that is not the responsibility of this body. This body is a regulatory body. It is about ensuring that teachers are registered and that there is appropriate professional conduct and so on. This is not a body about sharing professional best practice. What that is going to do is result in the transfer of cost from the agencies of the State in the form of the Ministry of Education the Education Review Office and so on on to a body that is paid for through teacher registration fees. That is unjust and that is overwhelmingly the feedback from the profession. I think before the Government goes ahead and tries to impose these additional responsibilities on to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand it needs to make sure that it is supported by the profession. I can say from the submissions that that certainly is not the case. Those were some of the concerns that were raised. There were many many others. Overwhelmingly the teaching profession was saying that it does not support this legislation. The question really becomes whether it can discharge its responsibilities effectively if the people who are covered by it do not support it and the answer to that clearly has to be no.My colleagues are going to talk about the changes to tertiary governance that are covered in this part and I will come back to those in a subsequent intervention I guess if I get the opportunity to do so. But I want to talk more about this: I mentioned that one of the issues around the regulatory nature and the responsibilities of the regulatory body is setting professional standards. The Teachers Council as it exists at the moment sets a code of ethics which is aspirational but it does set minimum standards for what the conduct I guess of the teaching profession should be but it is more aspirational than that. It is more than saying this is not about setting minimum expectations; it is about saying this is what we are striving for and it is much more than just the minimums. So yes it clearly establishes minimums by definition but it actually goes further and says actually we want to go further than that and we want to be an aspirational profession. Once upon a time of course the National Government claimed to be aspirational. It no longer does. Instead this bill replaces the aspirational code of ethics with a very arbitrary code of conduct which would be narrower and set minimum expectations for the profession. Overwhelmingly those who submitted to the Education and Science Committee said they did not think that was good enough. They actually thought that the teaching profession should be striving for more than just a minimum code of conduct. I absolutely agree with them. That is why I have put forward an additional amendment to return the focus to the code of ethics which is an aspirational document rather than the code of conduct which is around minimum expectations.Finally in this contribution I want to talk about the requirement for the council to audit 10 percent of teacher registrations. That is going to create a huge bureaucratic burden which teachers will have to pay for.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):I am delighted to take a call on this important piece of legislation the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and would like to reiterate what my colleague Chris Hipkins has said about the submitters. I think for those of us who attended the hearings there was an amazing consistency in the submissions from the many voices of people and we really heard very clear messages about what is important. Hence the Green Party is opposing the bill and we are putting up 10 Supplementary Order Papers on different aspects of the bill in an effort to make sure that the bill could actually reflect what the profession wants out of its council.If we go back to how change is best achieved it is interesting to think about whether change is best achieved by imposition or inspiration. Nobody disagrees that the Teachers Council could go through a review process. It is a necessary part of any institution that it be reviewed and that it be reviewed by Government which puts money in and by the profession which should own it in the professional sense. Clearly the profession is not happy with what has been suggested for this organisation. We had an overwhelming number of submissions that clearly stated that the profession did not want the Teachers Council to be turned from a registration body run by professionals where at least some of the people were appointed by those professionals to a creature of the Minister of Education of the day. This is basically what has happened. It has become a creature of the Minister of the day. Hence the large number of submissions that focused on the issue of representation. Although we did have a victory on one issue which is to get teachers on to the council I would like first to address the issue of representation which is in one of my Supplementary Order Papers.One of the problems that we have with representation is teachers not being able to choose their own people. The field is now open to anyone to vote and every single one of the nine appointments will have to be accepted by the Minister. That is not the situation at the moment. At the moment though the Minister appoints some of the people we actually have a large number of teachers engaged in voting for the representatives. They have just been through that process and we have seen the result which is some very high-calibre people being voted on by the profession. We do not see why—and hence Supplementary Order Paper 29 we have put up—there is such a lack of trust in the ability of teachers to govern themselves.We support as do the teachers who came and submitted—and it was largely teachers organisations that came and submitted—an improvement to registration. They actually would like to see an improvement to registration. There was no disputing the support for the improvement to registration and the importance of having tight and heavily monitored guidelines for making sure who gets to work with our children because this is what this Teachers Council has been about. It has been about who gets to work with our kids. When there has been problems then it has been really important that we look at the loopholes in the structures and make sure that we cannot have loopholes and that the vulnerable—the children—will not be exposed to people who should not be there. That is one of the issues that we wanted to raise in the Supplementary Order Papers—the critical issue of representation. We really do believe that if we want change it should be inspired not imposed and teachers themselves should have control of their own professional body. You have already heard that from a number of us in the first levels of debate but we heard it thousands of times—literally thousands of times—at the Education and Science Committee. Day after day after day in different cities we heard people say: “Please. We want to represent ourselves. We are professionals.”This leads me on to another of my Supplementary Order Papers Supplementary Order Paper 35 which relates to the question of ethics versus conduct. Again the professionals were saying: “If you really want to lift the status of the profession which you claim to do in this bill why don’t you respect the fact that the code of ethics is a fundamental recognition of that? Why are you going for a code of conduct which is far more about a tick-box public service control model than recognising our professionalism?”. It should be remembered that the fees that teachers pay are for their own professional body. Therefore they should have the type of code that reflects their responsibilities their beliefs and their capacity as professionals. The medical profession does as was pointed out to us numerous times as do other bodies so why not the teachers? If we are really serious about valuing teachers and making sure that we have the best possible education system in this country this was the moment to listen to those submitters. But unfortunately the Government has not listened. The bill has not been changed sufficiently to do that. That is very disappointing. A code of ethics would have been a signal from the Government that we recognise that the teaching profession is more than capable of distinguishing the difference between conduct and ethics and that ethics require a broader deeper and more educational approach.Continuing with some of the other Supplementary Order Papers on the functions of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ)—these are really important issues because again the status of the profession is at stake in this. The idea of the broad powers of this new council—it is interesting but it is very vague. It does not really address the issue that the council was set up for. It is changing its function profoundly without again the support of the profession. If it is going to raise the status of the profession the way this is structured it relies far more on the actions of the Minister and the Ministry of Education. It does not actually raise the status of the profession at all. The purpose statement of the new body is really vague; it is not clear. The status of teaching relies much more on matters such as employment conditions and remuneration than something that the council itself can control. We do not really need a ministerial body duplicating the efforts of other bodies that we already have for raising the status of the profession and for the functions that are suggested. It will not lead to safe high-quality leadership in teaching unless it has buy-in from those people unless it is the core business.The debate remains. What is the core business of this council? I do not think that was clarified at all. We did not hear in these statements about the function and raising status etc. what they mean and how