Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:662;Page:10291] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak to Part 1 of the Education Amendment Bill and to offer Labour’s support. Labour did not support the bill at its first reading because we were concerned about the proposals in Part 1 to lower the police-vetting requirements for contractors who work at schools or early childhood education services. That could put our children’s safety at risk. However I am pleased to report that during the select committee process amendments were proposed that appeased some of our concerns in that area. We now find ourselves able to support the bill. 
This bill is about doing practical things that support standards in our schools and in our early childhood education sector. Unlike other proposals this Government has for education where it purports to be looking to improve standards but will in fact do the opposite this bill will actually do something practical to lift standards. This bill ensures that our children are well protected in their schools and in their early childhood education environments. 
During my call I will focus on one of the key changes that Labour was able to force at the select committee and that is the part relating to the ability of a school board to be taken over by a commissioner. The bill originally when it went through its first reading proposed a policy to allow a corporate takeover of school board functions. We were very concerned about that. I think that if we look back on what has transpired over the last couple of weeks we will see that we were right to be concerned about that issue. 
We know that this Government has a tendency to replace democratically elected organisations with commissioners at will and to leave them in place for quite some lengthy period of time. So getting it right in this bill was incredibly important. We did not believe it was correct for a faceless corporate entity to be able to take over in the role of a commissioner for something as important as our schools. 
Labour’s view which happened to be shared by others on the select committee was that it was important to have an individual responsible when democracy was overtaken by the appointment of a commissioner in the case of our local schools. So we fought for that measure and were able to convince the Green Party and the ACT Party to support that position. I congratulate both those parties on coming on board in making that very important change during the select committee process. This Government was committed to going forward and allowing corporate takeovers of board functions by bringing in commissioners that were not named individuals but could be corporate entities. I think that could have been a very frightening prospect. 
We know that local government is not the only area in which this Government has a tendency to replace democratically elected people—such as school boards of trustees—with commissioners for lengthy periods of time. In the part of the country I come from in Hamilton we currently have two secondary schools that have commissioners appointed to them. One of them Fairfield College has had a commissioner in place for 18 months or more. That is a very very lengthy period of time for a school not to have community representation via a school board of trustees. The other school in the area is Fraser High School which has had a commissioner for a shorter period of time. 
The point I am making is that when we determine by legislative means the process by which a Government any Government can replace a democratically elected school board of trustees with an appointed commissioner we need to be very very careful about the powers that are bestowed upon that person—or as the Government was arguing a corporate entity. 
Labour members believe that it was not right to allow corporate entities to take over that function because corporate entities do not have the same culpability as individuals do in that situation. We were very pleased to be able to make that particular change at the select committee and because of that change we can support the bill at its Committee stage.