Uffindell SamSAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): I'd like to open this by pointing out that I did study New Zealand history. I was very fortunate in my seventh form at school; I had a fantastic history teacher and he made us do New Zealand history and it was fantastic. We went to Ruapekapeka the bats' nest" that the Hon Kelvin Davis pointed out and did a tour around many of the pā through Waikato and the North Island and I greatly appreciated it.But back to the bill. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) seeks to change the criteria for school boards. It also requires licensed early childhood education centres (ECEs) to consider police vetting when having people coming on site. Having police vetting can be a good thing because you want to make sure that children—I mean I have three young children two of them in ECEs and I want to know that when they go there anyone that comes on site will be of credible character. But I also do note some of the concerns raised by Penny Simmonds that we need to make sure that it does not put undue burden on businesses and the example used was around a plumber coming on site that they would be able to do that in an efficient manner and not be held up for five or six days while that police-vetting check went through.Other provisions in this bill are around establishing a new framework for wānanga and that's received a fair bit of commentary today. It allows wānanga to reconstitute themselves as either Crown or non-Crown entities. We also have some changes to the board terms that Te Kura can have up to five years with the ability to go longer on that.But I'd like to reiterate some of the key messages that we've heard from this side of the House today. You know while we do agree with some aspects of this bill I mean we don't necessarily agree that mandating the composition of the boards along lines of sexuality and other defining characteristics like that is an imperative. What I would think and I'm sure most reasonable people would think is that it's a lot more relevant to have people with expertise in education and children's education and children's welfare being representative on those boards.Also this bill doesn't address the major issues that are facing the New Zealand education system at the moment—and I note the Minister has just walked in and will be listening attentively. But everyone does know that we do have significant truancy issues we do have significant performance issues and this bill does not address any of those things. National has put forward a fantastic package recently—Teaching the Basics Brilliantly—and that's really where we need to be looking when we are doing legislation in the education space. It's making sure that people are coming to school. It's making sure that they are learning—reading writing maths science; those key things that are going to determine whether the current and the next generation of children are able to succeed in New Zealand and beyond if so they choose. That is really what we should be looking at.I mean this Government and I think Mr Seymour put it—well I mean he got a fair bit of commentary around it. But this Government has a fantastic ability to tinker on things that don't necessarily move the dial and I see some scorn looking at me at the moment. I'm talking about the boards here Mr Davis. If that's what the focus is instead of the achievement of people the achievement of people and skills—and you'd know a lot about how the system's failing Māori and that's an indictment on our education system. But I would say that students in New Zealand especially Māori students—and you can look at the statistics and they will reinforce this—perform a lot better under National Governments than under Labour Governments because we focus on getting the basics right mate. You can look at their achievements at NCEA level 2 from 2008 when you last had office to 2017 when we left office and they went from about 45 percent in 2008 to almost 70 percent when we left office in 2017. And I hear the giggles—you shouldn't be giggling because your Government is failing a generation of young children and unfortunately Māori children are suffering from that. I oppose this bill."