that is core business. Teachers were very concerned that they were going to pay fees for something that was vague and that could rely on certain things happening with that money that did not raise the status of the profession that it was just fashion of the day or an opportunity to spend money which they had paid for to do things that they did not have any power over. For example if the council started to run expensive advertising campaigns or give out awards or invite new standards or criteria which no one had any proper input into. These costs could then be sheeted home to the teachers who have not got those powers who do not want to change the functions in the way that has been suggested. We are going to say that if you are going to put a cost on teachers we ought to listen to what it is that they want done. That is another of our Supplementary Order Papers. There are several of them relating to the functions of EDUCANZ because it is critical that the functions are not only clear but that they are supported by the people who have to carry them out.We are also very concerned about the clauses in the bill around changing the name of the council because of the symbolic importance of the word “teacher” and we understand why so many submitters raised this. It may seem like a petty and minor point to some people but actually it is quite critical if you recognise that teaching is a profession that we want to uplift in this country and therefore a teachers council will understand exactly what a teachers council does. EDUCANZ—that could be any NGO it could be any consultancy it could be any private body. It is one of those meaningless names that does not actually inspire the confidence of the people whom it is supposed to represent. So it is a very concerning issue and a symbolic issue rather than a profound content issue. But people were afraid that it would flow into content.The clauses around limited authority to teach—we want to change those so we have Supplementary Order Paper 25 about skill shortages. We have no problem with the limited authority to teach so long as it is related to skill shortages. But actually what we heard around the country from the submitters is that there are not these skill shortages so why are the limited authority to teach clauses being expanded in this? Is it something to do with charter schools? Is it the fact the Government wants to make sure there are more unqualified people in front of groups of children who have been identified by it as priority learners? We do not know. But when many of us from the Opposition asked at the select committee: “Do you have skill shortages?” the schools said: “No that’s not the issue. Not in that way. We do not need an extension to the limited authority to teach.” So that was another one.We would like to change the law to make it clear that we support the limited authority to teach where there are skill shortages but not as a blanket increase in the number of people who are coming into schools without having the pedagogical background to understand the difference between knowing a subject and teaching a subject. That is a profound difference. It is a difference particularly for primary schools but it applies to secondary schools as well. When you are teaching a person as opposed to a subject you have to understand the dynamics and the pedagogy not just be really good at understanding how to do some particular thing or have even a knowledge of quantum physics. That is not how it works if you want people to learn. So we are disappointed in those clauses and we are making those suggestions. In the late stages my colleague and I will talk about the clauses around tertiary governance. It is very very concerning.Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education):Tēnā tātou. Tēnā koe Mr Chairperson. I rise to take a short call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I would like to begin by thanking and acknowledging the Education and Science Committee for the recommendations that it has made which have been included in the bill—in particular the recommendation about the appointment of members to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ).I want to start with the point about changing from the New Zealand Teachers Council to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and answer some of the concerns that seem still to be apparent in the minds of members notwithstanding that they spent so long on the select committee. The New Zealand Teachers Council is at law a Crown entity. It must obey and work within certain restrictions and parameters that apply to Crown entities. What is being set out in this bill is that this new council will be statutorily independent. It will be able to make its decisions as an independent body.Education is of course of great interest to many New Zealanders. It is important given that this public good if you like—this public right—is to be managed or governed by a statutorily independent entity that there are some levers that the Government of the day is able to exercise to ensure that that public good is being governed in the best possible way. There are only two of those levers in this bill. One is the opportunity for the Government of the day to ask for reports and the other is the opportunity to appoint council members.One of the recommendations that Education and Science Committee made which has been accepted and which I applaud is that five of the nine appointees must not only be registered teachers but hold current practising certificates. I thank the committee for picking up that anomaly and correcting it. It is important that the majority of members on that council are from the profession. But let me be clear: firstly the appointment will be made by the Minister but all teachers all education organisations all parents groups and all members of the public will have the ability to nominate for consideration those people who they think should be on the board and be considered for appointment. Secondly the competencies and capabilities of those nominees will be clear and gazetted so that we understand that we are putting together a body that represents the broad range of experiences and expertise that will be required for governance of this council. It will be an entirely transparent and public process that can be subject to the scrutiny of all given the importance of this appointment.The next question is why the name is changing. Well we have an education system that is of sectors joined loosely: the early childhood sector the primary sector the secondary sector and the tertiary sector. But New Zealand’s children do not consider themselves to be in a sector. They are having their educational experience from 0 to 18 years of age generally which is the provision for our free and compulsory education schooling system. What we are trying to do through the educational council is provide for educators and teachers who operate in the early childhood sector as well as teacher leaders and principals who operate throughout.So although teaching as a qualification is an integral and critical part of this we want to try to ensure that we are embracing the entire system so that the focus can be on the students their learning their achievement and the contribution that these professionals can make to it. It is the Educational Council of Aotearoa New Zealand because we also wanted to indicate that this country was founded on a bicultural platform that it is a platform for our increasingly diverse and multicultural and plural modern nation so that name is not a meaningless name as has been suggested by previous speakers but it is evocative of the inclusiveness that we think is important to characterise an education system of the 21st century.The next issue that has been of some concern for members is the distinction between ethics and conduct. Clearly these are not mutually exclusive. Conduct must reflect the ethics and values that are held to be important by a body. So I just wanted to make that short contribution. Thank you.TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First):I thank the Minister of Education for clarifying a couple of issues. Can I raise a couple of others that perhaps the Minister could take another call on to clarify. One is with regard to the name change and the removal of the word “teacher” inside the name of the council and replaced with “educators”. It is good to have the Minister point out that this body will now cover all those who are termed “educators” which is an interesting term. It has become quite prevalent particularly since this Government came into power.At the moment it is interesting that inside early childhood education educators are home-based educators. They are trained and qualified and registered teachers and they are people with specific skills. We move into the compulsory sector of schooling and we now have the partnership school legislation which also has educators but not trained and qualified teachers in it. Can I ask the Minister then whether this body will firstly be creating a register of educators in the same way that it creates a teachers register? If and when any of those educators break the rules there will be a public record of those educators so that they cannot move from one facility to another. If this body creates a register of educators will those educators have to pay the amount the registration fee that is going to fund all the functions of this particular body; if not why not?Let us move on. That is the first question around the name. The next thing the Minister mentioned was around the code of conduct as opposed to the code of ethics. Let us get down to brass tacks about language shall we. Conduct is your behaviour—Hon Hekia Parata: Correct.