Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported by 21 July 2014.

Our Government has a comprehensive, successful, and sustainable education plan. We want every New Zealand child to get a better education so that they can be successful here, at home in New Zealand, as well as globally competitive. This Government is investing in an education system that gives students and young people the skills that they need to achieve success in education and in life. This is why we are introducing legislation that sets up the education profession with an independent entity as the cornerstone of our quality teaching agenda, to ensure our education system meets the challenges and opportunities of the modern learning context. This will promote educational leadership, accountability, and high standards within the education system; help to drive continuous improvement by strengthening and streamlining quality assurance processes; and establish a regulatory framework for the protection of children and for discipline—for the highest and safest behaviour. My colleague the Hon Steven Joyce will speak in more detail about the tertiary and international education aspects of the bill.

The Government is focused on strengthening and valuing the education profession. Earlier this year our Prime Minister announced an investment of $359 million for teaching and leadership career pathways that will create four new teaching and leadership roles in schools. These roles will recognise and use talent where it is needed most. They will be implemented from next year to support communities of schools across the country. Importantly, the pathways will have a focus on supporting teachers to collaborate to lift achievement.

This year we are reviewing professional learning and development for the compulsory school sector. This month we are hosting the International Summit on the Teaching Profession here in Wellington. We expect to host Ministers of education from the top-performing education systems from all around the world. At the same time we are hosting education festivals in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch to showcase school best practice to each other, to parents, and to the community and to celebrate what is happening in our schools. We have instituted the inaugural Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards, to be awarded in June this year.

We want to build on the good practice that occurs in schools every day and support the system to promote high professional standards and accountability. The Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is integral to our plan to value and strengthen the teaching profession. The bill establishes the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, EDUCANZ, which will be a new professional body for the education profession, replacing the existing New Zealand Teachers Council. I would like, at this time, to record my thanks to the New Zealand Teachers Council for the sterling work that it has done over the duration of its existence and to thank it for the work that it will continue to do until the new body is in place.

This bill today is the result of a 3-year conversation. Widespread consultation began in 2010 when the Education Workforce Advisory Committee wrote its report, and it ended with the 2013 ministerial advisory group report, which led engagement on the proposals right across the profession. EDUCANZ will lead and promote quality teaching in New Zealand. As an independent statutory body it will focus on investing in high-quality leadership and teaching practice across early childhood and schooling. It will be the guardian for standards for teachers and help ensure that the aspirations we have for educational success are realised in the day-to-day operation of our education system. EDUCANZ will be owned by the profession and will have its needs at its heart in the interests of quality learning and the best education for each and every child and young New Zealander.

The bill sets out the purposes and functions of EDUCANZ and the appointment process for members. Members will be appointed by the Minister and will have the skills, attributes, and credentials to lead the profession. Of the nine appointed members, up to five will be registered teachers. Many of the functions of the new professional body reflect that of the New Zealand Teachers Council, but it will have additional responsibilities in providing direction for the profession. The most important role of EDUCANZ will be as steward and guardian of the standards of the profession.

The bill requires EDUCANZ to develop a code of conduct that must be adhered to by every teacher in New Zealand, ensuring that there is clarity for all about the expected behaviour and conduct of teachers and the priority of safety for the young people in their care. The bill promotes the safety of students through a robust regulatory framework for teachers. Teacher registration will be separated from the issue of practising certificates, to promote the professional value and status of those practising certificates.

The safety of learners in our schools is an absolute priority. This Government supports an education system that takes a robust approach to safeguarding children and young people. Therefore the bill will make changes to strengthen and clarify the disciplinary framework for teachers. To help raise public confidence in the profession, any teacher convicted of a serious criminal offence will have their registration cancelled. EDUCANZ will have an explicit function to monitor and enforce the mandatory reporting requirements relating to teacher misconduct. Likewise, streamlining the powers of the complaints assessment committee will ensure that appropriate disciplinary measures are taken in a timely manner. The Education Council Disciplinary Tribunal can suspend a teacher’s practising certificate if the safety of children or the reputation of the teaching profession are in question. We are removing the current 3-month maximum interim suspension.

The bill helps us to achieve our aim of five out of five students achieving success in education. We are committed to ensuring that our education system is well equipped to meet the challenges of the modern learning context. The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) helps us achieve this. We have invested significantly in consulting with education professionals to ensure that this bill reflects both their aspirations and their ambitions but also balances the need to ensure that the safety of children and the protection of parents’ interests, in terms of their children, are also safeguarded. I now commend the bill to the House.

I call the honourable member Christopher Hipkins.

That is what my mother calls me when I am being badly behaved. First of all, I suppose I should sympathise with the Minister of Education’s croaky voice. I am not sure whether I will get through 10 minutes today, either. There seems to be something in the water at Parliament today.

I do want to pick up on some of the comments that the Minister made in her speech on this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). It seems that whenever the Minister speaks in the House about education, there needs to be some translation. When she talks about an independent voice for teachers and a teachers’ body that is governed and owned by the teaching profession, it is very difficult to reconcile that with the idea that the Minister will hand-pick all the members of it. How is the profession supposed to feel in ownership of the body if it does not actually have any say in who is governing that body? The membership of the council is going to be exclusively determined by the Minister. That is completely at odds with the idea that this will be a body that is owned by the teaching profession.

The Labour Party does support an independent teaching body; whether it is called the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) or something else, it does not really matter. The principle of an independent body is something that we are strongly in support of. However, having that body exclusively appointed by the Minister simply is not going to lead to that. This body, to do the job that it is being tasked with, must have the confidence and the support of the profession, because without that it simply is not going to be able to do the job, and it is not going to get that support if the teaching profession feels that the new EDUCANZ body is something that is being done to it, rather than being done with it.

When Hekia Parata talked about this being the result of a 3-year conversation, most people in the education sector would say that there is a big difference between being talked at and spoken with. The problem is that the current Government’s approach is very much to talk at people who are working in education, rather than have a genuine conversation with them. I think that there should be an independent, robust education council or teaching council that does have quite an expansive role in raising the quality of education in New Zealand and in raising the status of the teaching profession in New Zealand. Sadly, that is not what the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is delivering.

When Hekia Parata mentioned briefly the changes in this bill to make tertiary governance more effective, what she effectively meant is the removal of staff and student representation. That is not going to lead to more collaboration and a more collegial approach to educational provision. Hekia Parata talked in her speech about the Government’s plan to introduce expert teachers. One simple question: which teachers will not be the experts?

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: The ones that aren’t raising achievement.

Oh, the ones who are not raising achievement. Well, if they are not raising achievement, then one has to question why they are still teaching, and ask whether, in fact, the Government should be focused on providing support to all teachers, because all teachers should be expert teachers. The idea that we are going to have a two-tier teaching profession—where if you are one of the lucky few who gets an expert teacher, you get a better-quality education than all the others, who supposedly have non - expert teachers—clearly shows that the Government has got all its priorities wrong.

