Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. Let me just start by acknowledging Jan Tinetti who is the proponent of this bill the Education (National Education and Learning Priorities) Amendment Bill and congratulate her as a member of this House pursuing a member's bill through Parliament and bringing it this far through to the third reading. I also want to acknowledge her as the deputy chair of the Education and Workforce Committee and the work that she does there as someone who has a lot of experience in the teaching profession. I'd like to make a few comments in my short speech on this bill. National is opposed to this bill for a number of reasons but ultimately because this bill essentially does very little—does next to nothing. I think if members were to look at the bill and to look at its progress through the House—when it started this bill had quite ambitious goals. It was going to change the purpose of the National Education and Learning Priorities (NELPs) quite substantially. But through the process it has been drawn back to really just doing one thing which is changing how the Minister must consult. Initially the bill was going to replace the sentence in the Education Act to focus on helping. The purpose of the NELPs was to focus on helping each child and young person to attain educational achievement to the best of his or her potential;" and the bill replaced it with "to provide learning experiences that support children and young people to reach their potential and a system that aims to achieve equitable outcomes for all;". That's quite a reasonably dramatic change that was proposed and then a number of other changes through the Act were going to make a substantial change to the National Education and Learning Priorities in the Education Act. However during the select committee stage I believe it was the Post Primary Teachers' Association turned up and said "Hey we're having 13 reviews. We've got the national Education Conversation taking place. Surely we should be waiting to actually listen to teachers to educators to principals to a range of other interested parties in the education sector before we actually make any changes to the NELPs parts of the Education Act." And to the member's credit she did withdraw those provisions from her bill. However the irony of it is that in doing so she accepted that there needed to be a wider conversation. But that's exactly all that this bill does which now essentially means that the Minister must consult with a wider group of people before changing the National Education and Learning Priorities. Hon Tim Macindoe: Do they need a law change for that?SIMEON BROWN: And really I think—Mr Macindoe asked the question: "Do we actually need a law change to allow this to happen?" And the answer is no. The provision is already there in the Education Act so that the Minister should consult with a wide group of people when developing the National Education and Learning Priorities. That's exactly what Ministers do. They consult with wide groups of people—wide parts of the sector—to ensure that what they're doing is in the best interests of the people that they're there to serve. And so what we've got left is essentially a list of people which this bill says the Minister must make reasonable efforts to consult. I would argue that that's a weaker way of saying it than what it already is in the Act. It's weaker than what it was before. It now says "The Minister must make reasonable efforts". The member in charge of the bill Jan Tinetti was a little more brave when she first put the bill forward because it said "The Minister must include consultation". I think that's even stronger but it's been watered down to say "The Minister must make reasonable efforts to consult" and we're still not sure what a reasonable effort is.Then we see a list of people that the Minister must make reasonable efforts to consult with but there's one group of people who are missing and that's parents. Parents are missing from the list. Parents have an incredible and important role in the education of their children and they are missing from this list of people who the Minister must make reasonable efforts to consult. Yes members on the other side might say "Well it includes national bodies representing the interests of parents." but that's not consulting directly with parents. If the member in charge of this bill wanted to be consulting widely the member would be saying "Let's consult directly with parents." It says "Let's consult directly with children and young people." but fails to say "consult directly with parents". I believe they're one of the most important parts of the education of our children and of our young people and they are missing from this legislation. So I think this bill is unfortunately—while it has good intentions I think it makes very minor changes and misses out on one of the most crucial parts of the education sector: parents."