Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Indeed. Just working from the beginning of that for things like flu jabs we have prioritised the education workforce. They've been able to get those for free. If they can't get them for free they can claim a reimbursement for their flu jabs. We've been working very hard to get hygiene products—hand sanitiser and so on—out to schools and early learning services. I do just want to clarify the decision to move to level 3 and say that schools and early learning services will be open for those who need them was done on the basis that there was no evidence of widespread community transmission and a very very low chance of COVID coming through the gate or through the door in the first place. When we make that decision to move down to level 2 where we'll see schools and early learning services much more open for a much greater number again a big part of that—regardless of the debate around whether young people can carry it and transmit it a big part of the Government's thinking around that is that the risk of there being undetected COVID cases that could come through the gate of school or early learning in the first place is very very low. Therefore the risk of it spreading in a school setting is very very low. But one of the critical things of course in that is making sure we've got very rapid response so that if anything did happen we can close that school down very quickly and we can do the contact tracing required. In terms of the school financial viability issues the member is absolutely right. I think we both agree that decile funding is a flawed instrument and we need to move to get to a more equitable system. There are better ways of doing that and the member herself was involved as a Minister in helping to develop them. She will also then be aware that the issue is around how you do the transition because if you went from one system to the other very quickly there'd be some big winners and some big losers and I don't think anyone wants to see that. I think we'd want to make sure that we're smoothing the path for schools so that we don't see the big losers. I don't mind seeing big winners but I don't want to see big losers as we shift from one system to the other. With regard to international students yes I acknowledge that that is disproportionately affecting high-decile schools and so we are going to have to do more in that area to support those schools. I don't think that the taxpayer should be in the business of subsidising international student education but a lower international student enrolment is going to create some transition costs for those schools where I think it's legitimate for them to say Hey can you help us adjust to this new reality that we're in?" But I do want to offer some hope in that regard as well when it comes to international education and that is earlier in the year we worked with the university sector in particular to look at whether there was a way that international students could come to New Zealand have a period of quarantine and then re-engage in their education. We were unable to set that up given the very short time frame that we were working to but we've got some time now where I think we can start planning for what it could look like if international students could come back to New Zealand bearing in mind that given our COVID-free status or relatively COVID-free status we're a very very attractive place to come to. If we could get something where they could come here they could do two weeks of quarantine where we were all confident that everyone was going to be kept safe and where potentially they could even start some of their learning whilst in quarantine using distance learning and other things like that and then re-engage with the New Zealand community. That actually could be a very very positive thing and we could see international student numbers grow as a result of that. I don't want to make any commitments about that because there's a lot of water to flow under the bridge about how you'd make that work but what I'm saying is there's certainly a willingness on the Government side to have that debate with the sector to see whether we can design something that keeps everyone safe that meets the needs of quarantine but allows international students to keep coming to New Zealand. The final point I'll make on that though is that there are two sides to that equation. Us allowing them in is only one half of that equation. Them being allowed out wherever they're coming from is also the other part of the equation which we've got no control over."