When the Government talks about expert principals, what it is basically saying is: “We will take a principal who is doing a good job of running their school, and we will reward them for that by taking them out of their school for a couple of days a week, and we will pretend that by being out of their school for a couple of days a week they can still continue to do the good job they were doing when they were there full time.” Most principals will say that, actually, being a good principal is more than a full-time job. Running one school is more than a full-time job, so how on earth Hekia Parata and the Government can think that a good principal will somehow be able to run a whole lot of schools whilst still running their school at the same time is beyond anybody.

It is no wonder that the teaching profession and the principals are walking away from this. They are clearly walking away from this, and we have seen that in the last few days. They were willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt, and in record quick time Hekia Parata has already managed to burn them off. She has already managed to burn them off. The whole profession was willing to say: “Actually, let’s work with the Government and see whether we can make this work.”, and already it is walking away, saying: “No, this isn’t going to work.” EDUCANZ and the future of the teaching profession should be driven by the profession. In what other profession does the Government dictate: “This is how you will run yourselves. This is what all of the criteria will be.”? There are not very many. I actually think—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: The Minister already makes all the appointments, Mr Hipkins. Read the law that your Government put in place.

I have read the Cabinet paper, I say to Hekia Parata. I have read the Cabinet paper, thin as it was, and it was very clear that there was a very insubstantial evidence base there. Going on holiday somewhere does not create an evidence base for something. It seems to be that Hekia Parata thinks that just by going somewhere and speaking to a few people, it creates an evidence base. Actually, there is a lot more to an evidence base than that. There was a very flimsy evidence base for the proposals that have been put forward by John Key and the National Government, and it is no wonder that that is already starting to come unstuck.

We do need to focus on raising the quality of education in New Zealand, and that starts by recognising the critical role of the teaching profession in setting and maintaining the standards for the profession. That is something that this Government is not willing to do. This Government thinks that it can impose those standards on the teaching profession, including by setting up an establishment body for the new education council of New Zealand, which has a National Party office holder on it. If you want to know why it is that the teaching profession baulks at the idea that the Minister would appoint—hand-pick—the entire board of the new education council of New Zealand, that is a pretty good example. That is a pretty good example. I actually think that the teaching profession should have the ultimate say, or at least a significant say, on how this body is made up. That is not something that Hekia Parata is willing to do, because this Government thinks that it should be dictating to the teaching profession what should be going on within the profession.

This bill, of course, entrenches—entrenches—the double standard of this Government, where on the one hand it is talking about raising the standards for the teaching profession and then, on the other hand, it is exempting charter schools from those provisions. It is exempting its small group of charter schools from those provisions. If it is really committed to raising the standard of the teaching profession, why would it exempt the newest schools—the schools that it wants to expand? Why would it say that this new model of education should be exempt from the agenda to raise the standards in the profession? It has no good reason for doing that. This bill simply entrenches the double standard that says that schools in the public system should be dumped all over, as they have repeatedly been by this current Government, while the charter schools, which the Government is hand-picking and establishing, should get a different set of standards.

Of course, it is all spin—all this good news that we are getting from the Government is spin. Let us not forget that this is the Government that thought that the answer to quality teaching was increasing class sizes. This is a Government that, after a year and a half and $43 million of taxpayers’ money being shovelled at it, still cannot get the payroll system right—

💬 Hon Steven Joyce: That you signed up, “Chippy”!

—so that teachers actually get paid for their work. Steven Joyce is an absolute failure. “Mr Fix-it” still has not fixed it. A year and a half and $43 million later, Steven Joyce’s answer is to shovel another $10 million at it and hope for the best. Novopay does not work, and Steven Joyce still has not fixed it. He has been an absolute failure. “Mr Fix-it” did not fix Novopay.

Bigger class sizes, Novopay, school closures in Christchurch, national standards that are neither national nor standard—the litany of educational failures of this Government is not going to be undone by a little bit of spin work now, where the Government claims it actually values the teaching profession. It values them so much, it is not willing to entrust them with any decision making over the future of the teaching profession. This is a Government that is not willing to practise what it preaches.

This is a Government that wants to control everything. Hekia Parata wants to control the new education council, and yet we know that the courts do not have any faith in her decision making, because twice she has been challenged in the courts, and twice she has lost. She has been twice challenged in the courts, and she lost on both occasions. The courts even went so far as to say that she had abrogated her responsibilities as a decision maker.

Now Hekia Parata wants to have decision-making responsibilities for the whole teaching profession. She wants to hand-pick the entire body of the new education council. I think that is wrong. I think teachers should have a say in who is going to be on this new education council. The Government has no good reason for explaining why it does not believe that. Not once has the Government put forward a compelling argument for why this body should be exclusively appointed by the Minister of Education.

We should be focused on raising the status of the teaching profession in New Zealand. That means meaningful recognition for the teaching profession. It means meaningful ongoing dialogue and discussion with people working in the teaching profession. It means a two-way conversation, not a Minister who is preaching to them, telling them what is best for them, and never listening.

I would like to thank the author of the Novopay contract, Chris Hipkins, for that contribution. I would like to thank him for that. Unfortunately, I cannot thank him for much else. Unfortunately, also, I do not understand his contribution. I have tried to summarise it. I have tried to summarise it for him. It appears that he thinks that independent teacher councils are important, but they should not be too independent. That is the first thing he said. He also seems to be relitigating Labour’s support for teaching excellence. He seems to be quickly moving away from its support for teaching excellence. But, to be fair to him, that is Labour’s “yeah, nah” approach, as exhibited in education.

The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is an important bill. This bill will improve our education system. I agree with the remarks made by my colleague the Hon Hekia Parata and I suspect I will not agree with remarks about to be made by “Jurassic” Grant Robertson. In my speech, I would like to focus on the two areas of the bill—

💬 Grant Robertson: What’s that, Humpty-Dumpty?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE:—within my portfolio of tertiary education, skills, and employment. It is all right; I will come to you, Grant. First, let me deal with the Government’s reforms to university and wānanga governance. These moderate but important changes modernise councils so that they are smaller, skills-based, and can better respond and more quickly respond to the challenges of modern-day tertiary education. The changes will mean that the councils can more easily meet the needs of a rapidly changing employment market; adapt to the new challenges from changing technology, teaching, and learning; and operate more effectively in an increasingly competitive international university environment.

There are four major changes from the current model. Firstly, councils will decrease in size from 12 to 20 members currently to eight to 12 members. Universities and wānanga will choose their council size within those parameters. Secondly, council membership requirements will be more flexible by the removal of specific representative requirements. The current law is highly prescriptive and outdated in that regard. Thirdly, the Minister and councils will be required to appoint members with skills, knowledge, or experience relevant to each council’s particular needs. Fourthly, the duties and accountabilities of individual council members will be clarified. That is it. “Jurassic” Grant Robertson has been roaming the campuses, desperately trying to wind the students up to revolt in the streets and they have largely ignored him. In fact, if it had not been for my signing them up for the Young Nats at Victoria University’s campus the other day, nobody would have been talking to him.

