State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3)

I move, That the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time. This is somewhat more controversial legislation. It essentially addresses the question of whether teachers should be paid when they are on strike. It is the view of the Government that they should not be paid, and I expect there will be some discussion of that in the House.

I rise to speak on the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3), to be read today. It is interesting that we are speaking about this bill straight after debate on the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill, during which we talked a lot about constitutional decisions being made and running roughshod over them. That has happened previously, and we will be inspecting this bill, particularly during its Committee stage, as to whether that has happened in this case. It is highly likely; if so, members will hear what the National Party feels about that.

The bill was examined by the Education and Science Committee. The committee recommended that it be passed, with various amendments, and I look forward to discussing some of those. The State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) makes amendments to the State Sector Act and, interestingly, to the Education Act. The main focus of the bill is to address problems that apparently arise from the fact that the State Services Commissioner’s ability to negotiate collective agreements is currently compromised by boards of trustees retaining all those usual rights. Throughout the country we have seen boards of trustees wanting to act independently, and with a large degree of autonomy when it comes to the employment of their staff. That is because schools like a particular flavour. They may wish to employ people who provide that flavour in the school. It might be a focus on Māori education, and there is nothing wrong with that. It might be a focus on particular technical areas. When I went to school there were woodwork, metalwork, and technical drawing classes—those kinds of subjects. It might be a focus on learning the English language, and so on. As well as providing a general education across the curriculum, a school might specialise in particular areas.

Boards of trustees have rights, duties, and powers relating to them as employers, for all sorts of purposes. The difficulty, of course, is that the exercise of those rights, duties, and powers meant that the State Services Commissioner could not easily negotiate collective agreements. When those agreements were being negotiated, of course, the parties the commissioner was negotiating with would always come back to the issue that under the Education Act boards of trustees had those responsibilities. So in that negotiating process they were torn between not only two Acts but various parties—and rightly so.

So this bill is brought about to empower the commissioner to exercise the related powers of an employer when negotiating collective agreements. It requires the union bargaining for a collective agreement to give prior notice of industrial action, and that seems fair enough to us. We do not want to see strikes in this country. We certainly do not want to see the strikes that we saw in 2002 when teachers in schools all over the country went out on strike, one after another, and kids were sent home. If that is going to happen—and it certainly happened under the Labour Government, and is something that we did not see in the latter years of the National Government—we need to see the unions giving prior notice of that action. That seems fine with us.

The bill also empowers the commissioner to suspend striking employees by notifying the relevant union, rather than advising each employee separately. This type of issue is where we part with the Labour Party in supporting this bill, and it is why we will not be voting for it. The National Party will be opposing it. We find it appalling that the commissioner, in suspending striking employees, has to notify the relevant union rather than the employee. Imagine if that happened in the private workforce—outside the public sector—whereby a business owner who was laying off or employing staff did not inform that staff member of the job he or she had just won or lost, or inform the staff member about the job, how it was going, its continuation, its progress, and how the duties under that employment may develop. The owner would not talk to the individual involved—the person who woke up every morning and went to work at 8 o’clock and left at 5 o’clock, after putting in a good day’s work—but instead he or she would notify the union. It raises all sorts of concerns with us. It tells us that the Minister in charge of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) has a greater appreciation for the union bureaucracy and a need to inform unions, than he does for the individual worker who might be affected by any decision in the workplace. The example I used in this case was when boards of trustees had issues with regard to their rights, duties, and powers. That ran against what the commissioner was able to do.

There are also amendments to clarify the commissioner’s powers during a negotiation. The commissioner is able to cover boards of trustees for the costs of damages, and some amendments are brought about by that. The commissioner will cover the costs of boards of trustees for damages arising out of the exercise of powers conferred on the commissioner. In other words, if the commissioner makes a decision, rightly or wrongly, costs are therefore put upon boards of trustees. They should not be penalised by having to pay those costs. The commissioner, through these particular amendments, will reimburse those costs to the board of trustees—and rightly so. There is no reason at all why decisions made by one party should penalise another.

The employees must give sufficient notice of a strike, and I spoke about that earlier. Under this bill the boards are also obligated to provide information on a strike, and there will be amendments to clarify redundancy provisions. The National Party will oppose this bill. During the Committee stage we will certainly be discussing in more detail why that is the case. I bring the House’s attention to the minority view, which I did not go over but which is in the commentary. It summarises a little bit about how the New Zealand National Party views the bill.