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Minister. So a code of conduct dictates your behaviour and therein lies the interesting point. I also note that in the department’s report it says that the code of conduct so how you will now behave—I beg your pardon; how educators will behave but we are not sure whether educators will be incorporated by this body and registered by and tracked by it. We know only that teachers will be at this stage. This will be created in consultation with stakeholders. We just had 1525 stakeholders—bar 13—come and actually say that they did not want it so that will be an interesting consultation period. I wonder who is going to take that consultation with those people or with what people about this code of conduct as to how you will behave.I think quite reasonably the sector is concerned that with these outlines of how you will behave one of the things that will come out is that you will not criticise the Minister or the ministry. You will not publicly go out there and defend what you believe is bad practice with regard to the teaching and education of our children because there will now be a code of conduct that stops you from doing so.But because I am not confident that I am going to get a second call I want to also move on to another piece of Part 1 which is actually the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. The Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 21 says: In clause 38 delete new section 353(2) (page 35 lines 25 to 27).” Those lines are: “When performing its function and exercising its powers the Education Council must act in accordance with the rules of natural justice.” That is the only time “natural justice” is mentioned and the Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister requests it be removed.Would the Minister stand up and take a call and perhaps just clarify for me particularly and I am sure for the teachers out there why she feels the need to remove the rules of natural justice from this legislation and this body when dealing with this profession. I will leave it there because I am hoping—very much hoping—that this is such an important statement about removing natural justice from this group of professionals and that the reason why it was not discussed at select committee was that nobody asked about it then but it is now in a Supplementary Order Paper.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):I was waiting to see whether the Minister would respond to Tracy Martin’s question. I am sure she will at a later moment in this debate.I want to focus my first contribution on the changes to tertiary governance that are covered by clause 6 which amends sections 171 and 173 of the Education Act. This is a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. There has been no evidence provided by the Government for why it is making these changes. There have been comprehensive submissions from everybody involved in the tertiary sector to say that these changes are unnecessary ill-considered and inconsistent with international norms and best practices. The submissions say that the changes will undermine the integrity of institutions and undermine the autonomy of institutions and that they will threaten the international reputation of New Zealand’s tertiary institutions. Yet Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata come to this House put this in front of us and say that it must happen. Well there is no justification.I refer to the regulatory impact statement which helpfully has a heading “Problem definition”. It is not a good start for the problem definition when it begins to compare these changes with the changes to the governance of polytechs which were put through in 2009. The regulatory impact statement says: “Changes to ITP governance in 2009 resulted from poor financial and educational performance in the ITP sector. Unlike this situation … there are no immediate issues …” with the university sector. So the first element of the problem definition actually is not there anymore.I would say as an aside that in fact after the changes were made to polytechnic governance to restrict the membership of staff and students financial performance for polytechs declined. So the very reason that was given for doing it in the first place actually turned out to make the opposite happen.But that actually is not the justification here. The justification here talks about: “Greater competitive pressures from further internationalisation of the education market through the emergence of online provision …” and the fact that students can now access courses from all over the world. Well I know what a good response to that would be. Take students off the councils! Take off the council the very people who are making these decisions that are relevant. So that is the first part of the problem definition that does not make any sense.The second part of the alleged problem is the importance of better responding to areas of high occupational demand. Well actually there is not a lot of evidence that universities are not doing that. So does it make any sense whatsoever then to remove guaranteed representation of employers from councils? That is what this bill does. So if there is an issue and a problem about whether universities are responding to the need for the skills required for occupations that are emerging would it not be better to guarantee representation from employers on it? But no the Government wants to take away guaranteed representation from employers as well.I move on to other parts of the problem definition and to the importance of universities: “Making strategic investments to enhance their attractiveness to students and emphasise their particular areas of expertise”. Again why then take away the guaranteed representation of that class of people—of students the people who are supposedly needing to be attracted into these institutions?This part of the legislation is a solution in search of a problem. This problem definition is absolutely empty. Therefore you have to look around and ask what the reasons would be. Mr Joyce has never come up with one other than an ideological commitment to smaller governance. Members on the other side of the House will be familiar with Mr Joyce’s role in this during his time as general secretary of whatever the equivalent is in the National Party when he took the board of the National Party and reduced it in size as well so that he could control it and control the National Party. That is what this is about. It is about control—unbelievably from the National Party the party that is supposedly about freedom. It is about control. This is the most controlling Government—Hon David Parker: They brought in Jason Ede.GRANT ROBERTSON: I am coming to that. This is the most controlling Government that you will ever see.The other part of Steven Joyce’s justification here is about the stifling of dissent. The organisations within the tertiary sector that have put in the most criticism of the Government’s policies are staff and students and it is staff and students whose guaranteed representation is being taken away.So there we have the desire of Steven Joyce to control more institutions that have the role in our society of being the critic and the conscience and then also to stifle dissent. Does this sound familiar to anybody? This is exactly the operation that has been run from the ninth floor of the Beehive—a smear machine to control and get rid of dissent. The vile smear machine of the ninth floor is represented here in this legislation. It is almost as if this legislation was dictated to Jason Ede and sent to Cameron Slater as well. That is what this looks like because it comes from the same principle of control of these institutions.But it is not just the Labour Party saying this. It is coming from places like Auckland University and Stuart McCutcheon—Hon Simon Bridges: The Green Party too.GRANT ROBERTSON: I do not think that Stuart McCutcheon would be a member of the Green Party Mr Bridges. I think Stuart McCutcheon’s politics might lie considerably elsewhere. But he and other vice-chancellors and other members of the tertiary sector have been absolutely clear that this will undermine their role. They look to the international examples because reducing the number of people on a council perhaps down to eight from 12 you might think was in line with international examples. But it is not—The University of Melbourne 22; Queensland University 22; Cambridge University 24; Oxford University 25; Harvard University 32. They are all ranked higher. Stanford University is 33 and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 72. At the moment membership on New Zealand university councils has to be between 12 and 20. This is a number that has worked well. There is no problem here and internationally we will be out of step. A random sample of 50 of the top 200 universities in the world shows that the size of the council is irrelevant to the performance of that institution in the top 200. We want more New Zealand universities in the top 200 and instead what we have got is a Minister tinkering around and trying to take more control.If you want more evidence of that Mr Chair these proposals in this bill move the proportion of council members appointed by a Minister from 20 percent to 25 percent to 33 percent to 40 percent. So the Minister now takes control of nearly half the membership of these councils. These are institutions that are meant to be autonomous. These are institutions that are meant to be independent. They play a critical role in our society of standing up to Government and now Steven Joyce wants to control up to 40 percent of the membership. So nothing in this bill will do anything to improve the performance of universities. In fact what it will do is simply ideologically reduce the size and increase the control that the Minister thinks he can have over this.And what about the staff and students who make up institutions? Time