These changes will allow both universities and wānanga to recruit the expertise needed to effectively respond to the challenges of a changing environment. Individual council members will get a clear picture of what is expected of them. Those who are performing poorly will be prevented from undermining the overall performance of a council. The changes will help address the difficulties that larger councils can have, with timely decision-making and communication. They will bring university and wānanga councils more in line with most other organisations in the modern world, which have been moving towards smaller governing bodies for quite some time—many, many years, in fact. The governance changes made to our polytechnic sector in 2010 have greatly contributed to the turn-round in educational and financial performance in that sector. All university and wānanga councils will be required to have at least one Māori member to assist the Government’s role of raising achievement for Māori. This will not be a significant change, as all but one do today.

The changes are particularly important for wānanga. The current governance settings were not written with them in mind. They were asked to adopt the university settings. The changes will allow increased flexibility for wānanga to reflect their unique stakeholders, particularly iwi, on their councils. I want to stress that, despite the scaremongering of “Jurassic” Grant—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Can I just remind the member that the member must use an honourable member’s full name, not a nickname or anything else. All members in this House are honourable.

I apologise, Mr Assistant Speaker. I will not refer to him in that manner again, even though his response to these things is reasonably outdated. The changes will not compromise institutional autonomy or academic freedom. These freedoms are guaranteed by section 161 of the Education Act, which is not changing, so I can therefore save the Opposition members their breath for the rest of this debate and the subsequent stages of this bill, because those matters are not changing. I know that members opposite are concerned about student representation, and that is important. Under the changes proposed in this bill councils will be free to choose to retain their student and staff representation. I have already stated that I expect most institutions will do just that. The key point is that they get the flexibility to determine the best make-up of their councils; we treat them like adult organisations.

The changes proposed in the bill are the latest in a series of incremental reforms made by the Government to improve the performance and quality of tertiary education. We have reduced spending in low-value areas, such as student loans for people who consistently fail their courses, and we have improved the way the system targets need.

💬 Grant Robertson: Like people over 55. They’re terribly low value, aren’t they, Steven—people over 55.

We have set performance incentives on providers and students—here comes the guy who wants to spend the money—and improved information for students about the performance of providers and the employment outcomes of their study. Interestingly, Government investment in tertiary education has risen substantially. In 2012 we invested $2.2 billion in publicly owned tertiary institutions. That in itself is an increase of 13.4 percent since 2008. The investment increase in universities is higher—up 16 percent since 2008. The approach is paying off. We achieved a record number of qualifications in 2012—162,000. The number of domestic students who completed a Bachelor’s degree in 2012 was the highest ever, at 25,400, up 4,790 in just 2 years—an increase of 23 percent. Right through the 2000s, despite the buckets and buckets of money that Labour poured into this system, the number of degree graduates flat-lined, despite these big increases in funding. So these results are great to see, when somebody manages the tertiary education system properly and does not rely on old fossil politicians from the student unions. Many more young people are now moving from school to degree-level study: from 13,600 students in 2007 to 16,500 in 2012. These include more young Māori and Pasifika. The total number of Māori students enrolled in total in qualifications at Bachelor’s level or higher increased from 17,500 to 21,900 in 2012. The number of Pasifika students increased too from 8,500 in 2007 to 11,800 in 2012.

I will now talk about how the bill will improve the education system’s responsiveness to the needs of international students. International education is very important to New Zealand. It contributes $2.6 billion a year to our economy and 28,000 jobs for New Zealanders. I thought most parties in this House supported international education; after last week though I am not quite so sure, because the Shane Jones and Raymond Huo thing about supporting international education one day and not the next did send yet another confusing signal from the Opposition. The Business Growth Agenda has set a goal of doubling the total value of New Zealand’s international education sector to $5 billion by 2025. It is also part of our drive to be better connected across the world. Our success as a country depends on our level of connectedness. At the end of the day, we are a small trading nation and we need very strong links with the world, and international education is an important way to develop those links. It provides New Zealand with lifelong ambassadors as graduates go back to their home countries and share their experiences with friends, family, and colleagues. It helps enhance teaching and research, the sharing of knowledge, and the building of human capital. We must take steps to ensure always that our international students have the best possible experience while they are here. This bill adds on the reforms we have already made and creates a new legal framework for the Code of Practice for the Pastoral Care of International Students. This will enable targeted interventions in situations where providers are not complying with their obligations under the code. A more effective and efficient sanction process will be introduced to ensure that code signatories represent New Zealand education in the best possible way. It also establishes a dedicated disputes resolution scheme, which provides international students with an accessible and efficient forum for settling financial or contractual disputes with providers.

The bill also makes improvements to student fee protection, which covers both domestic and international students. That will help reduce the compliance costs associated with that for private training establishments. The bill strengthens the ability of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to undertake quality assurance of tertiary education organisations and streamlines the process for deregistration of private training establishments. To protect the quality of tertiary education the bill strengthens enforcement and offence provisions, and provides disincentives for those who seek to avoid the consequences of poor performance. This bill is from a Government that is doing a very good job in the education sector and a very good job in tertiary education. I know it is galling for the Opposition, but we are receiving great results in the tertiary sector. This bill makes important changes to the governance of our universities and wānanga so they can respond more effectively and strategically in the modern world, Mr Robertson—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

—and it will create a more robust regulatory framework for our international education sector. This bill is a good bill for our tertiary education sector. I commend it to the House.

It is a great pleasure to follow on from “Mr Fix-it”, Steven Joyce, who told us he would solve the Novopay problems in 3 months. That is what he told us—that he would solve the Novopay problems in 3 months. It was not so much a case of “Can we fix it? Yes, we can.”; it was a case of “Can we fix it? No, we can’t.”, because the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, Steven Joyce, is responsible for the Novopay debacle. We learnt today that Novopay has cost another $43 million to New Zealanders and it is why teachers continue not to be paid. What kind of Government can claim success in education but is not paying the teachers, is not paying the staff in our schools, and is seeing support staff in our schools resign because of the stress of it? Good old “Mr Fix-it” is behind that, making sure that Novopay continues to fail.

On this side of the House we will be opposing this legislation, the Education Amendment Bill. We will be opposing it strongly. The reforms to university governance that are being proposed by Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata, to quote New Zealand’s largest university, “strike at the very essence of autonomous but accountable universities in this country.” That is a quote from the University of Auckland’s submission on these proposals. These proposals undermine everything that universities and tertiary education are about: being the critic and conscience of society. Steven Joyce does not want to hear from critics. Steven Joyce wants to silence the voices of critics of his policies, and that is what lies behind these changes.

There is no evidence that lies behind these changes. There is no great call for the terrible governance of universities that has driven them into the ground financially. It has not happened. New Zealand universities are generally performing very well. They are adapting very well to the so-called modern world that Steven Joyce talks about. There is no problem here. This policy is a solution in search of a problem. It is Steven Joyce’s ideological response to people who disagree with him. It typifies a National Government that does not want to hear about criticism. Be it protest at sea or protest at a university, this Government does not want to hear from critics. It works to silence critics by shutting them out, and we on this side of the House utterly oppose that.

