Willis Nicola; Rurawhe AdrianNICOLA WILLIS (National): Mr Assistant Speaker I rise to speak on this the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Here we are with another Back to the Future Education Bill". This is not about moving the education system forward; this bill is about getting rid of recent innovation because this is a Government who knows what it is against but not what it is for. The member who has just resumed her seat Jo Luxton told us that the Government needs more time and isn't that just a theme of the way that this Government is approaching policy in New Zealand—wherever in doubt form a working group put a review together and give it more time. Well that is not good enough. So let's look at what this bill actually does. The first thing it does is it fixes up the problems that the Government created with the last education bill we passed in this House which was to change the Education Council to the Teaching Council. And what the regulatory impact statement for the bill we are discussing today the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) says is that: "In making changes to the process for appointing the Board of the Teaching Council the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill will reduce government's ability to protect the public interest in the work of the Council through membership of the Board. This increases the risk that the Council could exercise its functions in ways that do not align. Given the breadth of the Council's functions this could have implications for the safety of children and young people teacher supply and diversity the quality of teaching and government's fiscal commitments." So what that is for me to translate is a very clear statement by Government officials that the legislation we passed in this House but weeks ago put at risk the public safety of children and young people. And it did that because it overturned what currently exists with the Teaching Council—it changed it—out of the Government's desire to have political utu and change the name of something and in doing so it put at risk the public interest. So here we've got the tidy-up. Here we've got the tidy-up bill to tidy up the mistakes that were made recently and here we have the tidy-up which is to introduce new measures to give the Minister the ability to direct the Teaching Council. So isn't this an interesting situation? We have members opposite getting up and speaking passionately about how they wanted to give teachers autonomy they wanted to change the council to give teachers more ability to make their own decisions and then two weeks later here we are discussing a bill which seeks to give the Minister a new power to direct the Teaching Council on matters of Government policy. And it does that for the very serious reason that there would otherwise be risks to the public interest as defined by officials. So what I would say to members opposite is that I think it's time that you went and spoke with the Minister and said "Look let's stop it with the political utu. When we do these bills in the House that are just getting rid of things that National did what it does is it creates more complications and we find ourselves back in the House doing other things in the following weeks."So what we also see with this Teaching Council decision-making section of the bill is that it allows the Government to direct the Teaching Council in various ways. And we would ask why it is in particular in this bill that it is made explicit that these Government policy statements that are now able to be issued will not be disallowable instruments—that is that they will not be available to Parliament to scrutinise. That is a question that we will be able to address at further readings of the bill. So what else does this bill do? Well this bill also takes a totally retrograde step when it comes to communities of online learning because here we have another innovation that the previous National-led Government put forward. The National-led Government could see that we are in a time of digital revolution where the ability to create online teaching resources is greatly enhanced and better than it has ever been in our history. We have for example the Khan Academy and if anyone listening hasn't seen the Khan Academy and the great work that it can do to teach maths to people all over the world I encourage you to go and have a look on YouTube right now. What we have seen is innovations like that that allow children and young people via a digital device to be taught from distance. Now of course this is not ever going to replace the great work that happens face to face in classrooms and that must continue but there is a place for online learning particularly in a country where we do have provincial areas that are not served by large schools with vast staffs and subject selection and in a country where often students' choices are restricted because there isn't the subject choice and curriculum choice that there would be at a larger school. So what the National Government recognised was that it was time to allow for communities of online learning—to allow for new institutions to grow up and to provide services to schools. And this was a regime that was being embraced.But no—Labour in this bill says "We're getting rid of it." And what's the reason for getting rid of it? Well I've looked through the bill's purpose statement. I've looked through the bill and the best explanation I could find is to provide "further time to consider the future". I would suggest to you that just putting off these things is not good enough. The New Zealand public have a right to expect that that party opposite would have come into this Parliament with a plan for the future. If you're sitting in the seats of Government you should already have a plan for the future.Instead what we have is particularly Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu—the Correspondence School but also the virtual learning networks which currently exist now put under incredible pressure by this bill because they now don't know what their future looks like. What officials warn us about in the regulatory impact assessments is that in fact these virtual learning networks are under pressure to grow but may disband if arrangements become too difficult to manage. So that's potentially the impact of removing the communities of online learning. Not only does it take away potential for innovation in future; it jeopardises the innovation that already exists.And why? Oh because the Government needs more time—and I'd suggest also because the Government is intent on overturning every single innovation that National brought in to try and lift the achievement in our schools. Whether it's partnership schools whether it's communities of online learning whether it's the way the Teaching Council functions this Government is taking us back to the future in education.What else does the bill do? Well we've had quite a lot of discussion in this debate today about cohort entry for children over five years old. We had an interesting discussion from Jamie Strange about Sweden and children not having to learn till they're six and the virtue of play-based learning and all of those things are interesting but none of them are reflected in this bill because this bill doesn't say "Here's the innovative new way we're going to support young people to learn." This bill doesn't say "Here is the new way that we're going to encourage learning to happen in new entrant classes." No it does none of that. All it does is it says that the cohort entry policy that's currently in place is going to be tipped upside down and changed.And mark my words: what is going to result for New Zealand parents is confusion. It is incredibly confusing for me to even step you through right now what's going to happen but I'm going to give it a great go. Until 1 January 2020 schools' current cohort entry policies may remain or they may be terminated but after 2020 they have to have new policies which are enabled by this bill and that will require more consultation.What is the impact of this for an everyday mum and dad? The impact is they don't know when their child's going to start school because the Labour Government is so intent on changing things that National put in to give parents choice and to empower schools that in fact all we're left with is a very confusing situation where parents do not have a clear idea about when their child can start school. One thing they can be clear on: they can be very clear that not all children in this country are guaranteed any more to be able to start school at age five. It used to be a guarantee that when you turned five you could start school. Well that is no longer a guarantee thanks to the measures in this bill.So we have those three measures and then we have the measure around private schools' registration criteria. I want to be very clear that schools providing a safe physical and emotional place for students is important. It is essential. But forgive me for asking whether or not giving the Minister of Education the broad discretion to close a private school is a good idea when we have seen that very same Minister of Education prepared to show callous disregard to the students in partnership schools whose lives have been transformed by those schools whose well-being has been enhanced and whose learning has been enhanced. That Minister was prepared to close those schools and so I question whether he is the kind of Minister that should be getting expanded discretion for the future. This bill is simply a step back to the future. Where are the new ideas? You have none. Have some vision for education instead of—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired."