Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm glad that I have this opportunity to speak as I have a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name which I haven't yet had a chance in this debate to address and which I hope to address in this speech. But before I do so I do want to respond to comments that have been made by the Hon Tracey Martin this evening who said that my comments relating to the support by her good party member Mark Patterson in relation to the process followed by the select committee on this matter were not accurate. So I do want to draw her attention to the amendment bill commentary and report from the Education and Workforce Committee which is on the Table of the committee and which quotes a motion that was agreed to by the committee: that the committee would write to the Business Committee outlining frustration with the report-back date for this bill in particular the reduced time frame for parliamentary counsel to draft the revision-tracked version of the bill and the inability to take the report to caucus. I want to note for the member that Mark Patterson did agree to that letter being written and that refers directly to the process issues that we had with this bill.I also want to quickly take the opportunity to respond to comments from the Minister in the chair Chris Hipkins who said that I was trashing the future of these partnership school students and I take particular issue with that because I absolutely back the students who are in partnership schools. I back them to succeed. I want them to do very well indeed. I hope that their schools continue to do a good job for them into the future but I am concerned that the Minister by his actions is removing the ability of those schools to act in the way that they have in the past. And I would put to him a couple of questions: will he commit that the performance of those schools will remain on par with where it has been—is that a commitment that he is prepared to make? And what responsibility will he take if the performance of these schools does reduce following the changes that this bill makes to the scope with which those schools can deliver for their students? I put to the Minister that in fact if there is anyone who is putting risk in these children's way it is he who is putting the risk of changing the structure of the schools they attend for reasons which are still to be outlined in the debate in this committee tonight.Finally I want to just address this issue of system-wide reporting because we have the Minister asserting in relation to national standards clauses Oh system-wide reporting will continue to occur." This is the classic case of having your cake and eating it too. Say you want to get rid of national standards on the one hand to placate one group of people and on the other hand tell parents "Don't worry the system-wide reporting will continue." So my question for the Minister is: what will be the common benchmark that schools will be reporting against in future if not national standards? What will that common benchmark be and in what form will they be required to make system-wide reports? In what form will they be required to provide information about the achievement of their students over time? And with what regularity and against what benchmarks? If the Minister won't address those questions we will judge his silence accordingly.So I have two SOPs. The first SOP relates to clause 18 which of course is the new section that was introduced by a late SOP introduced by the Minister which relates to the way in which designated character schools are required to take on the staff of partnership schools. It's worth noting that every principle of a New Zealand school right now has the discretion and ability to recruit and employ their own staff as they see fit because it is acknowledged that that right to hire teachers that are appropriate for the class and the students that are appropriate for the school and its community is a key way in which a school goes about its business. But of course the clauses in this bill that we're debating tonight take away that power from this particular class of schools and dictate that they must take on the staff of previous partnership schools. So what this SOP does is it inserts a new paragraph that allows the principal or the board if they consider the employee to be wholly unsuitable for appointment due to the character of the school not to make that hire. We see this on this side of the Chamber as an appropriate safeguard that gives discretion to ensure that where people are hired for teaching roles they are appropriate for those roles. That's SOP 106.SOP 129 deals with this question of fines for students making false statutory declarations in order to gain access to the fees-free policy. What we've put in numerous speeches is the fact that actually if you are able to get free fees which could be many many thousands of dollars a requirement that—[Time expired]"