Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Well isn't it interesting that the speaker who's just resumed his seat Ibrahim Omer talked about the time constraints when he had 10 minutes on the clock and then sat down in under a minute? I would encourage that member to use his full allotted time if he has that much to say. Can I just open by also commenting on the children who were outside on the forecourt today from Hutt Valley High School who were here in what was quite a remarkable protest if you could call it that. They were here to do their schoolwork on the forecourt of Parliament out on the grass out there in protest of the mouldy damp cold and rundown buildings at Hutt Valley High School especially that C block that they tell me about. That is one of the very undesirable places. I just want to say to Flynn who was one of the organisers of that event well done. It certainly garnered lots of attention from MPs and the media. I think they made their point very well. I'll move on to the bill the Education and Training Amendment Bill which as many speakers before me have pointed out is a fix-up bill a technical bill. Sometimes these things happen and when the Minister delivered his speech earlier on he did point to the fact and he is right that this was one of the largest bits of legislation that's been done in a very long time when it comes to our education system. Of course when that happens there are things that fall through the cracks and there are some unintended consequences. So this bill is here today—we're here today—to fix some of those drafting errors. I would note that and I would like to say to the Minister Thank you for bringing this bill at this time." because I see that it has to be in place by January next year to avoid some of those unintended consequences. It is nice to see from this Government a bill brought in in a timely manner so that we can in fact have a full process at select committee which we haven't always been afforded. A bill that's just recently gone through—this evening in fact—the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill only had three weeks and it could have had a much fuller process like this bill is having. So it is good to see that the Minister is giving us a bit of time. The bill was moving things around shifting things into primary legislation and other things into regulations as should have been done. One of the things that it does around police vetting is also a necessary change. But I would like to point out that with the police vetting at the moment for early childhood centres who are looking to employ staff—and that's another thing I'll touch on in a minute—when they are having their staff vetted it is now at this current point in time taking 30 days for that to come back. So the real crisis that's happening here at the moment with our lack of early childhood teachers is being exacerbated by the fact that it is very very difficult to get police vets done in a timely manner. So while this bill is fixing a few things up and making it a little bit easier the real problem out there on the ground in the centres is the fact that they can't actually get those police reports back in a timely way. In fact most of those early childhood centres who are looking to employ staff actually vet every single one of the applicants because they know if they wait till they have chosen one of them it'll take so long to get the police certificate or the police check back that they won't have that employee on the floor in time. That's actually something that is going to require our attention because it is having an immense impact on early childhood centres.Just going back to that while this bill is a relatively uncontroversial technical fix-it—although I think my colleague Penny has some other ideas—for the most part at this early stage from what we can see it looks like most of these things are required and necessary and shouldn't cause too much drama although we will have a fulsome process at select committee to ensure that is the case. We do hope that some of the more pressing issues in the education system then have our attention. As other members have mentioned we've got truancy issues. We've got issues with our maths and literacy in schools. But one of the issues—the very important issues—that we have in our early education centres at the moment is a massive massive shortage of teachers which is impacting on those early learners. A lot of the time we are seeing reliever teachers on the floor to make up numbers and even that has been a problem getting relieving teachers because of the changes to early childhood teachers having to be registered in a different way now. Where the fill-in teachers used to just have to do a few hours a year to remain registered and would fill those spots they now can't do that. So we're heading into winter with a massive teacher shortage because we can't bring in migrants and we also have early childhood education educators who can't teach because they aren't able to get their teachers registration in the same way that they would—having to pay thousands of dollars a year—so they're just not doing it adding to that crisis. So I do hope that while this bill is just really a formality we will turn our minds to it at select committee in my select committee. There are some bigger issues out there that do require our attention and I do hope that the Minister will bring some more meaty bills. He did allude to the fact that he will. We are just here on this side of the House foreshadowing some of those issues and hoping that he will in fact bring those issues to the House in the form of legislation later this year. I commend the bill to the House."