There has been no evidence provided for this. We looked, and what we saw in the regulatory impact statement were a whole lot of “could be’s”, “maybe’s” and “might be’s”. “Current governance arrangements”—this is what the regulatory impact statement says—“may not be optimised.” They may not support efficient decision-making. They could result in people not making good decisions. There is no evidence; it is made up. Steven Joyce is simply putting forward his ideological solution to a problem that he has invented. Maybe, as he said today, large bodies in universities have difficulty making good decisions. Maybe around the world there will be examples where large councils are causing universities to have terrible performance.

Let us look at a few of them. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology—one of the leading innovative research universities in the world—how many people are on its council? Seventy-two people are on its council. Before Steven Joyce gets too excited, I am not proposing an increase to 72. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems to be doing all right, but perhaps that is an outlier. I know, why do we not look to the great universities, to Oxford and Cambridge? That will give us a guide. They will have small councils, because there is no way the Oxford and Cambridge universities could not be making good decisions. Well, Oxford has 25 on its council.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: That’s a lot less than 72.

It is. Cambridge has 23 on its council—not eight, not 12, but 25 or 23—and Stanford has 33. If you look at the 50 top universities in the world, most of them still have this kind of representative model. Many of them have far more than the number of councillors that are proposed in the current law in New Zealand.

There is no relationship here between universities, the size of their governing bodies, and their success. It is just not there. There is no evidence. Steven Joyce has provided no evidence. There is no problem with the financial performance of universities in New Zealand, and any problems will certainly not be dealt with by more of Steven Joyce’s mates being on the councils. There is no evidence that this actually supports better learning or teaching inside an institution. There is no evidence that universities are not responding to the modern world, that they are not looking at new ways of providing courses, and that they are not looking at new ways of attracting students. Steven Joyce has made up a problem and he has no real support for this.

When they did the consultation process there were around 2,000 submissions. Almost none of them supported any aspect of this—almost none. Of the universities themselves, absolutely no one supported this whole proposal—absolutely nobody. Our two largest universities—Auckland and Otago—have outright rejected the proposal. They do not want it; they are happy with where they are. The excuse that the Minister has used for the University of Canterbury looking to reduce the number on its council down to 12, was that it could have done it under the current law. It does not even want the law changed. Nobody wants this apart from Steven Joyce and possibly his mate Phil O’Reilly, who I expect will come along to the select committee and tell us what Steven Joyce wants him to tell us. There is nobody else out there. Staff, students, and community representatives—none of them want this.

Actually, the representative model of governance gives universities something very special. It gives them the ability to have at the table the communities that they serve. If you just want to look at it from an economic perspective, students pay a whole lot of money to be there. Steven Joyce might understand that argument, maybe. But beyond that, universities have a special character. They play a special role in our society. They are the critic and conscience of our society. They represent something that is important about higher learning, education, and what we want for our society. The university councils we have show that they are part of their communities. It shows that by having the students there, by having the staff there, and by having people who come from worker groups, employer groups, and the community the university is both part of and there to serve. We think that actually makes for better decision-making.

I was on a university council myself. I know that when student voices are there it makes a difference. I know that when staff voices are there it makes a difference. I actually also know that when employer and union representatives are there it makes a difference. Better decisions are made because there is a wider representative model. It is actually about inclusion rather than exclusion, but this Government is all about who it can exclude, not who it can include in the kinds of decisions that get made. Actually, modern governance theory says that more people should be involved in decision making in businesses. This is a tired, old policy from the 1980s. Mr Joyce might want to throw insults around about dinosaurs and Jurassic Park. Well, he is the one bringing something back from the 1980s, some sort of Chicago school of economics model that says that small, by definition, must be good.

As others have said, and as I asked Mr Joyce in the House a while back, presumably there will be some kind of policy coming from National to reduce the size of Cabinet from 20 to eight or 12. Clearly, Cabinet as a body of 20 is not capable of making good decisions, because large bodies of 20 could not be capable of making a good decision. Presumably, Steven Joyce will practise what he preaches in that regard—I think not.

This bill is ill-thought-out. It will cause problems. It will cause trouble. The answer in the regulatory impact statement was to say let us manage it by saying things that will placate people. The reality is that this will reduce the representation of key stakeholders in a university, it will limit the range of views that are at the table, and it will lead to poorer governance, not better governance. The Labour Party strongly opposes this legislation.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare Pāremata. The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is a consistent continuation of Government policy. It is a plan to further privatise the governance of tertiary institutions, reform the Teachers Council without the support of teachers, and continue to create two tiers and lower standards for schools such as charter schools versus those in the State sector. Therefore, the Green Party will not be supporting this bill. There are useful elements in small parts of the bill, but the overall thrust is depressing. One of my colleagues will take a later call on the debacle in the tertiary sector, the reduction of democracy, and the increasing of ministerial powers over tertiary governance. I do agree with Grant Robertson that this is an out-of-date, backward-looking, failed management theory, which many people have abandoned. Inclusion, broadness, and representation are how, we all know, better decisions are made. One of my colleagues will expand on that in her later call.

I would like to make some general comments about the overall direction of the bill. The overall direction is not only the National Government’s policy but also part of an international process we are seeing that has afflicted the education sector. Education has always been a politicised and deeply debated space, but now it is an eroded space in this country, where concepts like education for lifelong learning and educators as the conscience of society are being minimised and marginalised by the overarching and depressing determination that education is mainly a business. From early childhood to the tertiary education sector, it has been carved up for profit, and the compulsory sector is being redefined from the perspective of business efficiency and standardisation.

I would like to talk about a parent whom I met with today, who said to me that their 5-year-old had been kept in at lunchtime to improve their spelling because the school was worried about meeting national standards. That is a very, very depressing experience for a parent. And a teacher told me that she was forced to put up a picture in her classroom of where every child was at in relation to national standards—those who were failing, supposedly, and those who were achieving. If that is what we call expert teaching, that is a tragedy. That teacher, who is a remarkably good teacher, is destroyed by the introduction in her classroom of competition and the exposure of so-called achievement for 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and 7-year-olds. That is what I am talking about, Minister—not that she wishes to hear it.

There is endless rhetoric in the education space about meeting student needs, creating outcomes, and fulfilling potential for all. We can all buy in to that. But when we read the clauses of this bill, it is pretty clear that it is about advancing changes that will fulfil a very different power shift. The reform of the Teachers Council was heralded with some excitement. Teachers expressed interest in the idea of a professional body that was by teachers for teachers. They were interested in the model that would regulate and represent them as professionals, just as medical professionals have their own professional bodies.

However, things started to go badly awry when the transition chair of this process, John Morris, put out a series of papers advocating right-wing education solutions, such as performance-based pay, through The New Zealand Initiative, when he was supposedly leading a neutral process of developing the new Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. The “see no evil” Government saw no conflict of interest in his behaviour, but the teachers organisations smelt a big rat, because performance pay is divisive, inefficient, destructive, and irrelevant to student well-being, and it should have had no place in the discussion around the development of the new education council. It was deeply conflicting that the transition chair actually focused on that and politicised that process.

