Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name—No. 231 and No. 232—that relate to the functions of the Teaching Council. It's a shame that the Minister has already dismissed these SOPs having not yet heard my arguments for them. I am an optimistic person by nature and it's my hope that on listening to my arguments the Minister of Education may reconsider his view.Let's first consider new section 382A inserted by clause 13 in this amendment bill and what it proposes to do for the Teaching Council in order to understand why these SOPs might be necessary. We need to go back to remember how the Teaching Council came to be created in its current form and that relates to a piece of legislation that the Minister brought into this House just a few months ago. It was a classic case of giving with one hand and taking with the other because in introducing new rules for the way that the Teaching Council would be formed the Minister said that this would be a great thing for autonomy for the ability of the profession to have professional autonomy and so therefore he said that those changes were necessary.Now what new section 382A does is directly take away that autonomy by very clearly stating that the Minister gets to issue a statement of Government policy as to how the Teaching Council performs its functions. The relevance of this was laid bare by the original wording in this bill which was that it was a directive. Now the semantics may have changed but the intent of this section is very clear: that this is—Hon Clare Curran: She clearly wasn't listening to my earlier speech.NICOLA WILLIS: —the Minister's lever for asserting control over the Teaching Council. Now members opposite are interjecting and are questioning whether this is the case. I want to direct them to the departmental report which is very clear. It says that of the … two levers the Minister's ability to appoint [the] members of the board" was the stronger. It allowed "…the Minister to assess the collective skills [and] mix … to ensure that the Board [was] a cohesive body…". Essentially the departmental report there Clare Curran is saying that the old way the Teaching Council was formed was superior but what it says also is that in making changes to the process for appointing the board they had reduced the Government's ability to—and I'm quoting—"protect the public interest in the work of the Council" through membership of the board.So what you had here was officials saying to the Minister "Look your election-year policy in which you said to the teachers 'I'm going to give you control by taking away all Government appointments. I'm going to allow these all to be directly elected positions.' actually undermines the public interest Minister because what it does is it reduces your ability to protect the public interest by ensuring that this council actually operates in accordance with Government policy and in accordance with the wider functions of the education system." So the poor officials clearly found themselves in a corner saying "How are we going to save this body from actually getting in the way of what we're trying to achieve elsewhere in the education system?" and so they came up with this little halfway house called the Government policy statement. So what these SOPs that I've introduced do is challenge the Minister to put his actions where his mouth was before the election. He said he believed in teachers' ability to control their own professional body and to be autonomous. Well if that's the case he doesn't need new section 382A to allow him to issue a statement of what the Government policy expects.Then what I've done with SOP 232 is I've given the Minister a little "get out of jail free" clause. I accept that this bill has been through a select committee process and that it's unlikely that at this stage the Minister will want to remove all of new section 382A so what I've said instead is: if you're really keen on the autonomy of teachers in these elected roles in this Teaching Council then what you should be prepared to do is table in this House when they disagree with what's in your Government policy directive. So this is a very simple amendment that would simply allow the Teaching Council to table in the House that it disagrees with the statement of Government policy. It is necessary because this is not a Government that has had so far a track record of openness or transparency and this would ensure that where the Teaching Council feels it is being directed by the Minister in a way that does undermine his pre-election high-handed statements that would be made clear to all members of this House and indeed would be made clear to the public.So I think that these two SOPs should be recommended. They're consistent with what the Government says is its intention and should be passed."