The House is considering the second reading of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) and the report of the Education and Science Committee. It seems to me that this is quite a useful bill that clarifies the role of teachers as employees, the role that boards of trustees have, the role of the Secretary for Education, and how the unions that represent teachers fit into the very unique employment arrangement that teachers have. I think this will be a useful bill for the sector, and I support its passage through the House.

Firstly, I will comment that, in terms of the report back, the process of this particular bill through the Education and Science Committee was probably the best that I have ever seen. The select committee as a whole took the bill and looked at how to make it work. It looked at the areas that were problematic within the bill, and at what it could do to improve upon the bill. As a result of that process, the bill was quite monstered at the select committee stage. Quite large sections were modified and, in fact, removed during that period of time.

What the bill set out to do—and it went beyond its initial intention—was to overcome a really anomalous situation with regard to the teaching profession over the negotiation of the conditions of, and payment for, employment. Teachers are employed by boards of trustees, but the boards of trustees do not negotiate teachers’ salaries and conditions of employment. There is a national collective, and by law it comes under the State Services Commission, which is the agent of the Government that negotiates those matters. The States Services Commission has delegated its responsibility to the Ministry of Education, as it has the right to do. So we have the Ministry of Education negotiating the salaries and conditions of employment of teachers and going through all the industrial actions, when it is the boards of trustees that employ teachers and have the rights of employers. That has led to a number of circumstances that I think most people would regard as pretty unsavoury.

For example, in order for teachers who go on strike—as is their right to go on strike through industrial negotiations—to have their pay deducted, which one would conclude was logical in any industrial setting, the boards of trustees have to write to the Ministry of Education and tell it who went on strike. At certain schools teachers have put pressure on their boards, and said the boards should show them goodwill under those circumstances and should not write to the Ministry of Education. We had one situation, during a wildcat strike, where the teachers threatened to go on strike again if the school deducted their salaries from them. Pretty obviously, that is a totally impossible situation to operate in. It certainly does not make it fair for either the Government or the teachers to bargain in good faith. If people can withdraw their labour at will but also get paid for it, then we do not have a level playing field.

💬 Mark Peck: The old freezing works would have done well, wouldn’t they!

Would they ever! The purpose of this bill is to try to overcome that particular issue, but it has a corollary benefit. One of the tactics used by secondary teachers, both in 1996 and in the most recent round of strike action, was to roster off certain classes. They would say that on a certain day they would not teach third-form classes across the whole country. So in many cases the boards of trustees were forced into a situation of telling parents to keep their children at home. Of course, the problem was how to deduct the teachers’ pay. If that occurred on a Thursday on a certain timetable, we would not know the classes that Mr Black or Mrs Brown was teaching. One teacher may have two or three third-form classes, and another may have one. Schools may have 45-minute periods or hour-long periods. In the end, it just became too administratively difficult for the boards of trustees even to send the information in to the ministry. Consequently, there was a mechanism that teachers could keep going indefinitely.

But there was a downside to that particular mechanism, which was not recognised by very many: when parents kept their children at home, they were breaking the law. The law states that when a school is open for instruction, parents have to ensure their children are in attendance. How can we put parents into that situation? Pretty obviously, the Government was not going to chase parents up and fine them $15 for every day their children were not in attendance. But many, many parents do not like the idea that they are in breach of the law when they are forced into that situation. So the bill attempts to overcome those particular anomalies.

There is another anomaly, and it is that schools, by law, have to be open for a certain number of half days—380 half days for secondary schools, and I think it is now 394 half days for primary schools. If the teachers go on strike, pretty obviously schools cannot be open for instruction. Therefore, boards of trustees would not be able to meet their legal requirement to keep schools open for instruction for a certain number of days, without asking the teachers to come back for an extra day at the end of the year. Once again, that really attacks some of the fundamental industrial rights of teachers as employees. What the bill does—and I think this is a very positive move—is to state that if the teachers are on strike, then it is deemed that the school is open for instruction.

But then the Minister tried to say that if we had too many strikes, that would cut into education too badly, so he wanted to have the reserve power to be able to extend the school year as long as he liked. That raised some questions as to the power the Government was trying to accrue to itself, which no other employer would have been able to have. So if teachers went on strike for 3 or 4 days, the Minister could have just said to count one of those days as a school day, but the extra 2 days would have to be worked at the end of the school year. If teachers went on strike for even longer than that, we could have the school year lasting until past Christmas time. The Minister was asking for a draconian power, and the select committee did a very good job of arguing that there was no purpose in keeping that particular clause in the bill. It flew in the face of fairness around industrial relationships for teachers.