and again people came to the select committee and said that the value added by having staff and students at the table was immeasurable. That is where the voice of the people was heard. In the case of Auckland University it talked in its submission about the 6000 staff the 40000 students and the 64000 graduates whose participation in a university council is no longer guaranteed.These measures will undermine our tertiary institutions. They will increase the control of the Government and for no reason other than an ideological wish by Steven Joyce to silence his critics. Well that is not good enough. On this side of the House we actually stand for a tertiary sector that is independent that can play its role as the critic of conscience in society and that is not beholden to Steven Joyce and his mates.It is not like this came up just the other day. This is about the history of universities going back centuries. It is about the fundamental principles of institutional autonomy academic freedom and yes of equity. And if we want to see equity as part of our tertiary sector then having the people who are affected by decisions that are made at the council table is vital. All we have been asking for in this debate is the ability for students for staff for employers and for people in communities who are affected by tertiary institutions to be given the right to have a say.Steven Joyce justified this piece of legislation on the basis that one university Canterbury University wanted to change the membership of its council. It could do exactly what it wanted to do under the current law. The current law says 12 to 20 members. It has worked well in almost every tertiary institution in this country. There is no problem here. Tertiary institutions are doing relatively well financially despite the fact that the Government has actually cut their funding over the last 5 years. There is nothing in this piece of legislation to justify the claims that Steven Joyce has made about why he wants to make a change. When and if this legislation passes it will be a shame on this country.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):I would also like to concentrate primarily on clause 6 of the bill in the first of my many contributions on this piece of legislation. Although Steven Joyce has dumped his tertiary reform into a bill of Hekia Parata’s there are actually some common themes that run through the two aspects of the bill. My colleagues Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson have drawn these out largely. Primarily what these reforms are doing is taking away the representative nature of our education system and investing a whole lot more power in the Minister of Education and the Minister of Tertiary Education Skills and Employment.In the second reading of this bill the Minister of Tertiary Education Skills and Employment in his contribution to the House said there is nothing to worry about here because academic freedom and the role of the university are protected and enshrined in sections 160 and 161 of the primary legislation. Well if we have a look at new sections 171 through 176 inserted by this legislation what we will see is a number of clauses that actually undermine sections 160 and 161 of the primary legislation—that very fundamental purpose of what it is a university is to do and protecting the fundamental right of our universities to academic freedom.So if we turn our attention firstly to new section 171B covering the matters to be considered when appointing members to a university council. What is required to be considered is that the appointments reflect the socio-economic diversity of the community in which the institution sits. Although this is an admirable requirement to put into the legislation and certainly nothing we took any issue with what we do have is some sympathy with a number of submitters in the ability to ensure that that representation of communities can be reflected in a council that is so small.We heard from a number of speakers about being situated in incredibly diverse communities right along the socio-economic axis—various people who needed representation. Their ability to do this in such a small council when the Minister was going to be appointing such a high proportion of the people to the council was indeed problematic.As my colleague Grant Robertson has alluded to no case for change has been made for this legislation. We have had the Minister tell us it was about creating innovative and efficient universities that could foot it in the world. Well what we have seen is that our universities actually have smaller councils already than a number of far more successful universities around the world have. What we also heard around the reduction in the size of councils and the erosion of academic freedom—and I will go through some more of the clauses that bring this into effect—was that a number of the vice-chancellors and indeed universities in New Zealand had a very real concern about what this would do to our international reputation and our ability to market our academic institutions in order for them to be able to be seen as a credible place for international students to come to and undertake their studies. Because what we can see is the severity of what is happening to that core purpose of a university and its institutional and academic freedom.If we turn our attention next to new section 176A inserted by clause 9 of the bill what we can see there is the individual duties of the members being defined. One the things that really comes into play here—which we can see in new section 176B(1)—is that the duties are not accorded to the institution or indeed the council but to the Minister. This is something that a number of submitters rightly took a great deal of umbrage to. They expressed real concern that the duties of the members of the governing body of a university would be answerable to the Minister is a fundamental change in the way we govern our universities. A fundamental change that makes the people who are running a university accountable to a Government Minister rather than to the university itself undermines the very notion of what a university is. This is something that needs to be taken very seriously. For centuries universities have been colleges of colleagues—that is where the word comes from—who have run successful academic institutions. We are not saying that there cannot be any accountability but every member of that appointed council is going to be primarily and firstly accountable to the Minister.It does not stop there in terms of what this does to erode academic freedom if we turn to new section 176C and look at the removal clauses that are there and the powers that the Minister has to remove members from the council. The Minister not only has these powers to remove their own appointments the Minister also has the power to remove any member appointed to the council whether it be by the institution or by the Minister themselves.This is a truly frightening prospect when you put this together with the previous clause which makes the members of those governing bodies accountable to that Minister. If you do not do what that Minister wants they have the power to remove you. Remember we are talking about organisations that are meant to be the critic and conscience of our society. We are not talking about the board of directors of a company; we are talking about a university which has a particular function within our society and it is being eroded by this legislation.The Minister has not made the case for change. I invite the Minister in the chair the Hon Hekia Parata—I realise this is not under her responsibility but she is the Minister in the chair—to stand up and make the case for change. Tell us why it is that we are departing from centuries-old traditions of how we ensure that academic freedom is guarded and why it is that we are departing from centuries-old traditions of how we have a critic and a conscience in our society because the case has not been made.The universities are opposed to it the vice-chancellors are opposed to it and Universities New Zealand is opposed to it. This is a serious and grave change to an important set of institutions in our society and I would like to hear from the Minister why those changes are being made. We need to consider how all these new sections interact. It is not enough for Minister Joyce to say that there is nothing to see here and nothing to worry about because sections 160 and 161 of the principal Act remain intact. They do not because they are being eroded through a series of clauses that are contained in this legislation.The case for change needs to be made by this Government because this is nothing short of disassembling an important institution in our country at the very time that this Government is showing us we need institutions that will hold power to account. This is a Government that is intent on shutting down discussion. It is a Government that is intent on shutting down criticism of itself. We have seen its own smear machine that seeks to shut down dissenters. We are now seeing the Government introduce legislation that attempts to curtail the ability of our universities to fulfil that function in our society and it is not good enough.