Hipkins ChrisDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Madam Chair thank you very much for yielding to me. I wanted to continue to go down the lines of my colleague Erica Stanford to the Minister of Education the Hon Chris Hipkins around international students and the role that has and the significance of this because talking to schools talking to my community this is a serious issue for many New Zealanders. It's a $5 billion industry for us and going out there talking to people in the community you realise just how significant it is whether you're a person that takes homestays whether you're a school whether you're a food and beverage provider that takes a lot of international students on it has a significant impact for us as a country. So the first question I have for the Minister is around the formula that the Minister has outlined that will be used to calculate which schools get what. I understand that of course it's going to be based on the real revenue reduction. The issue that I have with that Minister is that there'll be some schools that have a significant real revenue reduction but have good balance sheets and yet there'll be other schools that perhaps have a smaller real revenue reduction but weaker balance sheet. So I want to know from the Ministry of Education's perspective whether the balance sheet of these schools will be taken into consideration because just looking and listening to some of my principals in Northcote there are some schools where they don't actually take a lot of international students but they just don't have the balance sheet strength to actually absorb some of that downturn whereas there are other schools that actually have a larger international education impact but they've put a lot away for a rainy day. So I want to get a sense from the Minister on that. But I think just the second part of that is around the clarity for the sector around what the Government is thinking around when international students will be allowed in to New Zealand. I think that's the biggest thing that I'm hearing from the sector—the sector needs clarity. I know the Prime Minister may have made some clarifications Don't expect to see something in the next year" but what I want from the Minister and what my schools want from the Minister is to go a step further to say under what scenarios will we see international students back in New Zealand and what will that look like? Will it be international students from particular countries? What are the things that the ministry is considering? So that it gives schools some comfort and some clarity to plan. Whether it's another year or another year or two we want to get a sense from the Minister around that. So there are two areas: the first is the formula and the inequities that may happen because of that; the second is around the sense of clarity that the sector needs and deserves in order to plan for the future.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Look very briefly with regard to the first part I don't really have a lot to add on the formula yet for how the money will be allocated to schools other than to say that it is being consulted on with schools at the moment. I do want to just make an observation though. As Minister of Education of course I get a breakdown of schools' finances each year. Members of Parliament will all get their school's annual reports. There aren't many schools in the country that you would describe as having healthy balance sheets. By and large schools do live a pretty hand-to-mouth existence year upon year. They don't have a lot of money sitting in the bank and so that's one of the things we've been very conscious of. When will international students be allowed back into the country was the second part of the member's question. At this point again I don't have a specific time frame for that—for the member for the schools or for anybody. I know we'll get them a specific timetable as soon as we're able to. There are a variety of scenarios when safe travel zones might emerge between New Zealand and other countries where it may be that international students can come back from those countries—under those circumstances when we have the capacity in quarantine and managed isolation to be able to support them when we can expand those arrangements to be able to support them. Of course we're actively involved in conversations with the sector about how we might be able to do that. Bearing in mind though that the schools sector is a little bit unique in the sense that other parts of the sector can put people into managed isolation by themselves; the school sector can't do that because those young people need to be with a caregiver if they were to be put into managed isolation. That adds a layer of complexity for the school sector that the rest of the international education sector doesn't really have."