Clendon David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16343. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on this legislation. I acknowledge the work that my colleague Catherine Delahunty has done in terms of the Education and Science Committee and of generally maintaining awareness of the way this legislation has been going. 
It is undoubted that the education sector is in need of change and possibly some legislative reform is required to facilitate changes in that sector but we do not see that the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) in total delivers much of value or engages with the very serious real and substantive issues of the day that affect the sector and the people in it. There is a considerable atmosphere of distrust in the entire education sector at this time. To us this legislation seems to be just tidying-up or messing around at the edges rather than going to the heart of and addressing some of the more substantive and indeed more urgent issues. It is never a bad thing to tidy up some of the small shortcomings of legislation or of practice but it seems to be an opportunity lost and time not well spent to be dealing with the lesser issues and leaving the larger ones untouched. 
It is clear that the education sector as a whole the ministry and—dare I say it—the Minister of Education seem to be almost in a state of war. Something of a battle is raging out there particularly over the issue of educational assessment. The Principals Federation the teachers unions several hundred boards of trustees and the Porirua City Council have had opinions and many parents groups are clearly concerned about the absence of any trialling of the national standards that are being imposed. 
A perceived threat is hanging over the early childhood education sector as it is forced to cut quality. That sector is being put in the unenviable position of either raising charges or cutting the quality of the service it delivers and it simply ought not to be put in that situation. 
The tertiary education sector is in some disarray as enrolments for study are capped. In the meantime instead of dealing with very substantive issues we are focusing on the rules about people leaving their children somewhere while they go to the gym and shopping in malls. 
Some reasonable objectives are contained in this bill connected to refunds for international students. There is some useful spelling out of the relationship between schools and tertiary providers in terms of trades training. There are changes regarding teacher registration. We have challenged those changes in terms of the process undertaken to achieve them but we see some value and benefit in the content of those changes. 
We are voting against this legislation despite the fact that there is some good content. Some valuable changes are accommodated in it but overall the bad changes in this legislation certainly outweigh the good. The parts of this legislation that we cannot support are clearly ideologically consistent with the Government’s overall philosophy about the myth of choice and the belief in protecting the privileged. 
The clauses relating to limited-attendance centres were bizarre. They were very strange in that they reduced the protection for children in order to facilitate some undefined convenience for parents. We are not disputing that those creches are limited to childcare rather than education; we agree that they do not need the same level of educational scrutiny audit or regulation. But it is an absolutely critical responsibility to ensure the safety and the protection of children and we are pleased that that matter has been attended to. We acknowledge the determined campaign that has been led by Mr Mallard in order to effect that change. We will be very happy to support that amendment which has become a part of the new legislation. 
The Green Party remains fundamentally opposed to the idea of the proposed changes and the priority settings for enrolments of out-of-zone students. These changes do not accurately reflect an egalitarian approach to education nor do they sufficiently acknowledge our mobile and diverse population. They clearly offer privilege to those with parents who once attended a school or to the children of members of boards of trustees which creates a sense of entitlement among certain groups for no really robust or sound reason. Public schools need to maintain the integrity of the open access and the lack of special privilege that our education system was built upon and we think that philosophy is certainly worth maintaining. If parents are determined to maintain some sort of dynasty or some continuation they have the option of going private or they can simply stay in the zone. 
We see the clauses relating to private schools as an opportunity lost. The Law Commission review of private schools provided some useful recommendations—some relatively light-handed recommendations—some of which have been included but too many of them have been ignored. The human rights of all children need to be protected in law and we agree with at least one submitter that that has not been achieved in this legislation. 
As has been noted we are on record speaking against the late amendments brought to the select committee relating to the powers of the Teachers Council. We listened to the teachers unions which were summoned at the last minute to comment on changes to the suspension rules. The New Zealand Educational Institute said that as representatives of a large professional body it did not support the changes to the working conditions and rules governing its profession without appropriate and adequate consultation with its membership. We think that is a reasonable stance for it to take. There was no substantive argument in favour of this change being rushed through. It may indeed be a good idea but it is important that a robust process be put in place; without such a process we cannot agree to this part. 
We believe that the sector and the Government need to work together to deal with some of the substantive problems that are obvious and that have been mentioned but the current climate is such that there is not the degree of engagement or trust needed to enable or facilitate that open and necessary conversation. We will continue to be available and will continue to work with and within the sector to advance the debate that we ought to be having in this House today instead of the rather lightweight and disappointing discussion that is occurring. We will continue to oppose this legislation. Kia ora.