Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm taking this call to oppose this bill. This is a very interesting bill because this bill was originally a member's bill under the name of the same member who is the Minister in charge now the Hon Chris Hipkins. This was put forward as a member's bill when he was the education spokesperson in Opposition. I believe what happened is that when this Government was formed for several months even now we are seeing that there are several National bills that are being debated in the House. They didn't have any programme of theirs to go on the Order Paper. Even the Ministers were rushing to the House to take calls to extend readings on bills because they didn't have any legislation to put on the Order Paper.I believe the Minister of Education thought Well education is a very important sector. We should have something to do with education on the Order Paper." and he decided to put this member's bill of his on as a Government bill. It is very typical of this Labour-led Government which believes in spending and this is wasteful spending.As we know they are spending millions of dollars on working groups. They are spending millions of dollars on various summits. This bill is also going to incur expenses that are wasteful because this is not going to deliver anything for the education sector. This bill will not deliver anything for the teaching profession. This bill will not deliver anything for students and deliver nothing for parents.For a minute if we look at the substance of this bill this bill will change the name of the Education Council to the Teaching Council. Even the Education Council didn't make any comment about the name change so we can understand how insignificant that issue is for the Education Council. This is about changing the composition of the Education Council. It's increasing it from the current numbers to 13—that is seven plus six: seven members will be elected and six members will be appointed by the Minister.From day one the argument that we had from the Minister about this bill was that the Minister wants to make this council independent of the Government. That was the argument we heard from day one—that by having that mix of elected and appointed members he believed that this will become an independent organisation. But what we know now if we look at the Order Paper is there is this bill which is No. 7 on the Order Paper: the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). There are several provisions in that bill and one of the provisions is that this Teaching Council should work within the parameters of Government policy. So that independence that the Minister talked about from day one is out the window. It is not going to be an independent body. This is going to be run by the Minister. This is the level of transparency we have from this Government. So they've put this legislation in one bill and that it will actually be run by the Minister in another bill thinking that this won't get noticed. But it definitely will get noticed and we will make sure that this is noticed. It's not going to be an independent body because it's going to be run by the Minister.Now we know that the structure that the Minister wants to put in place is going to revert it back to the structure that we know was dysfunctional. There were some serious issues. We have heard about them again and again. There were even some serious financial issues and that's why the National Government decided to do an in-depth review of the body. Because of that in-depth review we came up with the structure that has been put in place by the National Government. There is no evidence that the current structure is not working. There is no evidence because the current structure is working really well. It is working within the code of ethics and responsibility. It is providing that stable governance that is needed in the sector so I do not see any reason why we need to change this structure.There is another point in this current legislation—not this one that we are debating; the one that was put by the National Government. The Minister cannot appoint any political cronies on the council. I believe that is the reason why the Minister wants to change this whole legislation because that is what is going to happen. The Minister is going to appoint politically motivated people on this body—that is what is going to happen. As we can see the other legislation which is on the Order Paper might come up tonight or some time this week for its first reading. There is no transparency. So this whole legislation which is going through here is based on them making this body independent then we have another piece of legislation which takes that independence away. So this is a very serious issue. Why could this whole thing not be put into one piece of legislation? That's a big question. The other thing we know is that the previous structure was broken. It was not working. That's why National decided to fix that. Now this Minister wants to revert back to that broken structure. Why does he want to revert back to that broken structure? There has to be some motivation. I believe that this is going to be a body that is going to be run by union members run by the Minister. That is what the Minister actually wants to see happening in this body. This is not going to help with the teaching profession at all.We know that unions are already complaining saying that they put Labour in Government and Labour is not rewarding them back. FIRST Union—yes publicly they have criticised this Labour-led Government. So here what we're seeing is that this Government and unions are scratching each other's backs. They're just looking after each other and that is what is going to happen with this change that is going to be put in place through this legislation that we are debating.If the Minister was so keen on having proper representation on the Education Council then why did he dismiss my Supplementary Order Paper 102 that was about bringing representation of experience that comes from the partnership school model? Very easily the Minister dismissed it without realising that the Hon Jenny Salesa the Minister who was in the chair before the Minister in charge of the bill said yes that would happen because there are six positions that will be appointed by the Minister. But the Minister in charge the Hon Chris Hipkins said "Oh we are actually getting rid of partnership schools." Yes when I challenged him again—National has already announced that we will be bringing partnership school models back within 12 months of getting elected—the reply that I got from the Minister was that he doesn't have a crystal ball to see what's going to happen next. He doesn't need to spend on a crystal ball because we have already announced it. All he needs to do is be aware of what's being done and what is being announced by other parties. So he doesn't need a crystal ball.If the Minister is so so desperate to have a crystal ball—they have a crystal ball and that is Greg O'Connor. Greg O'Connor knows what the Labour Party should be doing what the Labour leaders should be doing what the Prime Minister should be doing and how the Prime Minister should be dealing with troubled Ministers. They already have a crystal ball so they don't need to go out to find another crystal ball.Will this body do anything to improve the teaching profession? No. Will this body do anything to help students achieve better outcomes? No. Will this body help parents to know what's happening in schools giving them the assurance that the teaching profession is going to be kept to the level that parents expect? No it's not going to do that because this is going to become something that is going to be run by unions and also controlled by this Government and controlled by the Minister which is going to become very very clear when we debate this other bill the Education Amendment Bill (No 2).So overall yes we know that the Minister wants to revert back to the model which has significant flaws. We actually fixed that but the Minister doesn't care about that because it's all about control—it's about making sure that the Education Council is delivering what the Minister wants to deliver. So I want to finish by saying that I do support Greg O'Connor being the crystal ball of the Labour Party but I do not support this legislation. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."