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National):I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No. This is a major bill and it really has only one substantive part. I am not prepared to take it.GARETH HUGHES (Green):Mr Chair kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. In this speech I would like to limit my contribution to looking at clause 6 in Part 1 which basically gives the Minister oversight of the university councils. It takes over what the Government did in 2009 with the institutes of technology and polytechnics sector.What the Green Party cares about is quality education. What it cares about is making sure students have a voice and representation around the governance tables at our universities which clause 6 will disestablish in favour of the Minister deciding who will be on there. What we want to see is a good student voice coming through the top levels of a university because ultimately this is what our universities are for. They are not just businesses. They are not just corporations. In fact they are there to educate to inspire and to grow the New Zealand economy with trade enterprise and academic skills.We face a challenging and new time for our university sector. I think now is a critical time to have student voices staff voices and other representatives around that table to make sure our universities are planning for the future. That is exactly what the regulatory impact assessment said. When you look in that report at all the challenges that universities are facing I do not know why you would not want students around that table to provide their insight and advice.Obviously it is an incredibly unpopular change. Of the more than a thousand submissions 474 were opposed to this in particular. Only five—only five people—thought this was a good idea. I invite the Minister to explain exactly what the rationale is. Why are we doing this? The submitters raised numerous concerns around institutional autonomy our international rankings—which actually measure institutional autonomy—why it was beneficial to get rid of student and staff voices. How are we going to make sure diversity is actually represented there and where is the evidence for smaller university councils without those guaranteed representative roles? Where is the evidence? Where is the harm that they are trying to address through this legislative change?I would like the Minister to actually answer the question which is: “Why do we need smaller councils?”. When you look at the corporate evidence in New Zealand in fact the corporate evidence of New Zealand and Australian businesses shows that larger councils or boards actually have better financial performances than smaller ones. So if this is simply around a corporate argument for efficiency I ask the Minister to look at the evidence that is portrayed.If there is an issue as there was in the institutes of technology and polytechnics sector in 2009 what is it? Where is the financial mismanagement? Where is the harm they are trying to address? And where is the international example? When you look around the world you have got the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—they have got 70 people on their council—and Cambridge University has got 30 people. This is why I have put in Supplementary Order Paper 24 to address three issues. The first issue is getting rid of clause 6 by repealing it. This ideological flawed approach to university governance which gets rid of staff and students’ voices should not proceed. There is no evidence there is no support from the public and there is no good reason why this should go ahead. The second part of the Supplementary Order Paper would ensure that tertiary institutions accurately represent the demographics of their constituents and their support staff. By repealing clause 6 I am essentially proposing that we return to the status quo but I think we can do better when it comes to reporting and monitoring diversity. The last part of this Supplementary Order Paper would limit the length of term of ministerial appointments from 4 to 2 years.There is a place an appropriate place for ministerial appointments—not in the dominant position of up to 40 percent which is what this legislation would achieve. What I want to see is university councils representing their students and their staff actively planning for the future and addressing those challenges because they have got the best advice the advice of not just customers—as I imagine some National members may view them—but the students the life and soul of universities; what they are actually there for.What I do not want to see is university councils that look more and more like Minister Steven Joyce that look more and more like the Government’s view. I think we should make sure we ensure diversity and transparency in the university councils. Kia ora.Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato):This bill is what it is: a razor that takes away another slice of the public education system and another slice of what makes our tertiary institutions really effective and responsive to delivering community education. It is taking away the rights and opportunities of students of staff and of the community to have a say in what is happening at their local tertiary institution. So it is what it is: a razor to further slice and dice the public education system in ways that are not helpful. I am really concerned because I did listen to the response of the Minister—and she carefully went through the purposes of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) which will take over the Teachers Council—and I am thinking to myself: “You know principals and teachers in all our communities are respected leaders yet they cannot lead their own profession.” That is what the Government is saying: “They cannot be trusted to lead their own profession.”Where is the sense in that? We let health professionals lead the health profession because the care of people is absolutely critical. Yet we cannot let the teaching profession lead its organisation to ensure that the minds of the next generation can be shaped by people who know absolutely what they are doing. In fact I am really concerned listening to the Minister’s explanation of why independent people will be appointed to EDUCANZ because it sounds to me that EDUCANZ will be running the teaching profession like a business. In a similar way to how the Government wants to ensure that charter schools will be there to privatise the education system it seems that EDUCANZ will be there to privatise the way in which the teaching profession operates.We only need to go back to the comments about the difference between a code of conduct and a code of ethics. With regard to the code of ethics it is a lot like how it works in the health profession where you lift up the standards of the profession to a degree where excellence is the threshold. A code of conduct is very transactional. It forces teaching into the mode where you do your job and if you do not do certain things and tick certain boxes well then you may not get your registration. That makes absolute sense when we consider the fact that the Government has been pushing through national standards. Teachers throughout many schools are saying that national standards do not prepare our children for the future in terms of being innovative and creative learners.In fact national standards force young people to learn by rote learning—the bad old days when the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and just lectures to the kids. You have to pass tests and that is the only way that we are assessing learning. Well that is the past. We need an education system that prepares our young people for the future. We need to trust that our teachers are able to arbitrate over their own profession and set good ethical standards and be able to ensure that the profession can be the trusted profession that it always has been in New Zealand.This bill moves away from what I believe is core to what will be a successful public education system. I want to come back in particular to the provisions in the bill from new sections 379 to 387 inserted by clause 38 and make these particular comments. The current Teachers Council has provision for advisory groups for Māori-medium education and early childhood education yet the way in which the bill now reads EDUCANZ will create these boards. There is no guarantee that those boards will make provision for Māori-medium education or early childhood groups. That said the important element of this is that we cannot get away from the things that have been successful. It does not make any sense so I would actually appreciate if the Minister of Education responded to that to give some assurance because it is unclear. She well knows that I was not a member of the Education and Science Committee so the question may be simple to answer and I would appreciate an answer.Also many submissions as I have read in the select committee records show that the education profession itself was not very supportive of EDUCANZ because it believes that its members need to be freely elected—democratically elected—by the profession. That was such an important point that came through from a number of schools and submissions that went to the select committee. Obviously the Government did not take on board those particular recommendations.The other aspect that was commented on—and I think the point was well made by Chris Hipkins our spokesperson on education—was on the issue of the code of ethics. The code of ethics was actually developed by the teaching profession—and I am speaking to new section 387 which is inserted by clause 38—and that is such an important point because again these are trusted leaders of our community who know their profession many of whom have gone through an extensive qualification process. In order to ensure that they can lift up professional standards having a code of ethics is by far the best way to ensure that. In fact when we go and visit our schools principals and teachers will say that the best thing about the New Zealand education system is actually the collegial nature within which it is able to share best practice and learning behaviours and actually build on those types of opportunities. The code of ethics helps drive leadership.I am really concerned that the code of conduct will reduce the way in which teachers are going to be assessed which will build on the narrative that actually