A number of other issues came up as a result of this particular bill. Once again, it is believed that these are improvements. When the Employment Relations Act went through, one of the issues that came up was how much notice a union should have to give before its members went on strike. When it came to schoolchildren, there was the real problem of getting the information back to the parents that the teachers were going on strike at a certain time. During the last round of strikes, students in Auckland were stranded. Parents did not know that bus drivers were going on strike, and there was no way of getting the students home. This legislation ensures that there has to be 3 days’ notice of any strike action. We believe that is fair. We believe it is fair that schools get that information in a timely fashion, in order to be able to get the information to parents and ensure that appropriate arrangements can be made.

The final issue that we need to talk about is the power that the bill planned to give to the Minister to punish boards of trustees if they did not do what they were supposed to do. Boards of trustees are now to be required to send information to the Ministry of Education about all the teachers who did not go on strike, rather than the other way round. The ones who did not go on strike can be paid, in a rightful fashion. But the Minister tried to give himself unlimited powers to be able to punish boards of trustees that did not comply with that requirement. The punishment would have been to make deductions from their grants. The people who were going to be hurt by that would have been the students themselves, because there would have been less money available to them for their particular studies. It is fortunate that the select committee was able to argue cogently and as a group that that was an unnecessary power. The Minister already has powers to punish or penalise boards of trustees that are recalcitrant, and he certainly did not need the sorts of draconian powers that would have flown in the face of a board’s responsibility to ensure that students are getting the best possible education.

There was another little issue around technical redundancies that required the select committee to do some tidying-up. Although the committee did not change the basic principle or premise of the bill, it certainly needed to do a lot of tidying-up of the wording. I think the wording that has come back to the House is far, far clearer in stating what the Government is attempting to do to ensure that people do not double dip when there is loss of jobs as a result of the merger or closure of schools.

Finally, I say once again a very big thankyou and give my congratulations to the select committee for what I consider to be a very fine job on this bill.

The Greens will not be supporting the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3). We were pleased to see the changes that were made to the bill in the Education and Science Committee, because the bill as originally proposed was absolutely appalling. It was a very clear indication on the part of the Minister and the Government that they would bypass the collective agreement processes by the use of legislation. It is our view that the Government is using its position as a legislator to get out of its obligations as an employer. The Greens are entirely satisfied with the concept that those who are on strike are not paid for the time they are striking. In no way does our objection to this bill disrupt that fundamental tenet of the right to strike. But the whole of the bill, in our view, is stained with the intention of the Minster to avoid his obligations as an employer, by the use of legislation to bypass the collective agreements that take so much time and effort for all the parties involved to work through.

All credit must go to the select committee, which took a great deal of care over the bill and took out some of its worst excesses. For example, the Wages Protection Act now applies, though the ministry had tried to avoid that legislation. There is now no ability for the commissioner to directly deduct money from schools’ operations grants—for being naughty schools—if they fail to inform the ministry of those teachers who are not on strike. Another example is that the bill originally proposed that the Minister would be able to extend the number of days in a school year, to make up for those days where schools lost teaching time because of industrial action. The officials at the time tried very hard to argue that, despite the fact that they wanted to extend the number of days so that teachers would be required to work longer if they did take industrial action, the bill did not disturb the fundamental principle of the right to strike. That, of course, was ridiculous, and the select committee did a very good job in taking out those provisions.

But there remain some very serious concerns about the redundancy clauses in the bill, and that for the Greens is one of the biggest issues. In our view those clauses are really about the Minister trying to remedy the worst effects of the network review school closure process that is currently under way. The network reviews are a huge community issue; there has been enormous outrage from all sectors. The community has worked very hard to prevent those unnecessary school closures and it has succeeded to some extent, with the moratorium. But, none the less, there are still some closures set to proceed. This bill is an attempt to avoid the redundancy processes for those teachers in the schools likely to close. We do not believe that the Government is honouring its collective agreement with the teachers unions, so we are opposed to that provision, in particular. We consider it to be completely unfair that teachers will be forced to accept positions in new schools when they are directly affected by the closure of their school, in situations where the Minister decides it is an equivalent employment position.

In the current situation, when schools merge jobs are guaranteed for teachers. Where there are school closures, teachers are allowed to take redundancy if they choose not to take employment in other schools that are still operating. That is an important factor of the principle of choice for those who are employed. But this bill will change that process because it will mean that where there is a closure, teachers will be forced to take equivalent positions, rather than redundancy.

This bill does not consider the process and the decisions around what is an equivalent position. Teachers choose to work in a particular school because of the culture of that school, its philosophy, its staff, and its management structure. That is a crucial decision that teachers, as employees, make when they choose where they go to work. This bill eliminates that choice. It undermines the good-faith bargaining that underpins the whole process around collective employment agreements.

