Mallard Trevor: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mallard Trevor: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16329. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I look forward to having that debate on the hustings. Mr Quinn is saying that people can go to Hutt Valley High School because their parents went there but people who live a lot closer cannot. 
Colin King 
: After—after you’ve got that— 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No I make it very clear to Colin King that the way the system works is that there is a zone and when there is a lot of demand on a zone it shrinks. There will always be someone who is just outside the border who if the inherited rights did not apply would have got in to a school because the zone would have been bigger. Colin King knows that. I look forward to the people who are on the wrong side of Waiwhetu Road saying that they would have got into Hutt Valley High School if it was not for the Government’s rules that have inherited rights for people to go to Hutt Valley High School. That is what will happen. That is the way it will work. Colin King knows that. I look forward to debating that. 
Colin King 
: No I don’t. Nor does Allan Peachey. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well Allan Peachey does not think there should be zones at all. Allan Peachey thinks we should just be able to flog any kid from anywhere and the principal should decide. Those were the rules under a former National Government before zoning came in. 
I go back to a point that my colleague Grant Robertson made—that is the way we are shaping up education legislation. When I was the Minister of Education there was a general review of education legislation going on. I do not know whether we made a lot of progress on it over 6 years but there was a hope to get a new education Act that was slimmed down and did the things that legislation needed to do. I see that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education is nodding; that review is still ongoing. It will be good to see it and do some work on it. The idea was to remove from the Education Act the stuff that did not need to be in legislation. I see the Minister is nodding that this is occurring under the National Government. 
My question for her is: why then are we putting into legislation which Government agency should run the policy function for tertiary education? That does not need to be in legislation. A Cabinet minute is fine. A Cabinet minute would cover that. I think something has happened similar to a couple of little boys having a competition to see who can pee further up a wall. The Ministry of Education won and it wants that written into legislation. That is essentially what happened. There is no need for it at all. All it is proof of is who won the competition. It is proof of who won the competition and that could have been in a Cabinet minute rather— 
Hon Simon Power 
: Get some sleep man. Get some sleep. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I hope to get some sleep. I hope to be out of here by midnight tonight if not half-past 10. 
The other point that I will make is very similar. In fact it is probably more important. It is about the secondary-tertiary programmes in the bill. I reinforce what my colleague said. There are a lot of very good programmes going on around the country. There are not enough and not all of them are good but there are a lot that are good. They are running very well at the moment as a result of the application of ministerial discretion and occasional Cabinet decisions. They work. That is all that is necessary. 
The problem is that when we start putting that sort of detail into legislation it gets quite hard to change. The flexibility is lost. The ability to take the moment and to move when a community is ready to go is lost. There is a danger that the community will not only have to come back to Cabinet but also have to come back to Parliament to make the change. We all know that could take a couple of years. I think we also all know that when communities are ready to move in this area they do not want to do it slowly and they should not have to do it slowly. We should not be a brake on innovation. I accept that the Minister is genuine and she thinks this will help. I just warn her that it will make it worse not better.