Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Oh look I'm pleased to take a call in this committee stage of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Firstly can I just acknowledge that there are going to be a range of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in this debate and I think it's really fitting that that occurs. At the outset though can I acknowledge that there is one Supplementary Order Paper which particularly my colleague Nicola Willis will address and that National is supporting. Can I at this point recognise that there have been literally hundreds and thousands of people across New Zealand who opposed the name change for Victoria University and that the Minister's worked very hard with my colleague Nicola Willis and Dr Shane Reti to I think get to a reasonable place on that. You know it does have a huge impact to people in terms of their academic history but also this question of the impact economically socially and culturally as to what a name change can do for an institution. So I'll let my colleague Nicola Willis particularly address that.In terms of the committee stage of this bill though National has made it very clear we are deeply concerned about the ideological nature of a number of these changes. I'm going to address some of them and in particular a couple of amendments that I have up. One of them cuts to the heart of cohort entry and let's just remember and reflect on the history of this. What we know is that there is some research that shows the benefit of children starting with a cohort of other children in terms of their ability to form social relationships but also the disruption that can occur for new-entrant teachers. That was sort of part of the theory about the original cohort entry policy that was progressed by the last National Government; I acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata. National fought very strongly for that. We obviously had designed it in a way that we thought was reasonable. Again it sort of played out quite throughout the select committee but also in the public that the maximum amount of time that a child could—and it would be a small group of kids on the numbers—would be eight weeks but potentially this is a few weeks or a couple of days.We think—and again my colleagues have I think put this in a very eloquent way—it's a fundamental right of parents to be able to not only ensure that their child starts school potentially on their fifth birthday if they want to which is what the history of New Zealand has been but also that we're talking about their choice and we're also talking about what may be days in many situations of difference. Instead what happened was the Minister came out there with some pretty strong statements I think. He hadn't got Cabinet agreement at the time. It obviously had a cost to it this policy because effectively to go out there and say well we're going to make these changes in terms of cohort entry does bring additional costs to the Crown because you've got a group of kids that are more likely to be in early learning. So the process was pretty shabby.Then what we've ended up with in my view is intensely ideological. Now I do argue that maybe if you are going to get to the point where you say OK you can't be under five years old it does make sense to have more cohort entries but regardless National stands firm on the principle that it's not going to work for every child but actually it is the fundamental right of parents to enable their child if they want to to start a little bit earlier and that might make sense for that particular child.This bill removes that ability for a group of parents who have always known that in New Zealand they're able to have their child start at the age of five—that will be taken away from them. Again I don't have time to go through all of the other areas but we've got a lot of time in this committee of the whole House stage of the debate because I know that the member in the chair is very generous in terms of calls particularly when we've got so many Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) and so much ground to cover.You know I'll just briefly touch on communities of online learning. I've got an amendment in the mix here. Again this is a Government that talks about the next generation but a core area that would provide distance learning for a group of young people in isolated communities who are disadvantaged are having something ripped away from them on the grounds of pure ideology and National thinks that's wrong.