The Greens will not support a bill that is as anti-teacher as this bill.

United Future supports this bill because we do not think it is fair to put boards of trustees in the kinds of difficulties and circumstances they found themselves in during, particularly, the negotiating round for the secondary school teachers contract in 2002. That put a tremendous amount of pressure on the entire system. The purpose of this bill as we see it, in summation, is really to attempt to take the boards of trustees out of the equation and to transfer their employer functions back to the State Services Commission, and also to tidy up some arrangements when it comes to the question of school closures, programmes, and mergers, which are current around New Zealand at the present time. Those two things emerged as part of the rationale for this bill. As has been pointed out, the bill as it was presented to us initially had a number of hooks and snares in it that would have been counterproductive to what the Government intended and/or the teachers would receive as a result, and, certainly, what the students and pupils at schools would incur. The purpose of the bill is really to make things a lot easier and happen more quickly.

We heard submissions from the main institutions and supports for teachers and students around the country. The New Zealand School Trustees Association presented its views on the bill as it stood, and brought out a number of issues that needed clarity. The Education and Science Committee put them into effect on its behalf in a very clear way. I want to touch on one or two of those as we go through, even during the Committee stage. The Post Primary Teachers Association also submitted quite strongly with regard to collective bargaining; it wanted to ensure that whatever goes into this bill does not affect the whole covenant it has with the State Services Commission. The same could be said about the submissions made by the New Zealand Educational Institute for primary teachers. It and the New Zealand Law Society acted as a group to ensure that any changes we make to this bill are at least in line with current law, and there are not any conflicts in it. I appreciated the input by the submitters. As a result, and as the chair of the select committee, the Hon Brian Donnelly, mentioned, the bill has come out looking like, given the nature of the Government’s own position, it will make things work a lot easier.

Sometime later on I would like to address the issue that—it is one of the contradictions of this bill—because of centralised bargaining and collective agreements with teachers, the Government has got itself into trouble, and this bill is an endeavour to untangle that. It is not a position that United Future members would have been in favour of. Many boards were very sympathetic towards the teachers’ claims in the last strike, in 2002. We know that the State Services Commission is responsible for collective agreements with teachers. The boards of trustees did not know who to lock out and who not to lock out in that particular strike, which went on, as we know, for a protracted period. This bill really focuses on untangling that, and on the whole it does so. There was a lot of inconsistency among and across schools as to whether teachers were facing financial consequences for their actions, and that created quite a lot of inequity among teachers as to who was getting paid and who was not. Of course, in the sort of befuddle that took place in 2002 with secondary teachers, there were a lot of consequences in terms of children missing out on education. Quite honestly, that is why this bill has to come in—to guarantee that they do not suffer as a result of any further strikes in the future. It sorts out who gets locked out, who gets their pay docked, and who does not.

The amendments to the bill—and I will have a look at one or two of those—are very, very useful in that they ensure that the difficult and almost impossible original bill can now be functional and work properly. It is very, very important to note that the majority of the select committee saw fit to throw out a whole provision that tied people down to irregularities that would obviously have come up when a strike was on. As has been referred to earlier, one of the provisions that was taken out allowed the Minister to deduct from a board of trustees any amount of money the Minister thought fit. With the employer function being moved from the boards of trustees to the State Services Commission, it no longer is an issue, and the Minister cannot just do that at his will.

United Future members were happy for the bill, at the end of the first reading, to go to the select committee in order to sort out these difficulties, and in our minds they have been sorted out. We are most happy to see this bill progress. United Future supports this second reading.

I rise on behalf of the ACT party to oppose this State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3). I do not have voting power on the Education and Science Committee, because of ACT’s disadvantage under the situation at the moment, but I did sit on the select committee and tracked this bill through.

This legislation is another nail in the coffin for Tomorrow’s Schools, it is another nail in the coffin for parental representation, and it is another nail in the coffin for boards of trustees having some say in how their schools are run. When this bill first came to the select committee it was one of the most draconian pieces of legislation I had seen. Members in this House have praised the bill and said it is workable and will tidy up the situation. It will not tidy up the situation. Yes, it has been toned down a bit, but only in one respect—that is, the removal of the powers of the State Services Commissioner to deduct funding from a school’s operations grant. That was what the Minister of Education originally wanted to do. He wanted to punish boards of trustees as he saw it—punish them by deducting money from the schools’ operations grants. Who would be the loser in that? The children would be the losers in that. The children and learning will be the losers from this legislation.