Now we see the enabling legislation but we do not see the robust involvement of the broader teaching sector representing the concept of quality public education. The education council is described in the bill as being “to provide leadership to teachers and direction for the education profession:”, as well as having a number of other new roles and responsibilities. Who gets these roles and how they are developed is a critical process and should not have been a politicised situation. It should have been an inclusive and depoliticised situation. I guess the new bill could not let the new education council be a teacher-led professional body, because then all of the provisions of the Education Act that undermine accountability, safety, and transparency in the charter schools would have become an even greater contradiction.

The Green Party sees no need to abandon the limited authority to teach as an important adjunct to the essential role of the registered teacher, because that idea—the limited authority to teach—was always based on the idea that these were people who were studying towards an education qualification but also were contributing to classrooms. The bill sets up all kinds of structures, which we do not disagree with, to protect children, to regulate teacher registration, and to establish a code of conduct—note that it is not a code of ethics but a code of conduct—but it is extraordinary that these are not applied in other parts of the Education Act to the unregistered teaching staff in charter schools, who will also be working with the same range of students and who are not covered by the education council rules. They will have police checks, but so should all volunteers. They might be fabulous or they might be a risk, but lowering standards seems to be an underlying contradiction alongside double standards.

On the one hand, teachers are meant to be professional leaders who get $350 million spent on their career pathways towards executive principal, and on the other hand, in the charter schools, in the targeting of the so-called vulnerable students, the staff do not have to be teachers and are not covered by the codes of conduct or accountability rules of the new education council. So it is all about tightening up the rules for teachers but totally relaxing them for others, and that is a massive contradiction.

All students deserve an education that is liberating, innovative, and inspiring, and of course I agree that they are not all getting that now. I have visited the people working on charter schools—some who are clearly motivated by the best reasons, and some who are just downright inappropriate in their ability to meet targets. The Green Party fails to see how the Vanguard Military School - style press-ups and military training punishment model is going to create the best modern learning environment. That is not the pedagogy of collaborative learning that we all believe in; it is the pedagogy of authoritarian control.

It was very interesting when a professor from the University of Oregon talked in this Parliament not long ago about how the authoritarian model, which appears to work in Asia to create great Programme for International Student Assessment standards but does not lead to innovative thinking, is welcomed by Western societies that do not know how to manage kids without an authoritarian model. He said our biggest challenge was creativity. In fact, the Chinese Government and the Singaporeans, for example, are recognising that it is not working, and that paths that test standardised teaching and national standards for those countries are not creating innovative learners who can then lead a modern world.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Again, not true.

So it was really interesting to hear him speak. The Minister says it is not true, but he was a fantastically creative person who has been employed by the Chinese Government for that very reason—for that very reason.

The Green Party is very keen to work for solutions for genuine initiatives to become part of quality public education in Aotearoa that is culturally appropriate and innovative. That can happen, but we do not need to privatise. We do not need for-profit, State-funded, unaccountable schools to do that.

Much of this bill is detail—and stuff that I would like to read in more detail—around international students, private training associations, and teacher registration. Much of it may well be useful. We often find that these omnibus bills combine things that are good with things are that are actually abhorrent and then put us in a difficult position because we cannot support them. We will be looking for the greater good in the bill if it is there, but the overall approach towards the tertiary governance issues and towards the education council is very disturbing. We find it difficult when our in-boxes are now being flooded by people who are very concerned about this bill and do not believe there are enough good things in it to justify it.

It is difficult to imagine how less democracy and less teacher involvement in their own professional body will result in better decision-making. Steven Joyce talks about, for example, cutting students out being a choice—people can choose to cut students out. What he is failing to acknowledge is that democracy needs to be encouraged, supported, and acknowledged in law so people recognise the importance of those diverse voices rather the myth of efficiency. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the member. I have been contemplating for some time. There is a longstanding convention in the House—it goes back to the time of Sir Basil Arthur in 1984—Speaker’s ruling 63/1. When members are in close proximity to each other and there are constant interjections going on, it actually has an effect on the microphones, so I just ask the member the Hon Hekia Parata to please desist.

An education amendment bill is an opportunity to strengthen democracy in education, and, unfortunately, this bill fails to do that.

It is an enormous pleasure to take a brief call on this bill. The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is another strand in this Government’s cable of initiatives to lift New Zealanders’ educational achievement. I personally have benefited hugely from our country’s education system. I went to Westown School in New Plymouth. I went to that paragon of virtue—

💬 Hon Maryan Street: Bastion of virtue.

—of a secondary school, New Plymouth Boys’ High School. The Hon Maryan Street went to the sister school across the river, New Plymouth Girls’ High School. I then went to Otago University, and the highest compliment I can pay to Cambridge University, where I did my medical degree, was that it was as good as Otago University but in a different way. Why do I mention Otago University? It was there that I met a young man whose musical virtuosity left me absolutely in awe. I am talking about Tim Hazledine, who was a young economics student. Tim went on to become a professor of economics, in fact, a member of the Auckland University council, and a little bit of a comic, I have to say. It was something he had not displayed as a student. He showed no sign of comic prowess. He was a brilliant musician and is still a brilliant musician. But the reason I think he has perhaps indulged in stand-up comedy is that he referred to Steven Joyce as an “old-fashioned socialist central planner at heart”. I do not know what the Opposition feels about that, but I have a hard job equating the Steven Joyce that I know with that sobriquet.

Why do I mention Tim? I mention Tim because I have a huge amount of respect for him. He is an economist, and yet he finds the prospect of slightly reducing the number of people in a governance entity—to whit, the new university councils—and having people on there with proven governance experience outrageous and remarkable. He says there is no need for it—there is absolutely no need for it. He does not give a skerrick of evidence as to why there is no need for it. So what evidence can we find to suggest that there may be need for it? Well, it does not come much simpler than looking at a past experience where this happened, in 2009 when the policies came in and were instituted in 2010 by the Tertiary Education Commission in the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics—the ITPs. What happened when the Government introduced a policy like this? We had the opportunity to hear from no less a person than Tim Fowler, the chief executive of the Tertiary Education Commission, who looked at what happened. What Mr Fowler told us was that with the reduction in numbers of the councils of the ITPs and with a requirement for skilled governance ability, in fact, the performance of these organisations improved.

Are we surprised? We are not surprised. That was the commission’s impression and its summary after a number of visits to them. So what did it do? It went back twice since 2010 and it is going to do so again to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the changes. It has not just looked at the performance and found it to be much improved, but it has also interviewed the new chairs, the chief executives, and the chief financial officers of these organisations. The feedback from those individuals, who are actually on the bodies, has been uniformly favourable. So there is evidence, hard evidence, that this model works.

