Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Mr Chair for this opportunity. I would like to start by responding to the call the Minister of Education took earlier. So yes we are grateful that the Minister is taking calls. The Minister actually said that he has gone through all the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) put forward by us which is really good. But with due respect to the Minister I want to say to the Minister that he might have read them but he hasn't understood them because firstly he said that about reporting—yes there is another way of reporting put in place which will be done twice a year or something like that. But what we mean is something that is sensible something that means knowing the place where the child is in the big picture. So if the report is going to read that yep your child can read but can also improve what does that mean? Can the child read or can the child not read? That is what a parent wants to know. Just getting a paper twice a year or thrice a year is not helpful. Hon Tracey Martin: At what level? At what age? What reading age?Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: We need to be able to measure their learning against something and that is what national standards did. The member if she wants to take a call she should actually stand up and take a call. So yes take your time and make your point in your time.So coming back to my point what parents want to know is how their child is doing in comparison to the whole system. They don't want to receive a piece of paper that they have to sit there and interpret and understand where their child is in the whole education system. Because that means a lot—reading writing and maths mean a lot for a child's future.Hon Tracey Martin: Science? Arts?Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Yeah for arts. For any kind of trade there has to be some reading skills there has to be some writing skills there has to be some kind of maths skills. I don't think anyone can be a successful tradesperson without knowing how to read how to write or having some basic maths skills. If that is what this Government wants to promote we are definitely not supporting that. Of course we want to see that national standards are kept.The second point I want to make is the Minister said that our SOPs are saying that there are no consequences. We are not saying that there are no consequences if someone is misrepresenting—that is clause 15. We have two SOPs and members on this side have already spoken to those SOPs—SOP 128 and SOP 127. SOP 128 is Denise Lee's SOP and SOP 127 is Simeon Brown's SOP. Today the Minister said there are consequences. We know that the consequences are there in the legislation but what we are saying is that the consequences are not enough. That's not going to actually help people people that would feel tempted to take this opportunity to misrepresent and take advantage of something that is freely available. That's what we are saying. We are saying that the offence that is in clause 15(4) a fine not exceeding $5000." is not enough. The other SOP which was about removing "without reasonable excuse". Why we are saying to remove "without reasonable excuse" is that if there is this clause the way it is that is keeping the wording "without reasonable excuse" in the clause that means the person is misrepresenting willingly knowingly. If that person is willingly and knowingly misrepresenting then there should be severe consequences. The consequences that are listed here in clause 15 are not going to deter anyone from taking advantage of this free system that is available at the cost of $2.8 billion of taxpayers' money. So this is taxpayers' money; it cannot be taken lightly. There can be temptations by people. If the Minister wishes to keep "without reasonable excuse" then the Minister should take a call to explain why he thinks that when that person is convicted a fine of up to $5000 is going to be enough. In other legislation we have seen there are fines of up to $55000 and this is along with the possibility of imprisonment. So this is a serious fraud if somebody is misrepresenting and taking advantage of the education system at the cost of taxpayers' money. If that person actually goes through with it the benefit for that person will be huge. If that person is caught if it is going to be just up to $5000—it could be $50 it could $100 it could be $1000—that will mean nothing. So the Minister needs to put a system in place where people know that if they try to take advantage of the system that is freely available then there are going to be some serious consequences.So no one is saying that there are no consequences listed in this legislation; what we are saying is that the consequences listed in this legislation are not enough and we want to make sure that people are not committing fraudulent activity and we want to make sure that the consequences are serious enough so that they realise—[Time expired]"