We heard from a United Future member that the measure makes the situation more equitable because now all boards of trustees will be forced to behave in the same way. What on earth is equitable about forcing sameness on every board of trustees? I was on a board of trustees when those strikes were going on. Our board of trustees discussed the issue of whether we would pay our teachers. We discussed it in a democratic way, we voted in a democratic way, and we decided not to pay them. But we remunerated them in other ways, and we had the freedom to do that. Other boards of trustees decided they would pay their teachers. Fine, we did not have a problem with that. It was up to the board of trustees of each school, because that board had been elected by the parents of children at that school to talk for them. If parents do not like what a board does, they can vote out those board members and get new ones to do what they want. They do not vote for their board members to be dictated to, on how they behave, by the State Services Commissioner.

That is what this legislation does. It vests in the State Services Commissioner the powers of boards of trustees regarding teachers’ pay. It is a typical example of a collectivist Government digging itself into a hole and trying desperately to dig itself out. When it removed the ability for schools to have bulk funding it got itself into this disastrous situation. The most sensible thing that this Government could do, which Governments in Western democracies all around the world are doing—it is not radical; it is not gasp material—is to let parents chose; to devolve the funding to the boards so that the communities, in consultation with the teachers and the parents, can decide.

But this Government does not want to let even the teachers choose. It will now take choice away from the teachers as well. It was extraordinary on the Education and Science Committee. I actually remarked that it was rare for me to find myself on the same side as the Post Primary Teachers Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute. They opposed this bill. They saw it as draconian. They saw it as removing the last vestige of choice from teachers. They will no longer be able to choose which school they teach in, under this legislation. If teachers are put by this Government in a situation where their school is closed down or merged, they will not be able to choose which school they teach in, or they will lose their compensation. It is not their fault that schools close or merge. They do not ask to be put in that situation. They should be compensated. They have a right taken away from them, a property right if one likes—their property right to earn money. They have that right taken away from them by the State, and the State should compensate them. But teachers will not be able to be compensated now, unless they adhere to the draconian terms that have been put in this bill. We will look at those terms in more detail later, but if teachers do not adhere to the directives in this bill, if they refuse an offer of a job—a so-called equivalent position, which is very loosely defined—in a replacement school or another school directly affected by the closure or merger, they also lose their redundancy. So this Government not only does not want parents to choose; it will not let boards of trustees choose any more, and it will not let teachers choose, either.

I am shocked to the core that United Future—the family-friendly party—is voting for this legislation—[Interruption] We might not always agree with the Greens, but at least they have principles. As I said, the loser here is education. It is patronising for that member to say that members of boards of trustees were put in a difficult position of not being able to decide whether they should pay the teachers when they went on strike. That is why people decide to become members of boards of trustees; they have to make difficult decisions. Every time they have a meeting they make difficult decisions about whether they will raise $120,000 for a swimming pool or an arts centre. Is United Future going to take those choices off boards too, because parents, ordinary people, cannot decide? Does it think only politicians and bureaucrats can make choices for parents, because parents do not know, even if they are elected by other parents to be on a board of trustees?

In Florida, even the liberal, lefty press is now coming out in favour of a voucher system whereby funding is not centrally controlled as it is here—and further so under this legislation. It is devolved to the students. Research has shown that that especially benefits children from very poor families on very low incomes, because they are given the opportunity to choose a school. Even if we went back to bulk funding for just those schools that want it, they would be able to make decisions themselves over whether they pay the teachers when they go on strike. Sure, the principle of withdrawing one’s labour is that one’s remuneration is withdrawn, too; that is the basic principle. But so what if another board of trustees wants to go against that principle, and decides that, because its members sympathise with their teachers who have gone out on strike, it wants to continue paying them? It should keep that choice. This bill is a sad day for learning in New Zealand, and the ACT party is vehemently opposed to it.

Can I say to United Future that being mauled by Deborah Coddington is like being mauled by a toothless sheep. Until that particular member learns to pay her tax bills, and there are certain other words that come to mind about her party, such as “Pipi Foundation”, and “Pipitea Street”, her party has no credibility—

💬 Darren Hughes: It was an electorate office.

Well, it was the electorate office. This particular bill is quite a simple bill, and I do agree with my colleague Mr Brownlee that—[Interruption] Not Brownlee! I tell Mr Donnelly that I take it back. I do apologise for that. I do not know whose reputation suffers the most with that particular comment, but I do take it back. But can I say that despite what was said by the person whom we do not comment on because her speeches are like being mauled by a sheep, this particular bill makes sure that some of the industrial relations issues around the operation of schools are dealt with. I interjected on Mr Donnelly’s speech that the freezing workers would have very much loved a provision whereby they got paid for going on strike. No worker worth his or her salt expects to be paid when on strike. Workers go on strike—

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: Some of them do!

