Williams Poto; Dean JacquiEDUCATION AND TRAINING (TEACHING COUNCIL FEES LEVIES AND COSTS) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingHon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for Building and Construction) on behalf of the Minister of Education: I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees Levies and Costs) Amendment Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I move That the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees Levies and Costs) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.To ensure the safety of our children and young people and the quality of the teaching they receive it's essential that we have effective regulation of the teaching profession. The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is the professional body for teachers. The core functions of the council include the registration certification and discipline of teachers. The council also sets minimum standards for ensuring high-quality teaching and provides professional leadership activities.A significant proportion of the council's income comes from fees paid by teachers to be registered and hold a practising certificate. This bill rectifies a legislative anomaly relating to the council's fee-setting powers and makes changes essential for the council's financial sustainability.Authority for the council to charge fees for the recovery of costs is provided under the Education and Training Act 2020. However in a case taken earlier this year by the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) the High Court found that the Act only allows for the council to fix fees in relation to some of its functions. There is a significant gap between what the council is required to do and what the Act allows it to charge for. The gap is unintentional and needs to be addressed. The policy is that the council should be able to recover the costs of its mandatory functions from teachers. The bill amends the Act to give effect to that policy.Fees are the only cost recovery mechanism provided for in the Act. However the costs related to some of the council's functions are more appropriately recovered through levies because they relate to activities undertaken for the benefit of the profession rather than as specific services for individual teachers. The bill addresses this issue by enabling the council to set fees and impose levies as appropriate. This will improve the transparency of the council's cost recovery process.Two of the bill's measures are aimed specifically at addressing concerns from many teachers who submitted on the bill about the potential for the council to set unreasonable or unaffordable fees. The first of these is a requirement for the council to ensure that fees and levies only cover the actual and reasonable costs of performing the council's functions and exercising its powers. The second is a requirement for the council to consult with the teaching profession and to receive views presented to it with an open mind and to give due consideration to those views when making decisions about fees. While the requirement to consult is already a well-established principle of administrative law making it explicit in the Act provides the profession with greater assurance that consultation on fees and levies will be genuine.I want now to briefly touch on the retrospective validation provisions which I outlined in greater detail during the bill's second reading. I want to reiterate how important it is that the council be able to operate from a position of legal certainty. To that end the bill retrospectively validates fees previously set and received by the council and its predecessor organisations with one exception: it does not validate the annual fees made under the May 2020 order that also promulgated the change from three-yearly to annual certification.The council's decisions to change from three-yearly to annual certification and fees were overturned by the court in the PPTA case and the previous arrangements were effectively reinstated. The bill does not change this position. It does however allow the council to retain the annual fees that have already been paid credit these in part payment of the reinstated three-yearly fee that now applies and require payment of the balance. This is more efficient than refunding the annual fees and invoicing those teachers who have since had their annual certificate replaced by a three-year certificate for the reinstated fee.At the time of the bill's second reading I advised members that we were in conversations with the council about their professional leadership function and who should bear the cost of carrying out that function. These conversations were informed by submissions on the bill from teachers and their representatives. Many teachers support the Teaching Council carrying out its core regulatory functions and using registration and practice fees to fund these activities but they strongly object to their fees being used to fund activities related to the council's professional leadership functions.During the committee of the whole House stage the committee amended the bill to address this concern. There are three aspects to these amendments. First the council's functions are separated into mandatory and optional functions. The professional leadership functions are optional and all other functions are mandatory. Second the optional professional leadership functions can only be performed with the approval of the Minister of Education. Third the council can only charge fees and levies to recover the costs of the mandatory functions.It is important that the council's mandatory functions focus on teachers. The optional functions approved by the Minister should continue to be funded by the Government because they are focused on the profession more broadly. This change will help to clearly distinguish support for growing and improving the capability of principals which the Government has committed to from the council's role in ensuring safe and high-quality teaching.I want to close by thanking all of those teachers and their representatives who made submissions on the bill during the level 4 lockdown. That input has resulted in amendments that should give teachers confidence that future fees and levies will only be used to recover costs that should be borne by teachers and will be set in place through a process that is transparent and inclusive.This legislation will support the financial sustainability of the council so that children their whānau and the broader public can have confidence that the professional regulator charged with ensuring safe high-quality teaching will be able to operate effectively. I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.