the Government’s move towards performance pay based on the code of conduct sounds a little bit not right. I am also concerned that there is a feeling of mistrust in terms of the way in which teachers are now beginning to feel within the schools—and you certainly hear it on the ground; I am sure actually that members of the Government will be well aware of that—and they do not feel that they are trusted any longer by the Government. Some of that may be relevant to the discussion that we have had on the code of ethics.The other part that I would like to comment on is the limited authority to teach. As they currently operate as we all know the many limited authorities to teach that exist within our schools are fulfilling specific skill sets that are missing school by school. This bill will change the way in which you recognise the skill set of an individual and the gaining of the authority to educate and that will allow those people to go anywhere. But the problem with that is that it is harder to assess where these individuals best fit. I would still maintain that the limited authority to teach gives far greater autonomy to schools to be able to determine—unique to their community to their demographic and to the skills that they are able to attract into their community—the type of approach for that school because then that will enable the granting of a registration for that purpose and for a period of time. But if you have these free-roaming people with the authority to educate it is much harder to get a grasp of where they are going and whether in fact they are filling gaps.The biggest concern that I have relates to charter schools and that is covered in clause 4A of Part 1. That is a fact—and we have debated it many times in this Chamber—that charter schools can have non-registered teachers. It seems to me that at a time when we need the profession to lift standards and to be able to ensure that it is in control of setting those standards we are saying that with charter schools they can do whatever they want. As long as the contract between the Crown and the sponsor enables certain conditions to be met the individuals they get to teach and the quality of their ability to teach is actually something that sits very much within the terms of the contract. It cannot be assessed in the same way that we are expecting teachers within the public education system to be assessed and I just think that that is wrong.This bill continues to act as a razor that slices and dices the public education system in a way that is not helpful. It continues to reinforce to the teaching profession that teachers and principals cannot be trusted and that they cannot arbitrate over their own profession and it continues to address issues that I think are not real to the challenges that communities face. Delivering education that is responsive to communities—to the demographic—actually requires a community voice. We know how hard it is within schools to attract people on to the boards of trustees yet in tertiary institutions when we are going for higher qualifications the Government is saying: “Well we’re going to take the community voice out of it. We’re not going to recognise the demographic that this tertiary institution is responding to. There is no need to have those types of views reflected at the strategic level to drive the delivery of tertiary education.”So how are you going to retain the high numbers of people who are not able to get there—and we need them to walk through the door and stay in tertiary education—if you do not have their voice reflected at the strategic governance level? I am not sure but I think that if we peel away all the surface talk of the Government we will find some very challenging statistics for the Government. It is harder and harder for tertiary institutions—ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua):I move That the question be now put.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour):I rise to address and request a response from the Minister of Education as to why the Minister thinks that the Government should have overall control of universities because that is the effect of having the ability to appoint 40 percent of members of any board. Indeed securities legislation is illustrative of this point. If a company acquiring shares in another company acquires something like either 40 percent of the voting power on a board or 40 percent of the shares it is treated as taking it over.Dr Megan Woods: A hostile takeover.Hon DAVID PARKER: That is right. It is treated as taking it over and it has got to be fair to the minority even though the minority in that sense is more than 50 percent. If you take the case in point here if the Minister has the authority to appoint 40 percent of a university council which is what the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) if passed will allow all it has got to do is get in some cases the vote of one other person on the university council or the board or whatever the Government is going to call them—one other vote in addition to the 40 percent that the Minister is going to have the right to appoint. We have had no justification for that. No justification has been attempted by Steven Joyce and no justification has been attempted by the Minister in the chair Hekia Parata.There is enormous change coming in the provision of tertiary education around the world. We are seeing enormous change as a consequence of information technology. Universities have a number of functions some of which this Government does not like. This Government would prefer universities to be merely technical training colleges. It does not value learning that does not have direct economic output—and that is absolutely clear from the statements that you have from the likes of Steven Joyce—and yet the social purpose of universities through the centuries has been much broader than merely vocational training. We ought not to elevate vocational training which is part of the role of universities to being more important than other values. This change allows Steven Joyce to get his way and to elevate vocational training further. What will it do? It will also suppress dissent including political dissent. That is one of the reasons why the Government is removing the right of university councils to say that they want to have student representatives. This legislation is saying that they cannot say that. It is not saying that it is going to leave it to the universities to choose as to whether they do; it is going to remove that current right of student representation that exists in some institutions. Why is that important? Well we know that when things go wrong in society political activism is one of the things that causes them to come right and therefore protects democracy. We have got some terrible things happening at the moment in New Zealand in respect of political standards. I would expect one of the societal responses to that to come from universities and political activism at universities from both academics and students at those universities. When we had the worst period in New Zealand’s democracy prior to the recent events it was actually under the Rt Hon Robert Muldoon’s National Government when we had apartheid controversies and we had Springbok tours. Where was the heart of the dissent coming from? It was in large part from university activism—it was. University activists and university students were the heart of activism against apartheid and against the Robert Muldoon regime which effectively did not push against it in the way the New Zealand population wanted it to.One of the other challenges that is coming to the university system arises from online learning. The cost of tertiary education fees is going to plummet around the world and this presents real challenges to university funding models that are already pressed. Already and Stuart McCutcheon of the University of Auckland has told me this the profits of the University of Auckland—the annual amount that it has got to put towards its additional capital expenditure and to improve the university—is about the same as the amount of fees that it gathers from foreign students. There is the importance of foreign students now because the level of funding that comes from the university—the amount of funding that is in part controlled by the generosity of Government provision—is so lean now that universities are increasingly reliant on foreign fee-paying students in order to make the budget balance. The challenges that are faced by that funding model are immense because universities are going to face competition from internet-based teaching programmes which will be of supremely high quality including from superstar lecturers from around the world from universities which are frankly overall in the international rankings far higher ranked than the highest of New Zealand rankings. Those universities are going to be competing into New Zealand and they are also going to be competing for those foreign fee-paying students who are already a source of revenue that is higher than the overall profitability of the major universities.How do you get through that transition? Well you have actually got to trust universities and the wide groups of stakeholders who go to universities including students and the staff who work there to manage their way through that challenging changing circumstance in the future just as they have managed their way through the challenging circumstances as they have changed over the last hundreds of years. How have they done that? They have done that by being allowed to be independent as they balance the different interests of the different stakeholders who are involved. They do include the Government because the Government provides part of the money and of course the Government has got an interest in the education policy but the stakeholders