Before I close, I will just address a few points that have been raised. As the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment himself said, this is about making council membership requirements more flexible by removing specific representative requirements. What can be bad about more freedom to make, involve, and create the make-up of your local council in your university? I cannot see a problem with that. That was one of the concerns raised by the Opposition. I could go on for ages, but time is pressing. I look forward to further debate on this bill in future.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. I would like to acknowledge Dr Cam Calder, who is the chair of the Education and Science Committee. He is a lovely man, and he is going to have a hell of a time on that committee, around the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to acknowledge Dr Calder now, because I want to make sure he understands that although I appreciate his collegial manner on the select committee it will not last with this bill.

I would like to start at the beginning. Let us just note bullet point No. 2 in the general policy statement, which says: “to create a regulatory framework that promotes accountability and high standards within the education sector;”. The National Government just cannot seem to help itself. Either that, or it just does not realise how insulting that truly is to hard-working professionals inside education in this country. Statements like that suggest to the public that there currently is not any accountability or that the profession does not already have high standards, otherwise the bill would not say to create them. Any Minister with actual knowledge of this sector would have known that that statement is demonstrably false and would not have allowed the staff to use that language.

It is farcical to suggest later in this bill that one of the purposes of creating the new Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is to raise the status of the teaching profession. It is farcical because it is this Government that has done more damage to the status of the teaching profession than any other single incident or entity since it began using attacks on this profession for political purposes in 2008. This Government makes these sorts of derogatory statements inside legislation, which places them on the permanent historical record of this House, and then it has the audacity to try to kiss up to teachers by launching a website where people write on it about their personal favourite teacher.

The Government has announced a top-down bribe of $359 million, in an attempt to get teachers to forget the number of times the Government has kicked them in the guts over the close to 6 years that we have had this National Government. The Government appears to hope that teachers will be so busy trying to figure out their payslips from Novopay that they will not notice that legislation like this will remove their representation on a body that they will be paying for. According to Treasury papers, they will be paying more for the privilege of having this Government take away their ability to elect their representatives.

If this bill is not about raising the status of the sector, then what is the purpose of these changes? The Minister of Education has been very helpful in her publicly recorded statements. This is unusual, but she has. Ms Parata uses dog whistle politics when she makes statements such as: “There will be less chance of dodgy teachers resurfacing at other schools under this legislation.” What absolute rubbish. The Minister knows that one of the worst convicted sex offenders was found to have completely bypassed the teacher registration process, so nothing inside this bill will stop that from happening again.

The Minister seeks to remove the basic rights of teachers around being innocent until proven guilty, through clauses in this legislation. Teachers are humans too. They deserve the right to be able to have complaints against them heard away from the public, until it is shown that that complaint has a basis in truth. Teachers will be pursued, under this legislation, and the Minister is using that to try to create turmoil and a voting base for the National Party, just as it did when it scaremongered in 2008 and just as it did when it scaremongered in 2011. The Minister knows that it is more likely that improvements to the front end of teacher training, through the screening of potential teacher trainee candidates and the continual screening of candidates, around a holistic matrix, would have more effect, as opposed to the current “bums on seats” mismanagement of teacher supply in practice under this Government.

The Minister knows that her Government has left a gap that one could drive a truck through. It specifically puts our children at risk in recent charter school amendments to this same bill that allow anyone with a Ministry of Justice check into those charter school classrooms. The fact that the Ministry of Justice checks cover only New Zealand convictions, and not those from overseas, has been ignored by this Minister and by this Government. The fact that should any incident arise in a charter school around any of these individuals, where there is no central record to track them from one charter school to another, puts our children at risk. But the Minister does not want the New Zealand public to focus on that.

This Government prefers to have another go at the professional body that actually takes the educating of our young people seriously. If I have a criticism of members of the teaching profession in New Zealand, it is that they are too reasonable. They try too hard to accommodate the many choices that this Government says it wants for our children. If there is a criticism I have of them, it is that they are so invested in the children of this country that they put themselves so far second and they have allowed this Government to ride roughshod over them.

But they do stand up, so why do the Minister and the Government pursue this legislation? It is about the fact that the teaching profession is still fighting back. Teachers still stand up, no matter how battered and bruised they are, and they fight for their students to be judged as a whole person, on holistic criteria, as opposed to the narrow robotic view the National Party would like. The National Party believes only in winners and losers. That is its reality. Given a chance, we believe, this Government would bring back the “scale to fail” of the 1970s. We believe that this Government would have primary school children held back, year upon year, if they did not meet the national standards.

We have seen no money being put into the front end of the spend, to support students who have been clearly identified, which is what the purpose of national standards was supposed to be when it was sold to this country in 2008. Not a single cent of the close to $40 million spent to date on national standards has touched a child at the front end and given more resources with regard to our dyslexic children, our dyspraxic children, and our children who need any other support—not a single cent. If this is not about protecting our children, and it is not about lifting the status of the profession, what is it actually about? Again, Minister Parata has articulated this—mistakenly perhaps, but none the less she has put it into the public domain. This is about control. This is about removing any elected official from the body of the profession and giving the Minister total control of all appointments. The Minister has quite clearly told the educational representation bodies that her ultimate goal is that this new council will be the only body that she or any future Minister of Education will have to consult when they start the next tranche of privatisation and performance pay amendments to our education system.

But Minister Parata is not the only member of this Government who is hell-bent on removing democracy and the need to consult from the education sector, so let us move on to the amendments in the bill under Mr Steven Joyce’s area. We have seen that it is about removing what this Government finds most annoying. It is about the requirement to consult, and removing it. We have seen time and time again from this Government—and it is an arrogance that is inherent in the National Party—a disdain to enter into constructive dialogue. This is why this party actually finds it most difficult to get its head around MMP. MMP is actually about entering into constructive dialogue and this party finds it very difficult to do so.

Well, we all know that it is much easier for people to just do as they are told. We know that. But that is called a dictatorship, and history has shown us time and time again that the people will stand a dictatorship for only so long before they will demand to have their views and their voice heard, and we hope that the New Zealand public will demand that their voice be heard later this year. Mr Joyce is basically saying that we should trust him with his ministerial appointments, and I am sure my Opposition colleagues will address this further as they go on.

I want to have a look today, in the last few minutes, at the performance of this particular Minister. Information provided to us about the make-up of the current ministerial appointments to councils show that he cannot be trusted to actually provide the diversity that is required to keep these councils representative. At the moment only 16 percent of his appointments are women, only one Māori, and no Pasifika. Two-thirds of his appointments have been chief executive officers, company directors, or accountants; a further 20 percent are commercial lawyers; and only four come from some other professional background. And this is despite 90 percent of graduates actually heading into professions and vocations other than those.

The bill is a mishmash and we will stop it.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I intend to take only a brief call because I look forward to the opportunity of receiving submissions from the parties who are interested.

This bill certainly fits in with the Better Public Services targets that this Government has set out. It proposes to establish a new professional body for the education profession. It also intends to support the tertiary education institutions with a better governance structure. It will also codify a better pastoral care model for international education. And it will also reinforce the New Zealand Qualifications Authority side of appraising the delivery of quality assurance of tertiary institutions. So I look forward to receiving those submissions.