Well, I have a very strong view about that, as a unionist—a very strong view. Those who do go on strike expect that, for standing up for their principles, they will lose wages in the process. That is part of the deal. The other side of that coin, of course, is the right of the employer to lock out, which I think deals with the issue of the confusion that Mr Brownlee—I am sorry; Mr Donnelly—was talking about. I do really apologise to the member for that. Mr Donnelly was talking earlier about the employer having the right, when these particular problems crop up, to lock out. That is just the normal ebb and flow of industrial relations—end of story.

Then I come to the crocodile tears shed about the school reviews and the redundancy provisions. They are exactly that—crocodile tears. If employees are offered a position in a merging school, or in a new school in the area, and thereby are not disadvantaged—if they can continue to be employed, if their service within the industry is not affected, if they can maintain all the other positions that they are entitled to within their particular contracts—what is wrong with that? If employees decide, after having been offered a position, not to move on to it, they make their own decision not to take up an offer of employment. I do not care how good any particular tribunal or court in this land is: at that point that is a resignation—end of story.

It seems to me that the bill tidies up quite nicely an area within the State sector legislation that is a little untidy at the moment. There is no shock or horror about this bill. It is a good bill that tidies up a situation that should have been tidied up a long time ago. In future, when teachers do decide to go on strike over matters of great importance to the education industry, they know that the price of principle is their salary for that period of time. I have absolutely no problem with that, because it means that both sides of the industrial dispute compete on a level playing field. When dealing with industrial relations, I would have thought that was something ACT would agree with.

If it were not so sad to hear Mr Peck trying to climb into Deborah Coddington over her speech a few minutes ago, it would be amusing. Deborah Coddington is known up and down this country as someone who stands for principle. I do not think that Mr Peck is known for anything. Mr Peck is so bitter and twisted because even Mr Benson-Pope was promoted into Cabinet over him. Mr Peck has been here for quite a few years and is so bitter that he has not made it into the Labour Cabinet. If he chooses to attack someone of principle like Deborah Coddington, he is making a grave mistake.

I now come to the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3). This is a very important issue. No one can pretend that the arrangements for negotiating our teachers’ salaries, and the authority of boards of trustees with respect to their employment, have been satisfactory for a number of years. No one can claim that the way the system worked in the past has been totally satisfactory.

When I was Minister, the way the system worked caused me a lot of concern. However, to hear Mr Ogilvy from United Future—is that who it was?

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Dr Ogilvy.

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH: Dr Ogilvy from United Future said that this bill sorted things out. The problem is that a party like United Future in this Parliament has no knowledge of the background to the payment of teachers’ salaries, the role of the States Services Commissioner, or the reforms of Tomorrow’s Schools. To pretend that this bill sorts things out satisfactorily is a travesty. If this bill is passed, the losers will be our children and families—the people United Future claims it cares about. This bill causes children to be the losers. I invite Dr Ogilvy to think about the issue a bit more, and about what goes on in the schooling system in this country.

There is an issue around the role of boards of trustees as employers, and the role of the State Services Commissioner as a negotiator of collective contracts. But to re-empower the centre—to empower the State Services Commissioner more—is not the way to solve our problems. The big problem in schooling today is that our best people do not go into teaching, because our best teachers are not rewarded. The great collective contract means that our poorer teachers are paid far more than they are worth, and our best teachers are not paid anything like what they are worth—and everyone knows it.

That is the problem of the big collective contract when employing our teachers. When the State Services Commissioner is negotiating employment arrangements, the big State-sector union will always be on the other side. The Government had the opportunity to do something for the schoolchildren of this country and make the amendments needed.

I accept that the status quo was not satisfactory. School boards of trustees are officially the employers, yet the State Services Commissioner negotiates the collective contract on their behalf. This Labour-led Government has progressively pulled power back from boards of trustees and recentralised it, and this is just another step in that process. However, boards of trustees should have been empowered to become full employers, as they have now had the experience.

When Tomorrow’s Schools was established in 1989-90—in fact, the previous Labour Government put it in place, but as Minister I had to start making it work—maybe it could have been argued that the new boards of trustees, new in those roles, needed a period of time before they acquired the full role of employer, including employment negotiations. It was always intended that, ultimately, boards of trustees would have the role of running their schools.

