Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Mr Assistant Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I'd also like to join the Hon Nikki Kaye in talking about the select committee process. We do have an excellent select committee the Education and Workforce Committee very ably chaired by Sarah Dowie who's doing an excellent job and I acknowledge the Hon Tim Macindoe who's a part of that committee. Unfortunately I wasn't present for the—Hon Kris Faafoi: He's all right.JAMIE STRANGE: He's OK. Unfortunately I wasn't present for the submissions but I have taken the time to read a number of them and those submissions will make their way into my speech as I make my way through it.As we've heard this bill supports better outcomes for the tertiary sector in three main areas: number one by giving Government agencies better tools to identify and manage questionable behaviour in tertiary education organisations; number two by imposing higher consequences where contract breaches or illegal activities are confirmed; and number three by broadening protection and arrangements for students studying across our system to support student well-being.Now we had 2000 organisations and individuals make submissions on this bill so certainly this aspect of education is something that there is a high level of public interest in. It's actually my third time in two days speaking on education matters so that's quite nice as a former teacher—the fact that education is getting a bit of a spotlight in the House just over the last couple of days. The key aspect of this bill is around strengthening our education system. It's about making sure it's strong making sure it's robust and making sure it works for young people as well as families as well as parents—basically to provide for our community. I'm a big believer in public education and the outcomes that a strong education system provides for our country.I'm just going to focus for a couple minutes here on some of the miscellaneous amendments in the bill. The first one is about enabling State and State-integrated schools to manage international student misconduct outside of school including the use of a stand down suspension exclusion or expulsion so they can uphold their contractual duty to ensure international students' health safety and well-being. I know it's a miscellaneous amendment but I see this as very important because we do have a number of international students coming to our shores. We certainly are a very popular destination and that's a credit to our institutions to our teachers and to our lecturers. It's not just at the tertiary level we have international students coming; they come right through the levels right from primary intermediate high school—and even partnership schools I believe. Erica Stanford: Which one in particular?JAMIE STRANGE: Which one?Erica Stanford: Say it.JAMIE STRANGE: There you go. So look on this topic of international students I'm very pleased that this bill tightens up this area because it is important that powers are given to boards of trustees. We do appreciate international students coming and we welcome them with open arms and we'll continue to do so but it's important that there are safeguards in this area. The particular safeguards in this bill particularly relate to a situation where a student's having a bit of a challenging time and maybe pushes the boundaries further than they maybe should and there are powers to sit the student down and say Hey look this is not working." have a talk to their parents and work it out—which is just common sense. As a school teacher I certainly taught a number of international students and it can be challenging for them at times coming to a new country. A lot of times particularly if they're younger they will leave their family for a period of time to come over here. There's a language barrier. Confidence needs to be built. Sometimes they don't understand areas around safety and I think one of the key aspects for the international students is that they're often put into a boarding situation with a family and it can often be a completely different environment from what they're used to in their country so they certainly can at times be a little bit unsettled. Sometimes they settle down but sometimes there are a few challenges around that. So look certainly this bill recognises some of the challenges in that space and puts some things in place—not just for the school and the other students but also for the protection of the international student who is over here to make sure they have a good experience in New Zealand.I'd like to look at another amendment here and that's around changes to or clarifying the number of technical matters relating to funding and reporting. Now on this area of funding—and in terms of funding private and public institutions in a fair and equitable way—we did have quite a few submissions. I'm just going to mention a couple of those submissions now because this was an area that certainly came up in the committee. We had a submission from the New Zealand Union of Students' Associations and they talked about the treatment of international students but they also—oh no sorry that was international students. Sorry—it was the Otago University Students' Association (OUSA) and basically what they said was "We are concerned that the provision to provide private institutions with the same funding as public institutions will lead to the dilution of funding for these public tertiary providers. The purpose of public institutions such as the University of Otago is not to solely provide returns to its shareholders but instead to produce well educated individuals who will serve society. Large public institutions such as the University Otago are accountable to their community and to other external organisations such as OUSA which holds to account the organisation on the quality of the service in which they provide. Private institutions are accountable only to their shareholders and in providing maximum returns on shareholders wealth."So what this submission does is it clearly outlines the difference between the private institutions and the public institutions and they're strongly advocating for the same funding rather than private institutions having a bit of a better deal. That's certainly something that people on this side of the House agree with. A strong public education system is absolutely vital—vital—to our country.Just a couple of other amendments here—it talks in the bill there about making it an offence for a person to falsely award credits to a student studying towards a qualification. This is in relation to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA)—allowing NZQA to pursue action against tertiary education organisations for falsely awarding credits to students who have not been appropriately assessed for those credits. This is certainly common sense. It is important that we have a certain amount of robustness in our system around credits and if people are falsely being awarded credits then I think everyone in this House would agree that that's something that we don't want to see in our country. So this bill allows some teeth for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to act when that situation arises.Another one here—it talks about allowing tertiary education institutions (TEIs) to pull assets from a number of trusts to create a common fund for investment purposes. Pooling assets into a common fund provides economies of scale and administrative efficiencies and creates the opportunity to generate a higher return on an investment. It is important within an institution to look at the finances as we know and it certainly makes sense if they can cut down on costs by pooling funds pooling resources administration costs—yeah. In this bill like I said at the start there is a lot of common sense and there's a lot of cross-party agreement on these things and that's an important aspect.Just a couple more in my last sort of couple of minutes here. The bill also talks about changing the term "private training establishment" (PTE) to "independent tertiary establishment" to allay PTE concerns that "private" implies they are for profit when in practice PTE covers a range of types of organisational forms from small trusts to large conglomerate not-for-profit and for-profit education providers. So obviously we've had a bit of an issue here and it has come through in some of the submissions around some of the private training institutions who are not for profit being lumped in with the profit-making institutions. So they've clearly said "Well look we aren't for profit and so it needs to be clearly stated that we aren't and have the aspect there of difference." We'll be listening to submitters on that.I'll probably finish with one more.Rt Hon David Carter: You've only got 39 seconds to go. You're doing very well.JAMIE STRANGE: This one's for you: modernising the TEI council operations such as allowing councils to convene meetings via teleconferences and other electronic means. Now I'm not sure if the member opposite knows much about the modern electronic means but this is basically just about—[Interruption] You use things like social media you know or other sorts of aspects around there.I'm very happy to speak about this bill and very happy that we have general consensus across the House. It is just sort of tightening up on a few areas within the education sector and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you."