💬 Tracey Martin: Will it make a difference? Will it matter?

I would also say, just as a point of conclusion, that what we are hearing from the other side totally ignores the underperformance of a lot of our institutions in the way that they have delivered outcomes and qualifications to our students. When we reflect on the way that the taxpayer dollar is spent, we should be very, very careful that we deliver quality for that taxpayer dollar. I have great pleasure in supporting this bill.

You have to hand it to this Government for its consistency. There are a couple of areas of consistency that I am going to talk about today. This is a Government that when it does not like what people who are elected to a body are doing, simply does away with voting. It has literally taken away votes where I come from in Christchurch—we no longer have an elected regional council. But in education this Government has really taken the knife to the notion of representation. We have seen it with charter schools, which are not going to have elected boards of trustees, taking away the rights of communities to have a say in how these schools are run. We have seen this with the closures and mergers, and the creation of super-schools in Christchurch. Bigger schools mean less community governance and less community representation within our election system.

Moving right along, this Government is now taking the knife even further into the notion of representation in our education system in the tertiary sector. We are seeing it in the Teachers Council and we are seeing it in our university councils. When this Government does not like something that it is being told, it simply gets rid of the elected members. It just does not like it. It just simply appoints some of its friends. It puts into positions some of its friends who will roll and do exactly what they want. We look at Environment Canterbury and water irrigation—put in commissioners who will agree with that. You want things to happen; you appoint your mates who will not put up one murmur of discontent about what is going to happen. This is a Government that has given up on the notion that we elect people through democratic means and that this is an effective way of having governance. This is a Government that has given up on the idea of any type of civic governance, it seems, in education and simply wants to rule through corporate models.

Well, newsflash—it is not a company. These are universities, these are our schools, and corporate governance is not necessarily the best model.

💬 Phil Twyford: But Government is business, Megan.

“But Government is business.” my colleague tells me. Well, that is the way it is being treated by this Government.

Let us go through some of that changes that are going to be made. I did say I was going to talk about consistency in two areas from this Government. I just want to go through its capacity to botch - up everything in education. I will take just 1 year—1 year out of the 5 long years, nearly 6 long years, it has been in Government—and have a look at the number of botch-ups. Let us pick a year, any year—2012 will do. In May 2012 larger class sizes were announced. In June this was reversed. The Minister of Education had got it wrong. In August the Minister’s top adviser quits. In September the Canterbury school closures are announced. In October it seems her cousin is behind the charter schools. In November there was the Novopay debacle. In December the Christchurch teachers decide to go on strike. In December Lesley Longstone resigns. This is a Government with the capacity to turn absolutely everything it touches in education to absolute custard.

We have that again with this omnibus bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), which we have been presented with. This is a bill that came to the House on Monday. We are debating it now, on Thursday. It covers off very large areas of disparate bits of our education system. What is it that the Government is trying to hide? What is it that the Government is trying to do? What we have is a very consistent theme. They may be disparate parts of our education system, but we have a very consistent theme of an arrogant and out of touch Government that is interested only in appointing its mates to key positions.

Let us have a look at the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and what these changes will do. Well, this is a Government that does not believe that the council should be representative of the sector. What we believe in and what we stand for on this side of the House is a democratically elected educational council. Hekia Parata has been heavy-handed in all the decisions she has made, and this is another one. I want a Government member to take more than a 1-minute call on this bill and tell us why it is that teachers should not and do not need to be on this council. Why is it that we do not need to have teachers on it?

Moving right through to the tertiary sector, Steven Joyce is hiding in Hekia Parata’s bill. It must be that he senses a botch-up and knows that one more against Hekia Parata’s name is not going to make a blind bit of difference. So let us have a look. Steven Joyce tells us it is OK because universities can still choose to have students and staff on their governing bodies. Well, that is not good enough, Mr Joyce. What we say is there needs to be legislative protections so that the governing bodies of our universities will ensure that the people who work in universities and teach in them, the colleagues of the collegial body that makes up a university, have a voice and a say in how a university is run. We also say there needs to be legislative protection for people who attend those colleges, who are taught by those colleagues in these collegial environments, to have a say in how universities are run. We have had no justification for why we are going to change an age-old tradition of how a university is run.

If you go back to the very reason that democratic councils and bodies were established in universities, you go back to the beginning of the 19th century, when they were put in place to ensure that we entrenched Enlightenment thinking and teaching within our universities and that we did not hark back to religious tuition within our universities. The only way this could be protected was by having the people with a real stake in it have a say in the running of those universities. We have had absolutely no justification. We have the regulatory impact statement on this aspect of the bill, which really cannot give the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment any arguments that he needs to argue for it.

My colleague Grant Robertson has been looking through the size of some of the governing bodies of universities throughout the world. The Minister is telling us we need to make this massive reduction down to 8 to 12 people on our governing bodies so that we can have better universities, we can be better at innovating, and we can be better academics. Well, go tell that to Stanford University, with 38 members on its governing body. Go tell that to Harvard, with 32. Go tell that to Oxford University, with 30. Go tell that to Cambridge University, which has 16 places reserved for academic staff members on its governing body. It has a further three places reserved for students because it makes that university a better place. Then we have the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with its 76. Well, that university is pretty shoddy at innovation and commercialisation, is it not? We must need to change it.

💬 Grant Robertson: Hopeless!

It is a hopeless university—need to change that! The Minister will not even talk about the report that he received in 2012 from the Ministry of Education. What was the Minister told in this report that he received in 2012? Well, it was noted that, internationally, even those bodies that were taking a skills-based approach maintained stakeholder representation in their governance—that even if you do want to go to a smaller model, you do not have to do away with staff representation and you do not have to do away with student representation.

But this Minister has made a decision. This Minister knows that it is the staff who are not putting up with the way in which he sees education as a cost to be cut, and that the staff on those councils are not happy with the money that he is taking away from those institutions and the fact that he sees success in tertiary education as dampening down the demand for tertiary education. He certainly does not want students sitting on those governing bodies because, heck, some of those students might be people who have had their access to allowances and loans cut. This is a Minister who is taking the knife to tertiary education, and he does not want to have critics. He does not want universities to carry out their very function as the critics and conscience of society.

This is a Government that is continuing its grand tradition now of taking away democratic rights when it does not like what someone is saying. All New Zealanders should be very worried because this is something we are seeing right throughout our country in various places. Elected staff members and students should have a say. Teachers should have a say. Education is too important to leave to Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata.

Well, it is interesting; you have to be very careful with the facts coming from the other side. One of my colleagues was pointing out, I think, that five of the last six graphics the Labour Party has put up on its Twitter feed and Facebook have been wrong. You know, details have to be right and precise. Let us talk about a quick example—a quick example to give context. I was at a school recently, talking to a teacher. She came up to me and said: “Simon, I vote Labour. I’m a union person. I always vote Labour. I can’t bring myself to vote for National in education.” But she said: “You know what? Actually, National is doing the right thing in education. The $350 million - plus you are putting in to support teachers and the other elements you’re putting in to support young people are incredibly important.” That was from a person who is an avowed voter for the left. She knew that this Government is doing the right thing.

