Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. Just to correct Nicola Willis the speaker who resumed her seat this bill didn't start with the Tomorrow's Schools review. It started with a conversation across New Zealand for a 30-year vision about what our parents what our students what our families what our educators and what our country believed success looked like. That was the first thing in education that this Government did. We went throughout New Zealand and asked New Zealanders asked students asked young people asked our seniors asked our parents and asked our educators What does success look like?" They said that it doesn't look like national standards and it doesn't look like charter schools and it doesn't look like a voucher system and it certainly doesn't look like setting up those parents who happen to work in the Ministry of Education and have children inside our schools against the parents who don't happen to work inside the Ministry of Education and have children inside our schools. I find it fascinating that a member who's going to stand for Wellington Central decides that insulting bureaucrats is a way to start her election campaign. There are incredibly dedicated parents inside of the Ministry of Education who spend an awful lot of time—much more time than that member—moving around the country talking to families to students to disability groups and other specialty groups to teachers and to educational professionals. To write them off in the way that that member just did—I don't know what she thinks her election campaign's going to be like but if that's the start of it then I don't hold out a lot of hope. Can I come back to the bill. First of all I also need to disagree with something that the Minister of Education said in his opening speech. Now I don't often disagree with the Minister of Education. He and I have had a long relationship inside this House where we've worked on many facets of the education sector. But in his opening speech he said that "boards of trustees are after all volunteers." They are not. They are elected officials. Boards of trustees are elected by their communities to represent their communities' hopes and to set the strategic direction for their local school for the outcomes for their children. I have heard some other strange things from members of the Opposition around suddenly some lack of accountability supposedly about boards of trustees with the academic outcomes for their students which is completely false. Boards of trustees are required to report and of course they report not only to their community on the academic outcomes for their students but also on the safety and wellbeing and the holistic wellbeing of their students to their community as their elected representatives but they also must report to the Ministry of Education on those outcomes and the things that they are doing around discrimination and anti-bullying and all sorts of other areas. So I do take issue with the fact—boards of trustees are elected officials. They have put their hands up they have been voted into those places to represent their communities. They are not volunteers. The other thing I want to speak to is I want to acknowledge Catherine Delahunty. Chris Hipkins Catherine Delahunty and I used to be sort of the "Three Musketeers" around this place actually and certainly in that area of learning support and certainly in taking on the Government of the day when they decided that you know everybody had to get to that line on that day at that time or otherwise you'd failed—which was what was national standards—and I want to speak about the disputes panels. So I want to talk about the disputes panels. That came out of the inquiry into dyslexia dyspraxia and children on the autism spectrum. That came out of the presentations made to us by the parents who had children with diversity that meant that the support they needed inside of school needed to be different so that they were able to participate more fully. Unfortunately they got caught up inside the discipline process because at that time we did not have a Government that invested in the learning support that they needed for the schools to be able to work with them and their families around their diverse needs. Now this Government has not finished with the actions that we want to take to better support those families but we have put one of the largest amounts of investment into specialist areas and into other areas and into learning support coordinators and a learning support delivery model and we have acknowledged those students and we have acknowledged those families and the difficulties that they have had. We must do better but the disputes panels came out of that inquiry. That inquiry was brought to the select committee by Catherine Delahunty it was supported by Chris Hipkins and myself and the casting vote was the Hon Judith Collins. So just to acknowledge all those and to say that we have now started to move forward another one of the recommendations from that select committee. In my final moments I want to talk about physical restraint. I want to talk about the dog's breakfast that was left to us by section 139AC. That is the clause inside of the current Education Act 1989 section 139AC which is the physical restraint clause. It never worked. It's never worked from the moment that the previous Government put it into place. It never worked for the children with diverse needs it never worked for the teaching profession—it never worked. It was a knee-jerk reaction without all the other supports around it that were needed to make sure that those children could participate in the school day with the right supports for their needs. One of a teacher's key responsibilities is to effectively manage their classroom environment so that positive teaching and learning can happen for all students. There are times when a student or a group of students for whatever reason disrupt teaching and learning either by stopping teachers teaching or by stopping other students learning and we must not forget that a classroom is a learning place but it's also a workplace. We have dual responsibility. Teachers don't want to use force. There is a problem still with the piece of legislation in front of us. I want to acknowledge Golriz Ghahraman I want to acknowledge Chris Hipkins—the three of us recognise that what we currently have inside this legislation is not there yet. We will continue to do work and as the Minister identified we will bring in a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House. Collectively we've got to come up with a solution because what we're doing now is not working. So we endorse the bill. We commend the bill to the House from the New Zealand First perspective but we acknowledge that the three parties that create the Government are continuing to work together because we're not there yet on clause 95 around the physical restraint. Our teachers do not want to use force and our parents want their children to be safe but I have to acknowledge—I have to acknowledge—that we are seeing an incredible number of children coming through with behavioural issues and with the inability to self-moderate and one of the things we know from the Chief Science Advisor is that the ability to self-moderate is much more a predictor of what will be success later in life. So we owe it to these children we owe it to their families and we owe it to the teachers in our classrooms to try and get this right. We're not there yet but we'll continue to work on it. Kia ora Mr Speaker."