also include students and they also include staff. Those are the sorts of reasons why all of the stakeholders—other than I think one submitter according to the select committee report—came along and asked why the Government is changing the make-up of university councils because they are inhibiting the ability of universities to find the right pathway through this very challenging circumstance which if managed well will mean that more people will be able to get a good education for less money and more of the money that is spent on education can go into world-leading research which will actually improve the standing of the New Zealand institutions.The changes that are proposed in this bill make this very difficult transition harder rather than easier and we have yet to have one contribution from the Minister in the chair Hekia Parata justifying why these changes to the method of university governance are required and why the Minister will not stand and defend the fact that the Minister will now have effective control of universities by being able to appoint up to 40 percent of the members which if it was a private company would be seen to be effective control. The member on the other side Andrew Bayly who made the last brief contribution is well experienced in commerce. He will know that the right to appoint 40 percent of the board of directors or 40 percent of a university council amounts in commerce to effective control. Can we have some acknowledgment from the other side please that what is happening here is that we are devolving to a Minister of the Crown the future effective control of universities which is casting aside the hundreds of years of experience not only in New Zealand but also throughout Europe and throughout the United States.Interestingly in the submission from Mr McCutcheon on behalf of some of the universities he actually noted some US jurisprudence that actually went through this history as to why it is that not just academic freedom but also political freedom and the ability to adapt to changing circumstance have been protected by universities maintaining their distance from Governments and not being under the control of Governments—of course being influenced by Governments; there is nothing wrong with that but not going so far as to be under the control of Governments. The effect of this legislation is that in future Steven Joyce will be able to control universities. He will be able to say: “We don’t want you to do as much on political activism; we want you to give more vocational training.”TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First):Kia ora Mr Chair. I know why the members on the Government benches may be shouting out but not actually commenting on this bill. It is because Mr Macindoe is the only member on the Government benches who actually heard any of the submitters and even Mr Macindoe cannot rise to his feet and articulate why these changes need to take place. That is very unfortunate because Mr Macindoe is usually a very constructive individual. Mr Macindoe is highly respected here. But even he cannot rise to his feet and explain why these changes particularly—and I again challenge the Minister of Education to rise to her feet and explain why we need the removal of natural justice for our teachers. [Interruption] And there is laughter from the new members of this Government. That tells you a lot New Zealand. It tells you a lot that when the discussion around natural justice is talked about and the removal of it is discussed with regard to New Zealanders and professionals in the New Zealand environment new members of this Government laugh. They laugh in your face. The Minister unfortunately just joins them. So again I ask them.I just want to read from an article. There was a ministerial inquiry in 2011 into how convicted sex offender—[Interruption] Do you want to keep talking Mr Bridges about convicted sex offenders? Convicted sex offender Te Rito Henry Miki managed to get back into teaching roles. This is why the department said we needed a code of conduct—this case. Apparently he did so simply by changing his name. Reportedly he had 53 aliases and then used that new identity to get fresh documentation.Hon Simon Bridges: So this is relevant to this bill how?TRACEY MARTIN: Mr Bridges the Minister over there makes light of this case even in the light of the case we have just had repeated.Hon Simon Bridges: No it’s not relevant. It’s not relevant to the bill.TRACEY MARTIN: If it was relevant to the code of conduct when it was put forward by the ministry it is relevant now Mr Bridges. But Mr Bridges has not read the bill or the regulatory impact statement or the report on what is one of the most major takeovers of the educational institution in this country.Apparently Te Rito Henry Miki did so by changing his name so he had 53 aliases and then used a new identity to get fresh documentation and a teaching job. It makes grim reading in the light of the subsequent ability of Phillip Smith / Phillip Traynor also a sex offender to get away with much the same thing. This is largely because the recommendations made in 2011 to Minister of Education Hekia Parata were evidently not acted upon—were evidently not acted upon.But now we have a code of conduct for the teaching profession that does not cover educators; it covers only registered teachers. And we have a widening of the criteria for limited authorities to teach. So that is unlike what we have currently where a school must prove that it has tried to fill that role with a qualified and registered teacher but cannot do so and therefore applies for a limited authority to teach to have a skilled individual come into their school—and 62 percent of them are music teachers.We are not having that any more under this bill. An individual can front up to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and say: “Look I’ve got a skill. I’ve got a skill—no I haven’t gone through any teaching qualification or whatever but I have got a skill. I would like to wander about the country and offer my services to—I don’t know—rural schools that might be hard-up for teaching staff or something.” Was that part of the recommendation that came out in 2011 Minister? Was that part of the recommendation to tighten up the system?Hon Hekia Parata: 2012.TRACEY MARTIN: It was 2012—I do apologise. Was it part of the recommendations of 2012 Minister which apparently have never been enacted or is this it? Because this is what the department said it was about and if it is not about that then what is it about Minister? Rise to your feet and answer the question. What is it about?Why do we have to remove the laws of natural justice for teachers? When did that become—and why was that really important clause not brought to the Education and Science Committee? When did this Government decide to remove natural justice from teachers? We had that long process with huge numbers of submissions. We discussed and discussed and discussed this bill and that topic never came up—never ever ever came up—but now suddenly it is desperately needed in a Supplementary Order Paper on this bill. Will the Minister answer for it? No she will not.JONO NAYLOR (National):I move That the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No I am not prepared to take it. I indicated earlier that this is a major bill and it has only one part. There are two very important sections of it and so far people have actually been speaking to it.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):That member over there Jono Naylor will never be the member of Parliament for Palmerston North if the only contribution he can make on a debate about tertiary education is to try to shut it down.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): What the member is doing now is out of order because he is referring to a ruling that I have made. That is gone; we will speak to the bill.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: If members opposite are wondering why so many members on this side of the Chamber are taking an interest in the provisions in this legislation that refer to the governance of universities it is because neither the Minister of Education nor any member on that side of the Chamber has been able to provide a shred of evidence as to why these measures are necessary.Grant Robertson: Not one.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Not one. Not the Minister—the Minister who seems to have spent most of her time on her phone looking at her texts possibly deleting them. Not one of the members opposite has got to their feet and told us what the evidence base is. What is the evidence base? What is the international evidence? What is the domestic evidence? Where did this idea come from? Why is it in the interests of our universities to reduce the size of their councils? If we could have just one member give us one piece of evidence—Hon Nanaia Mahuta: For 1 minute.