The Education Amendment Bill (No 2), looking at the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, is doing the right thing. It is doing the right thing. [Interruption] Here we go. Members on the other side are saying we are making it up again—a lack of details they will not provide. There you go. They do not like it when you point out that their very own people are in agreeance with a lot of these changes. I am very keen to get this bill before the Education and Science Committee. I commend it to the House.

I understand that the next call is a split call.

I want to make a few points. First of all, I will respond to the member Simon O’Connor, who just sat down. I actually agree that some of the changes that National is making are useful. I think the $359 million is a step in the right direction, but one has got to remember that it is well under 1 percent of the salary budget. It is minuscule and actually will not make the changes that National wants.

We in the Labour Party will vote against this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). The main reason that I am voting against this bill is as a result of the changes that were made around tertiary education governance. I think that if there had been two bills and this bill addressed only the question of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, then it could well be amendable and supportable.

I think it is fair to say, as a former Minister of Education, that probably my biggest area of policy failure was the setting up in the initial stages of the New Zealand Teachers Council. It was something where the initial appointment was wrong. Kathie Irwin was not a suitable person to appoint to chair that organisation. I took advice on the matter, and I had doubts. The advice came from Liz Gordon, and I regret that I took her advice as to Kathie’s suitability, because my view was that the Teachers Council probably suffered for a period of about 5 years as a result of the poor governance at the beginning of the process and the poor setting up then.

I do want to acknowledge the recent work that Stan Rodger did in tidying up some of it, and, more recently, Kathy Smith and Alison McAlpine. As chairs of the organisation they have done a very good job. I also want to acknowledge the current chief executive, who I think has done an excellent job and has almost certainly been the best. Having criticised Kathie Irwin, I have to say that my old mate Harvey McQueen did not have the ability to do the necessary detailed work and to set the necessary systems up. Even his recollections of the time of the Lange Government were a relatively poor history.

💬 Grant Robertson: He was a poet.

He was a poet, and he had imagination. He had imagination in his writings, and I think it is fair to say that he did not have the necessary focus to be the chief executive of an organisation like the Teachers Council, and that is sad. I think that as a result of that it did suffer and the vision that I had for it—which was that it would, in fact, be the organisation that was the main deliverer of professional learning for teachers in New Zealand; that it would contract with the Ministry of Education; and that it would be the organisation that would be of teachers, by teachers, for teachers, and for developing the profession—is something that we have lost by a period of, probably, about 15 years. That is something that I very much regret. My colleagues will tell other members of the House that it is not that often you get a mea culpa from me, but in this particular area I think we did lose something.

My view is also that if we had managed to make the transfer of the funding of professional learning to the Teachers Council, it would not have been as easy for Anne Tolley to take that $100 million out in the way that she did on an annual basis in the first of those budgets. My view is that that sort of cut—if it was to an organisation that was owned by teachers and contracted to teachers—would have resulted in much louder screams than actually occurred. The screams in 2009 were mainly political. They were not extensive screams.

My view is that most parents did not realise that the National Government was cutting the future quality of the education of young people in New Zealand by taking out the funding for the most important thing. The quality of learning in a classroom is very much based on the quality of teaching, and the quality of teaching depends on the professional development and the professional support of those teachers. The National Government cut that to ribbons in its first term. I think our kids will suffer for decades to come as a result of those cuts. I am opposed to this bill, but I regret that the Minister did not put up the important part of it separately.

My colleague Catherine Delahunty has already spoken at length earlier in this debate about the changes to the New Zealand Teachers Council and the changes to the school sector in this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). So I want to focus my contribution on the changes to tertiary governance, which include, as we have heard, reducing the number of members on tertiary governance councils, removing the membership requirements for staff, student, and community representatives, and requiring the Minister and the councils to appoint members with governance capability.

What we see here, of course, is the Government pressing ahead with these changes, despite the fact that during the so-called consultation period on them, almost nobody was in favour of the changes. I went and had a look at the summary of submitters during that consultation period. There were a number of significant concerns that submitters raised consistently throughout those submissions. These were things like the very important need for staff and student perspectives to be taken into account on university and wānanga councils. They were things like the fact that council members need to have the appropriate knowledge of those most affected by the changes in order to be able to make appropriate decisions about those people affected. They were things like the fact that smaller councils would lack the diversity necessary to accurately reflect the professional and student body of the university.

With specific reference to universities, there were submissions that universities are different from polytechnics. They are different from schools. They are different from wānanga. They are unique institutions and they have evolved with a democratic form of governance that should be honoured and maintained into the future.

There were a large number of concerns about the negative impact on institutional autonomy and academic freedom that these changes could have, and there was a strong thread running through all of these submissions that insufficient evidence had been provided giving the rationale and the need for these proposals. There has not been sufficient evidence to actually tell us why we need these changes. Even the universities that supported the changes did not want smaller councils and they spoke very strongly in favour of stakeholder representation on the governance boards. So even those universities that perhaps did think specific governance capability was important still did not want their size reduced and they still wanted stakeholders represented on those boards.

If you look at the submissions, those that were in favour of these changes—very strongly in favour—came from the business sector. Well, surprise, surprise! My question is: what has the business sector got to do with it? What stake does the business sector have in the way that our tertiary institutions are governed? Why should its submissions on this governance review shape the decision of the Government to press ahead with it when all of the academic submissions, all of the submissions from students, all of the submissions from staff, and many of the submissions from the institutions themselves—even those that were supportive of it—reinforced the need for stakeholder representation on tertiary governance boards? Who have we listened to? We have listened to the business sector, which has no direct stake or interest in this whatsoever, but, of course, it probably will in the future under this Government.

Never one to let public and stakeholder opinion get in his way, Steven Joyce is pressing ahead with the changes in this bill, and the Government has already wreaked the same havoc on polytechnic governance boards in 2009 by removing democratically elected representatives. This is simply a continuation and an expansion of that into the university and wānanga sectors. Also, of course, it follows the attack on student voice that was the introduction of voluntary student membership, which was rammed through this Parliament at the behest of the ACT Party last term.

If you put these two policies together, you get a very clear picture of what this Government thinks about student voice and student participation in these institutions—that is, to turn them from institutions of education into institutions where students are passive consumers in degree factories.

I just want to make a point about wānanga, as well, before I finish. The Minister said in his contribution earlier that it was a shame that when wānanga were established, they had been lumped in with the way that university governance is put together. Of course, this bill does not change that. This lumps wānanga in with universities and gives them exactly the same parameters for governance, including the fact that they have to have at least one Māori member on their board. Well, is that not nice for wānanga? It is both irrelevant and not helpful.

I will leave my contribution at that. There is much more I could say, but I think that we should be listening to the submitters.

I commend the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to the House.

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be reported back to the House by 21 July 2014.

Motion agreed to.