Turei Metiria: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Turei Metiria: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12196] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Greens have not been convinced to not oppose this bill. We remain disappointed that the Committee of the whole House did not support the amendment to delete clause 5 from the bill. 
The Greens also strenuously object to the inference from Government members that teachers are engaged in a form of double-dipping when they are entitled to redundancy and then find themselves employed in another school. No double-dipping is going on and this bill does nothing about that because it does not happen. At present teachers who take redundancy when their schools have closed and then later get a job in another school are required—and have agreed in the collective contract—to repay or refund their redundancy payments. Therefore they are not getting paid twice but are making the best possible choices for themselves and their employment in schools around them in the circumstances in which they find themselves. Teachers are not in any way asking for any alternative or different approach to that. No one is seeking that some form of double-dipping be allowed and implications by Government members that teachers are asking for that are mischievous and untrue. 
With the passing of this bill the situation for those teachers is in fact much worse because they will no longer have the choice of taking redundancy when their schools close. Where the Minister offers an equivalent position—and whether a position is considered to be equivalent to their current employment conditions is the Minister’s decision—those teachers will be required either to take that position or find themselves unemployed with no redundancy. In this bill the Minister does not consider the nature of the employment teachers are taking the culture of the schools in which they may be forced to work and the fact that teachers are entitled to choose whom they work with and whether they go to a school with one or another management structure or cultural approach. This bill in effect strips away that choice and that opportunity for teachers. 
It is true that this bill is much better now than it was when it first came to the Education and Science Committee and the committee deserves a great deal of credit for the work that was done. None the less the bill is still infected with the philosophy that the Minister is able to alter collective agreements by legislation rather than through bargaining. If the Minister were seeking to manage the consequential employment difficulties that would arise from school closures—that is that he would not be able to find teachers to teach in new schools because of the destruction of relationships through the process—he should instead have negotiated and by agreement with teachers sought to find ways to remedy or find a better process when schools close. 
Teachers are open to those opportunities and those discussions but the Minister has made no attempt to do so. Instead he has taken the same approach to this issue as he has to the network reviews—that is he has a desire for a particular outcome and refuses to engage properly with the affected parties: the teachers and communities in the case of network reviews and the teachers over these redundancy arrangements. Instead he chooses to use his legislative powers to push changes through regardless of the damage he is doing to communities and the Government’s relationship with those communities. 
The Minister is prepared to exchange the potential for good-faith bargaining for a legislative quick-fix that will without doubt cause more problems for teachers who are already under huge amounts of pressure as well as the Government which is wanting to have relationships with schools teachers and communities in the future. So the Greens will continue to oppose this bill.