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: They do not even need to speak for 5 minutes. If they could just stand up and give us 1 minute on why this is a good idea maybe members on this side would not keep asking the Minister to give us their contribution. This is important to Massey University and to the Universal College of Learning the major tertiary education providers in my electorate of Palmerston North. It has a particular effect on those institutions and institutions like them because they are multi-campus institutions.When you have to get representation at a governance level that covers the variety of communities of a multi-campus institution that immediately restricts the ability to get the other ranges of experience and representation that are required on a council. We have already seen it with the Universal College of Learning council. When that council was reduced to eight members the student representation went and the staff representation went. That was not a decision that either the governance or the management of Universal College of Learning wanted to make. Nobody in that institution thought that it was a good idea to remove student and staff representation on their council but they were in a bind because they have a campus in Palmerston North they have a campus in Masterton and they have a campus in Wanganui.By the time the Minister’s appointments had been made and they got appropriate representation from those different campuses and ensured that they had the mix of skills that a governance board requires there was no room left—no room left—for the student or staff representation. According to everybody whom I have spoken to at the Universal College of Learning that is to the detriment of that institution and to the detriment of its ability to show leadership and governance that is in the interests of ensuring that that institution can provide to their community.If members opposite—and one member in particular—think that I am wrong they should get to their feet and tell us why that is wrong. They should stand up and tell us why that is wrong but they have failed to do so—absolutely failed to do so. That is why the Massey University council came to the Education and Science Committee and gave its submission absolutely in opposition to this legislation. It opened by saying there is no hard evidence—there is absolutely no evidence—that reducing the size of the council will have the effect of making the council more efficient or more effective making the institution more effective or delivering better educational outcomes for the students who study at those institutions. The council said that it would create difficulties in achieving the balance of interests and skills. Massey University will face the same challenge as the Universal College of Learning faced because it has a campus in Palmerston North a campus in Wellington and a campus in Auckland.They are very different communities that require very different types of representation—the representation that is encouraged in this legislation. Councils are encouraged in this legislation to make sure they have a mixture of representation that represents the communities that they operate in yet at the same time what this legislation principally does is restricts the ability to ensure that they can do that.Hon David Parker: They say one thing and do another.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: They do always say one thing and do another. Then of course we have got the point that the Hon David Parker and others have made that the proportion of representation provided—CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):I am pleased to take another call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and I would like to just cover off a couple of issues that were raised before. The issue of the name of the council—I agree with the Minister of Education about the importance of the word “Aotearoa”. I would be the first person to say it is very important to recognise that the foundation of this nation is Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that should be reflected in the way in which we name our institutions. I have no problem with calling it the “Teachers Council of Aotearoa New Zealand”. I do not think there is any problem with including that word and I would hate anyone to think that the Green Party would oppose that. What we are arguing for is a name that reflects the two issues: one that we are Aotearoa New Zealand and two that this is about teachers. Our disappointment is with the first bit not with the second bit. I just want to clear that up for the benefit of anyone listening.I also would like to agree with Tracey Martin’s analysis of what happened at the Education and Science Committee regarding the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 21. We never heard anything about it. It was never mentioned. We had a very exhaustive time going through all kinds of issues. There was a great deal of detail on the bill about registrations about monitoring about teacher practices and about various rights but there was absolutely no mention of removing the clause “natural justice”. So it has come to us as a surprise. It was not something that we anticipated. Initially when I looked at the Minister’s amendment I thought: “Oh this looks OK.” and then that has been brought to my attention. I realised that no we need an explanation for this. Perhaps the Green Party could support it if there was an explanation but we have not had one. The challenge was put out probably an hour ago and we still have not had one. We need an explanation about why the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper is going to remove that clause on natural justice. It is actually really important when dealing with issues of rights that we address the issue of natural justice. There may be a perfectly harmless explanation but we did not hear it at the select committee and we have not heard it yet. We would like to hear it.I would like to also address some of the university issues because the clear-cut most outrageous issues in this bill have been around the right of teachers to choose their own representation on the Teachers Council as it was and around university governance. There was a really interesting submission at the select committee by a guy who was an expert in governance and management. He came to the select committee and said: “This is bizarre. If a person knows anything about governance and management management needs to be lean small and efficient; governance needs to be broad inclusive and creative.” He said further: “Any modern organisation will have small management and big governance for that reason.” He said that it is completely ridiculous to be making the governance of important leading educational institutions smaller.Although there are places for Māori and a few other places guaranteed there is so much not guaranteed about this including the rights of people to dispute the power of the Minister that we had professors come to the select committee—many professors not one or two—arguing that this was setting up conflicts with the fundamental purpose of the education system. Not only were they saying you have got governance and management completely wrong they also said that when the universities are the critic and conscience of society the university council members must be able to raise difficult issues and disagree. If you go into the clauses about the removal of people from that council there is some very interesting language in there which needs to be scrutinised around the removal of people who dare to disagree. The point of governance is that it should be a robust environment where many voices are heard so that disagreement can be worked through not so that disagreement can be silenced.That is why although we agree that both on a teachers professional body and a university council there is a role for ministerial appointment it should not be the controlling interest. It is very concerning that there is the possibility of removing people who dissent. That is what the professors were talking about. They were talking about the role of the university which is an ancient role or the wānanga or any other institution where hopefully the wise heads gather in our society where they challenge the Government of the day or the thinking of the day and they tell the country: “We must act with a bigger picture. We must act with a wider understanding. We must act with a deeper perspective that comes only from people who are focused deeply on those issues.” Limiting the size of governance and removing the free and open—GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):I will do something a little unusual at the start—with your indulgence Mr Chair—which is to acknowledge in this House the very recent passing of Phillip Hughes the Australian cricketer who many in the House will know was in hospital. He passed away a few moments ago. I am sure others in the House will join me in wishing his family and friends all the best at this very difficult time. Our condolences go out to them and to the wider cricketing community. It is awful for someone to die in such circumstances and our thoughts are with all who are involved in that situation.I want to refer to a matter that has not been referred to yet in the context of this bill and it is in schedule 1 which inserts new schedule 19 into the Education Act 1989. It is around the transitional provisions relating to councils of tertiary institutions. I want to invite the Minister to explain a new clause that has been put into the Act. It is the temporary power of direction.This is clause 9 of the new schedule. It says: “Before the close of a council’s transition period”—the transition period is the period between which the old council that currently exists in a university and the new council comes into place—“the Minister”—according to this clause—“may by written notice to the chief executive of the institution concerned give any directions he or she thinks reasonably necessary to ensure that the council as reconstituted can deal effectively with the business before it … (a) the chief executive must give the council notice of the directions as soon as practicable after the close of that period; and (b) the council must comply with the directions.”I would like to know why this clause has been placed in the legislation. It is new it has not been seen before and it appears to give rise to the very thing that members on this side of the Chamber have been concerned about which is a greater—Progress to be reported presently.House resumed.The Chairperson reported progress on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and no progress on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No 2).Report adopted.