Turei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Turei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1651] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 I was very pleased to be able to sit on the Education and Science Committee for at least part of the consideration of this bill and I did hear some of the submissions but I was not able to be there for the last part. We will support the second reading of this bill but we will not make a final decision until after the Committee stage because we still have some real concerns about it. 
On the plus side this bill makes some important and necessary changes. We are pleased to see changes to clarify and simplify the prohibition of corporal punishment in early childhood services. It is an important principle that children should not be subjected to violence and we look forward to this House taking a similarly principled approach to my colleague Sue Bradford’s section 59 abolition member’s bill when it comes before the House for consideration. Some years ago the decision was made to prohibit corporal punishment in schools and we as a community and a Parliament need to make sure we are consistent in our condemnation of violence against children regardless of whether it is done by teachers or by other adults. 
We are pleased to see that a new section makes the intimidation of staff at schools and early childhood services—where that is happening in front of children—unlawful and that the fines have increased because violence and abuse have no place in a child’s life anywhere. We as legislators should do everything we can to make sure that the community knows that such behaviour is unacceptable and will be punished. We are also pleased to see that those provisions do not apply to children and that more child-appropriate services and systems are in place to deal with their behaviour. 
We are very pleased to see that a parent’s right to enter the premises of the early childhood service that his or her child attends is retained. I was very surprised when some privately owned centres asked to be able to exclude parents from entering their premises as they saw fit. That struck me at the time as being a terribly unsafe policy for an early childhood centre to have and I certainly never would have sent my children to a service that barred me from entering its premises to check on their welfare. 
The exemptions to this provision in the bill are generally sound but I would like to see some tightening of the new section 319A(e) proposed to be inserted in the Education Act 1989 by clause 43 of the bill. This paragraph gives the operator a right to bar a person whom the operator considers is “exhibiting behaviour that is … disruptive to the effective operation of the centre …”. I think that it is not the operation of the centre that is the main concern but the physical and psychological welfare of the children. Under this wording an operator could bar a parent who wanted to come in say to feed or care for a child in some way because that would disrupt the centre’s schedule. That is not a good enough reason to bar parents from checking on their children in those centres. 
Our real concern about the bill which was expressed by my colleague Rod Donald at the first reading relates to the extension of the student number system from the secondary into the primary and early childhood sectors. Currently those numbers are used for the secondary and tertiary sectors to collect and combine data for policy and analysis purposes—largely for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and tertiary providers to use to verify the identity of enrolling students. 
On the face of it the network management system that has operated those numbers is used for fairly benign purposes but the Greens have always been concerned that those unique personal identifiers could be readily misused. The only other existing national ID number is the national health index number which is an identification number given to all children at birth. So we are already trapped for our entire lives in some form. 
The Greens are not yet convinced that those numbers will not be misused or that there are sufficient checks on their use in the bill. We are particularly concerned about the privacy of the children and the families concerned. There is no doubt that the numbers are useful for the better sharing of information between schools when children enrolled at those schools move and for the better identification and management of truant children—and certainly the Office of the Children’s Commissioner supports the use of those numbers. 
But there still remains a high possibility that a breach of those children’s privacy may occur. Just because they are children does not mean they have any less entitlement to the protection of their privacy. In fact we should put in extra measures to protect their rights and interests because they have even less power to make any changes or to hold people to account should that information be misused. 
We are concerned that the information could be used to access children for advertising—even by the education sector itself. What is worse is that it could be used to trace and punish already struggling parents and families who for a variety of reasons over which they may have very little control are already engaged in a cycle of transience and difficulties. 
So we would like to see some better protection mechanisms placed in the bill and to see whether some amendments can be made to tighten up the rules. We look forward to seeing what happens at the Committee stage but the Greens will support the bill through to its second reading. 
Debate interrupted.