Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill. It's a daunting challenge and a humbling one to hold the education portfolio and as everyone who's spoken tonight has acknowledged this bill touches on some incredibly important aspects of our education system and thereby our society. Education is a basic human right. It in a way underpins many many others of our rights—our right to democracy and to engage with it our right to information and our ability to thrive and participate in society. So the fact that we are tonight modernising our laws around education from early childhood education and strengthening that up and down our nation right to the rights of students with different needs to both attend their local school and to be treated well while they do that and right through to vocational training to tertiary education—it is a joy to support the passing of this bill.But I do want to just focus on a few aspects of it because it is mammoth and none of us have actually been able to get through every single thing that we like about it. But to me this is a good bill because it is a human rights - based framework that it adopts in a lot of ways and one of those aspects of the bill is around the right to participate and to attend school. I think we were all a little bit shocked when we found that in fact some of our most marginalised students those with needs that should be catered to in our schools were not in fact being cared for in the ways that they needed but being discouraged from attendance. So this bill makes it clear in law finally that once a student is enrolled in a school in New Zealand they have a right to attend for all the hours that that school is open they are able to participate and if they are going to attend a lower number of hours during the week or during the school day that programme is established for them with their own input and with the input of their whānau.So that is a basic child rights principle and New Zealand is a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child—that's one of the most universal and enforceable aspects of human rights law—and we're proud to try as a Government to uphold those rights for our children and young people. So their input in that programme and their right to attend school is really important. The next aspect of this which is a due process right that has been really really long overdue for students and for parents is the right to dispute resolution that is fair that's inclusive and that will result in a mediated outcome for students and their family where they have been for example excluded—where their rights or their wellbeing is touched upon by a decision that's been taken by the school and where that decision is not able to meet the child's needs in the view of that whānau. So that has been missing even when something as important as exclusion has applied to a child. And we know that that actually will impact on a person's life for a long time. It will change a child's life. It will mean that they have outcomes that we know at the other end of our due process and rights scheme as a Government in the justice system will result in people coming through the youth justice system. We know that some 90 percent of young people that come into conflict with the criminal justice system experienced what's been diagnosed as serious learning disabilities and have often been excluded from school. So that's how we're impacting their lives but there was no dispute resolution mechanism at the end where education is concerned and this bill provides for that.I do want to thank Youth Law the Human Rights Commission and the Children's Commission who I know—in my previous life working on children's rights—fought really really hard for this change. As the Hon Tracey Martin noted this also came about as a result of a Green-initiated inquiry by our MP Catherine Delahunty who I'm sure has kept a very close eye on this bill as well.The next rights-based change that this bill makes that we welcome is the prohibition against religious instruction in schools. We would have liked the bill to have gone further and to address the issue of religious practice which is something else which comes through in a more insidious way that parents often don't know about so that could mean prayers before assemblies which isn't a particular class that the child may be excluded from but just part of school life. I know from sitting on the committee that parents and other rights-based organisations came and raised concern about it. We know that the Human Rights Commission has taken this to court. But it is a positive step that in law we now recognise that separation of religion from State schools and the education system is something that's important and to be protected and we're upholding that. But the last aspect of this bill that I welcome with great joy and has been introduced just tonight is the part that removes the previous wording of the bill that we know caused grave distress to parents families and communities of children with cognitive diversity and special needs that were not being addressed by schools and teachers were not supported in addressing. That is the use of the term use of force" being allowed in our education system. The term was introduced to replace the previous wording that we've now reinstated which was the "use of restraint". We've now reinstated that but the framework that's been put around this instead of use of force is something that's truly progressive. So we did that through really close communication with parents and with teachers. We know that nobody wanted the use of force and the escalation of what children were already experiencing as being traumatising.So the terminology has reverted back but we've also inserted a requirement that use of restraint is restrictive that it is only used where there is imminent risk of harm and that before that we will expect teachers and others dealing with children to use de-escalation methods that fall far from physical restraint or physical intervention that are far less traumatising and will require us as a Government—and this will be our commitment—to provide for training and support of teachers and everyone that deals with children in schools to know what de-escalation looks like to know the behaviours that may escalate to a risk and to intervene in a non-violent non-physical way well before that happens and support children to behave appropriately in the classroom.So we have inserted a requirement as well and this is truly progressive and this has never existed before in our law that guidelines be developed in consultation with not just parents but parents of the affected children. So they're a subgroup of parents and they hadn't been effectively consulted with before. That had been causing them huge stress and now they are specifically noted as a community that will need to be consulted with together with teachers with principals and with experts and policy makers. So everyone will come to the table for the first time and develop guidelines around what behavioural de-escalation looks like and that is a commitment by our Government to provide for truly inclusive education for compassion in our schools and for equality.And so I do support this bill. I am so pleased and so grateful to everyone who came together to tell us what was needed from the ground up and to share their expertise and their time and that has resulted in a bill that we can all be proud of. Thank you."