Martin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:958. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First):I thank the Minister of Education for clarifying a couple of issues. Can I raise a couple of others that perhaps the Minister could take another call on to clarify. One is with regard to the name change and the removal of the word “teacher” inside the name of the council and replaced with “educators”. It is good to have the Minister point out that this body will now cover all those who are termed “educators” which is an interesting term. It has become quite prevalent particularly since this Government came into power.At the moment it is interesting that inside early childhood education educators are home-based educators. They are trained and qualified and registered teachers and they are people with specific skills. We move into the compulsory sector of schooling and we now have the partnership school legislation which also has educators but not trained and qualified teachers in it. Can I ask the Minister then whether this body will firstly be creating a register of educators in the same way that it creates a teachers register? If and when any of those educators break the rules there will be a public record of those educators so that they cannot move from one facility to another. If this body creates a register of educators will those educators have to pay the amount the registration fee that is going to fund all the functions of this particular body; if not why not?Let us move on. That is the first question around the name. The next thing the Minister mentioned was around the code of conduct as opposed to the code of ethics. Let us get down to brass tacks about language shall we. Conduct is your behaviour—Hon Hekia Parata: Correct.TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you Minister. So a code of conduct dictates your behaviour and therein lies the interesting point. I also note that in the department’s report it says that the code of conduct so how you will now behave—I beg your pardon; how educators will behave but we are not sure whether educators will be incorporated by this body and registered by and tracked by it. We know only that teachers will be at this stage. This will be created in consultation with stakeholders. We just had 1525 stakeholders—bar 13—come and actually say that they did not want it so that will be an interesting consultation period. I wonder who is going to take that consultation with those people or with what people about this code of conduct as to how you will behave.I think quite reasonably the sector is concerned that with these outlines of how you will behave one of the things that will come out is that you will not criticise the Minister or the ministry. You will not publicly go out there and defend what you believe is bad practice with regard to the teaching and education of our children because there will now be a code of conduct that stops you from doing so.But because I am not confident that I am going to get a second call I want to also move on to another piece of Part 1 which is actually the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. The Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 21 says: In clause 38 delete new section 353(2) (page 35 lines 25 to 27).” Those lines are: “When performing its function and exercising its powers the Education Council must act in accordance with the rules of natural justice.” That is the only time “natural justice” is mentioned and the Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister requests it be removed.Would the Minister stand up and take a call and perhaps just clarify for me particularly and I am sure for the teachers out there why she feels the need to remove the rules of natural justice from this legislation and this body when dealing with this profession. I will leave it there because I am hoping—very much hoping—that this is such an important statement about removing natural justice from this group of professionals and that the reason why it was not discussed at select committee was that nobody asked about it then but it is now in a Supplementary Order Paper.