Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look it's really good to have the opportunity to run through a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) which I actually haven't even had the opportunity to speak about yet. So I've got a lot to say on a lot of SOPs as do many of my colleagues who haven't had the opportunity to talk to a number of those SOPs.I want to start with a series of SOPs of which one or two of them have been mentioned but again not gone into in detail and it does cut to the heart of this fees-free issue. We know it's $2.8 billion we know that all of the figures show there's not going to be great participation or major increases in participation and that's equivalent to paying—just so all New Zealanders can understand the scale of the funding that we're dealing with because it cuts to the heart of SOP 127 128 129 and 130 which I'm going to run through. If you're going to give $2.8 billion of funding which is equivalent to paying potentially 50000 teachers a 15 percent pay rise then you would want to make sure that this system was watertight in terms of accountability.There are a number of SOPs here that I want to walk through. As I say you look at SOP 127 put up by my colleague Simeon Brown and this is all about deleting the words without reasonable excuse". We actually believe that if you have effectively made a false representation there isn't a reasonable excuse. You have made a false representation. We are not going to accept a reasonable excuse if you have been in the act of doing something inappropriate in an area of fees-free. We're talking about huge amounts of money potentially for students so I would ask the Minister to consider SOP 127 very seriously.You look at SOP 128 again by my colleague Denise Lee and her point is very simple. Again I do want to quote the Minister back because we would love to hear from him on this issue. He himself has admitted that it's a very difficult situation to try and design proper scrutiny of a fees-free system and so he's gone and tried to develop this penalty through which we can see multiple holes. One of the issues that Denise raises is that we should as a principle not enable or let someone benefit from that false representation. So again SOP 128 does cover that: that a person is liable for $5000 but also potentially the amount of money gained from that false representation. I think the Minister should adequately consider SOP 128.The other SOP that I want to mention is actually in my name and that is again SOP 130 for which the argument goes like this: if you are a student that is about to benefit from $8000 to $9000—and we do have again many holes in this policy. There are potentially 50000 people that may be filling out these statutory declarations and I do want to hear from the Minister: can he confirm that there haven't been any situations that he is aware of whereby there have been major issues around the statutory declarations? We may be hearing—Hon Chris Hipkins: Yes. Yes I can confirm that. I already have.Hon NIKKI KAYE: Yeah but we would like to know the scale of that. We would love him to talk to us about that in the House.Hon Chris Hipkins: I answered that earlier.Hon NIKKI KAYE: Well we would like him to give us more detail because we have serious SOPs on the Table. The one in my name again is SOP 130 which I would love for him to talk to. Can he confirm why he wouldn't consider a penalty of $10000 given that many of the fees that we're talking about would be over $5000 anyway? Why won't he consider that as a possible option? That's what my SOP does: it states that "A person who commits an offence against subsection (3) is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10000."Again this is not about us bashing students. Actually we know how many students work incredibly hard out there but what we're saying is that if you are putting up $2.8 billion then you would think that you would have much stronger policies in terms of accountability. We have put up some options in this committee in the form of SOP 127 128 129 and 130 and we would like to hear from the Minister on the range of issues that I have raised. Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 9.55 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)"