If we go back to the origin of the whole Tomorrow’s Schools reform, the Picot task force recommended that all our schools be bulk funded. One of the reasons the task force recommended that was that, ultimately, it made sense for our schools to employ their staff so that they could reward outstanding teachers and manage their schools in the interests of the children of their schools. This legislation is just another step back from what the Picot task force recommended. It is a step back from the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms. It is all part of the recentralisation of education under this Labour-led Government.

United Future, of all parties, should not be endorsing that. Recentralisation and bureaucratic control of schooling is not in the interests of our children. United Future stands in this House and parrots on about the importance of families and children, and has the chance to vote against regressive legislation that takes that away. Clause 6 states that our teachers come first and our children last. If the teachers go on strike, the union comes first and children come last. If the union goes on strike, the children miss out.

At least we should give Trevor Mallard some credit. He wanted to make sure that children did not miss out. But Mr Donnelly from New Zealand First and his select committee said: “No, we can’t have a situation where the children come first. The union must come first, so they can take as many days on strike as they like”—and children will miss out on their education. This country has had enough of that. This country has to start standing up for children and not for the big teacher unions. That is what this is all about. Far from recentralising the whole negotiation of employment arrangements for teachers, this legislation should be all about giving schools the opportunity to reward outstanding teachers, because we have great teachers.

Every bit of research done on schooling shows that an important element making for a successful school is an outstanding principal. Schools used to be able to sack bad principals when their contracts expired. They cannot do that any more. This Labour-led Government has stopped that with its Employment Relations Act. Schools cannot have fixed-term contracts any more, and they cannot get rid of bad principals. The other bit of research shows us that outstanding teachers make a difference.

This bill will make it even harder. It is another step away from enabling schools to employ their teachers in ways that enable them to reward outstanding teachers and deal with teachers who under-perform. When a school has an under-performing teacher—and we have plenty of them—again it is the children who suffer. Labour and United Future claim they care about children, yet every time a legislative issue comes up, they take the union side; they do not take the children’s side. This bill was a chance to demonstrate that the children actually matter to United Future.

There is no need for this bureaucratic nonsense. It would have been very possible to give greater power to school boards of trustees. We could have had legislation by which boards ceded that power, if they wished, to the State Services Commissioner, but at least put in place a mechanism that was originally envisaged by Picot and the whole schools reform process to really enable schools to do something for their children. The principal and the teachers are the most important bit. The skill of those teachers matters, and this bill takes it all away from our boards of trustees, the parents, the community, and the teachers involved, who want to make our schools a better place. This bill just recentralises power in the State Services Commissioner.

No one can say that I do not know what I am talking about, because I was Minister for almost 6 years and Opposition spokesperson for 3 years. No one else in this House has been involved in the politics of education longer than I have. Those comments are made from hard experience.

It is very interesting to hear the comments made by a former Minister of Education—a Minister who was not very fondly remembered by those of us who were practitioners in the education service at the time.

Having been a member of Parliament at the time of the Picot report and involved in those discussions, I have to say the former Minister’s memory has been a little selective. He conveniently overlooked the very good provision in the bill that requires the union bargaining for a collective agreement to give prior notice of industrial action. I would have thought that a very fair provision, because it takes account of the notice that parents and children need if there is to be any disruption. Surely, that is much better than any other arrangement. To do what Dr Lockwood Smith suggested would be to take away the normal democratic rights that workers’ groups in this country have had over long periods under both National and Labour Governments.

This bill is much fairer. It ensures that parents get adequate notice if there is to be any disruption. That is quite unlike the situation that occurred in the early 1990s when Dr Lockwood Smith was Minister of Education.

This bill is all about the philosophical approach that political parties have to education. That is precisely why the minority view in the commentary on the bill states: “We believe it reinforces the ethos of centralised bargaining of teachers’ employment contracts, and reduces the reality that the true employers are the Boards of Trustees. It would be more appropriate to move toward more flexible employment agreements, rather than increasing the powers of the State Services Commissioner.”

We recognise the Government had choices; that there was a particular issue that had to be dealt with. That is an understood point, and the Government had a clear choice. It could either centralise or it could devolve. That choice is made on the basis of one’s philosophical attitude towards education. Is it to be State-centred and State-controlled, or is it to be parent-centred and child-controlled? That is the fundamental choice that this legislation implies.

We know what the Government’s choice was, and, frankly, we are not surprised. The Labour Government has always believed in centralisation—bringing power to the centre, reducing the power of the communities. That was precisely the debate in the previous bill. It is interesting to have two bills, back to back, that are actually about a philosophical choice. In both cases the Government has taken the choice of centralisation. What surprises me, however, is that that choice would be shared by the United Future party and the New Zealand First party. These are parties that would traditionally describe themselves, irrespective of their particular positioning, as of the centre right—respecting community choice, removing power from the State. Yet in both cases they have opted for centralisation.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: No, the centre.

