Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION AMENDMENT BILL (NO 2)In CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Education Act 1989Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I just want to speak briefly to two Supplementary Order Papers in my name that have been put forward for this bill. Supplementary Order Papers of course add additional amendments to those considered by the select committee. The first Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 220 changes the planning and reporting requirements introduced by the education update legislation passed by the previous Government and it moves the implementation date for those new provisions out by a further year. The new Government or certainly the Labour Party component of the new Government is quite supportive of the new planning and reporting requirements introduced by the previous Government. The reason for pushing out the implementation by a further year is that schools are currently quite engaged in the review of Tomorrow's Schools and want to see how that's all going to play out before they have to engage in further work around the new planning and reporting requirements and that's quite a reasonable thing. So as I've indicated already we support the new planning and reporting requirements. We're just giving schools more time in the context of the Tomorrow's Schools review and the other things that they're dealing with at the moment. So that's what one of the Supplementary Order Papers does.The other Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 224 which I expect there'll be a little bit more discussion outside of the House on is one that clarifies the rules around a university changing its name. I want to open by acknowledging the decision made by the Victoria University Council this week to move on from their debate around a name change and I welcome that but it has highlighted an area of the law where there is some ambiguity. The reason for the ambiguity is that the Education Act of 1989 does give a Minister the power to approve the name change of a university but some of the legal scholars who were contesting that were arguing that because some of the universities were established by Acts of Parliament in fact it would certainly be inconsistent for a Minister to make a decision to make that name change without reference back to Parliament particularly as ultimately the Act that established the university would subsequently need to eventually be changed to reflect the new name of the university. It therefore is more consistent with other legislation and other parts of the Education Act to have the name change decided after an endorsement by the Parliament. That brings it into line with the process for disestablishing a university for example where a Minister cannot make the decision to disestablish a university without the endorsement of the Parliament. A similar provision will now apply to a university seeking a name change. So it creates more consistency and it removes what was clearly going to be had that debate continued a point that was going to be contested by some of those involved in the debate.I'm happy to answer questions on the remainder of the bill as drafted and as reported back from select committee as the debate progresses.