Woods Megan: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10554. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I am very happy to take a call on Part 2 of the Education Amendment Bill. Specifically I also want to address clauses 42 and 43 and to also make a comment and reiterate the question that my colleague Jacinda Ardern put to the Minister of Education around the need to take a call and clear up this ambiguity. I think it demonstrates the absolute worth of having a number of speeches on each part at the Committee stage because we are drawing out some problems perhaps in the Minister’s understanding of what it is that this bill does.The Minister stood up and gave a defence of transparency in this bill. I just want to read to you from the Ombudsman’s submission to the Education and Science Committee over the issue of the exclusion of the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act. It said: “the Education Bill runs the risk of creating a state funded schooling regime which is shrouded in secrecy and is unaccountable. This is likely to hamper the ability of partnership schools to achieve their central goal of achieving better outcomes for students. Applying the Official Information Act and Ombudsmen Act to partnership schools will assist partnership schools in exercising their statutory functions enhance transparency and accountability bring New Zealand into line with international models and avoid the constitutional anomaly inherent in the current Bill.” So the Ombudsman certainly did not think the appropriate levels of transparency were in the bill.What we have a number of concerns about is the fact which a number of my colleagues have talked about of the justification that was given around private training establishments and early childhood education centres. My colleagues have covered that off. During the course of the select committee hearings and indeed in the Cabinet paper there were a couple of other justifications that were given for the exclusion of these Acts and for the presence of clauses 42 and 43. I just want to go through a couple of those justifications.The first of these was to avoid vexatious and costly complaints. Well already under the present legislation the right to refuse frivolous or vexatious requests exists. If the Ombudsman agrees that it is frivolous or vexatious then they simply say that the organisation does not have to respond. To say that you need to avoid it because it is costly is simply not good enough. As my colleagues have talked about this is about transparency and about one of the most important things that we do for our children and that is educate them. We need our parents to have access to that information and for it not to be excluded. We have yet to hear a justification that actually addresses the detail and head-on addresses the reason why it is that the members opposite think it is OK that charter schools should be away from this level of scrutiny.Another justification—and a justification that actually gives me great cause for concern—is that the exemption is consistent with the status of the sponsor as a community organisation. Well this is the justification that should strike fear into the hearts of New Zealanders all over the place. This is saying that it is about the type of organisation that is delivering the service and not what the service is.Hon Trevor Mallard: Rubbish.Dr MEGAN WOODS: There is a real danger as well as being rubbish as my colleague Trevor Mallard says that this is a Government that is consistently contracting out of its obligations as a Government in order to get private organisations to deliver what we consider to be core services—in this instance in the area of education but we have also seen it with welfare legislation. What we are saying is that if a Government contracts out of its obligations it is also removing its dealings from the spotlight of scrutiny that the protections of things such as the Official Information Act should accord. This is simply not good enough. This is simply not what our children deserve. Our children deserve for information around their education to be freely available and not shrouded in secrecy.This is about the use of public money. This is about the use of public money going to private organisations to educate our students. Why is there no accountability? Who is going to be running these charter schools—the friends of this Government? Is it more money for mates with absolutely no accountability? The Minister needs to take a call to justify why it is that Government members are willing to do that—why they are willing to have yet another part of their Government run by contract. They think that is—