Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. I couldn't resist that challenge from Simeon Brown—it was just too good to resist. All through this debate we've had a lot of very passionate wording and there's nothing wrong with that because that is great. We have to have a passionate debate at this stage of this bill but it does also have to make sense and what we heard from the Hon Nikki Kaye is that this side of the House is accused of acting in some kind of ideology. She uses the word ideology" and it has been used by other members of the Opposition but at the same time in the next sentence she makes the statement that "National stands firm on these principles." Now if that doesn't sound like some kind of ideology then I don't know how you describe ideology—"We stand firm on these principles." Another comment that struck me as rather inconsistent was the mention by a couple of the Opposition members now of "these two prominent unions". Now of course they are absolutely correct but it's very rare that you hear them talking about unions in such a positive way. I hope it will continue perhaps into the next piece of employment legislation we're getting through. But I have to point out the inconsistency because last night the chair of our Education and Workforce Committee Parmjeet Parmar stated that the communities of online learning were brought in—and I quote—"to reduce the numbers of teachers in an attempt to bring down the number of union members." So which one is it: are they too prominent the unions and you admire them and you want to listen to their wording or are you out to actually try and just get rid of them? Most disappointing however is the fact that very clearly at least four or maybe five members of our Education and Workforce Committee permanent and also floating have not read the departmental report—either that or they are completely disregarding the very eloquent advice that we've been given. Nicola Willis was the last person to mention it so I would like to restate some of the very eloquent explanations already given by both my colleague the Hon Clare Curran and the Minister in the chair Chris Hipkins. This was with regard to the requirement for the Teaching Council having to have regard to Government policy. Yes both the Post Primary Teachers' Association and NZEI—"these two prominent unions"—did point out that they had some views that this could perhaps undermine the Teaching Council's status. So as we should do we sought advice on this. Clearly the committee needed to consider that and it was very eloquently explained to us that these two phrases "giving effect to" and "having regard to" have different meanings in law. So what the bill states is it's "having regard to". To quote the departmental report "Having regard to is different from giving effect to and therefore the council remains an independent entity free to make decisions based on its assessment of the issues." Now this is the third time I believe that we've read this sentence but with their heads down they can pretend they didn't read it they didn't hear it now so they can start this debate all over again. Quite frankly it's like a washing machine; we seem to be going around and around. We're hearing the same arguments; we're giving the same explanations. Words matter. So if words matter as per your own expressions these words matter. Lastly a very quick mention on the cohort entry. We received 18 submissions in total on this bill. Five were on the specific point of the cohort entry but none—none—of them were from parents stating to us that their choices were ripped away from them that they wanted at all costs for their child to start on their fifth birthday. We didn't hear any of them. In fact I think that those parents were a lot smarter than the Opposition members have proven to be. They worked out for themselves that actually mostly the children might be missing out by a week after their fifth birthday to start school—at the most it would be five or maybe six weeks—and actually that it was not such a big deal. I am very sure that the teachers listening to this debate are glad that this side of the House does not agree with the Opposition's view that teachers and schools should be providing baby-sitting services. Thank you Madam Chair."