Mr Donnelly has said that I have got it wrong; that they describe themselves as of the centre; but surely, nevertheless, New Zealand First is a party that believes in the community rather than the Government. Or have I got it wrong? In fact, is the basic underlying philosophy of those two parties actually for centralisation? Because that is what their votes imply. They did have a clear choice in this situation.

So we are voting against the bill, precisely because it reflects the choice the Government made. There was a mischief to be dealt with. We recognise that. It is clearly not desirable for boards of trustees to simply pay teachers who are on strike. But why do they do that? They do it because there are no consequences. Because, in fact, the power resides with the centre. Surely the proper approach is to sheet responsibility and consequences home to those who are the legal employers—the boards of trustees. So that is the fundamental choice that the public will ultimately be faced with.

The Government is, no doubt, going to go out to the New Zealand public in 18 months’ time and say: “Trust us. We know best. We can make the decisions for you. Trust the bureaucrats to make the right choices for your children.” That will not be the choice that National offers to the community. We will be saying: “Devolve power to the community. Give real responsibility to the boards of trustees. Sheet home those responsibilities, and the funding to the boards of trustees.” That is the fundamental choice that this bill implies, and there could have been another way to deal with this issue. The Government has chosen not to take that way, and, frankly, that is not surprising. It does believe in centralisation. That is why we are debating these two bills today, because it is precisely what the Government believes in. We take a different view, and we say give the community autonomy.

I have heard sotto voce interjections by Mr Donnelly about bulk funding. Well, we are proud of the results of bulk funding. Certainly, within North Shore every school that had the choice made the choice. Why did they make the choice? They did that because it gave them autonomy. It gave them the ability to make choices that were right for their schools and their communities. When people have that opportunity to make those decisions, they actually want to be able to make them. That will be the choice that will be being put to the community. It is not often in the House that we get the opportunity to have a worthwhile debate on these deep philosophical interests—how we actually deal with the real choices that face this community. But this is one of those choices, and we will be voting against this bill because—

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: What!

We will certainly be providing choice in education. We will be opposed to the whole concept and argument of zoning. We will give autonomy to boards of trustees.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Prior to the luncheon break, I was saying this bill essentially has within it a philosophical choice between centralisation, which was also a feature of the bill debated previously, or decentralisation. The Government has chosen centralisation. Somewhat to my surprise, both United Future and New Zealand First have unwisely decided to support that educational philosophy. That is an unfortunate choice, because there is another way. That way is to trust parents, trust teachers, and directly fund schools, so that they make the choices. That is the essence of the choice, and it is why National is opposed to this bill.

There is also another provision in the bill about redundancies. It is all there because of the Minister’s ill-starred network review, which he had great enthusiasm for. Up and down the country he was closing schools left, right, and centre, bravely fronting up—I acknowledge he did go to the various meetings—and going to the communities and saying: “This is good for you.” I saw him on television in Invercargill defending his position.

Remarkably, there was then a complete about face, and there are to be no network reviews for 5 long years. It was an extraordinary position to take, which could only be assumed to be driven by the polls. The people of Invercargill are still waiting for their answer. Why they not included in that moratorium as well?

Now there is a somewhat anomalous position. The new sections 77HA and 77HB, proposed to be inserted in the State Sector Act by clause 4 of this bill, are still in there, but in what circumstances would they now be used, other than perhaps in Invercargill? In reality the Government has taken a reverse step and done a U-turn. So during the Committee stage, we will still ask the Minister why he felt it was necessary to include or retain those provisions, given the U-turn.

I just want to close on this point. This bill involves clear choice between centralisation and State control, which is the Government’s way, or decentralisation and trusting parents and communities, which is National’s way. The public will decide that in 18 months’ time.

I rise to support the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3), and I am glad that that member finished the way that he did, because the minority view as expressed in the Education and Science Committee report made it clear the National Party wants to move to individual boards of trustees having to negotiate contracts or agreements with their employees, school by school. Those members do want to break down the relationship that has been developed over many, many years between those working in our schools, and they want to smash the State sector unions, the Post Primary Teachers Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute. That is the National Party’s position on this. It is not the Government’s position. When the State Services Commissioner has the power to bargain for collective agreements with employees of boards of trustees, it makes good sense that the commissioner has all the powers under the legislation. It is sensible legislation from an excellent Minister of Education.