State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3)

I want to focus in particular on clause 3, “Purposes”, because, as referred to in the previous debate, this has the philosophy of both the major parties, and indeed all of the parties. It is a real choice. For Labour members the choice is this. They want to centralise, so therefore the clause has the words: “… to enable the State Services Commissioner, in negotiating collective agreements …”. The Government will stand in the stead of the board of trustees. The power goes from schools to the centre. That is the Labour way. We heard the Hon Lianne Dalziel talk about their love of the unions and their cosy relationship with the New Zealand Educational Institute and the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA), which are well-known funders of the Labour Party. That is the sort of arrangement Labour likes and that is what it favours.

The Government will give all possible powers to the State Services Commissioner to reinforce that arrangement, because the more power one gives to the State Services Commissioner, the more power one gives to the unions. That is the corollary, which is not stated explicitly in the bill like that, but it is the intent. The Government wants to empower unions, and this is its mechanism to do so. That is not in the interests of the children, and neither is it in the interests of the teachers, because it treats all teachers the same.

I worked in the tertiary sector, and one of the most important changes was shifting from a national collective contract to having essentially university or tertiary-specific contracts. When that happened there was a tremendous blossoming of diversity and a real recognition of the abilities and talents of individual people within those institutions. That is how it should be. Teachers are not some form of cloth-capped unionists marching in rank and file, although those who would belong to the PPTA and devote all their negotiating power to it would have one believe that that is the case. Teachers are responsible professionals. In the modern era of the 21st century, modern professionals negotiate with their employers. Their employer is not the State Services Commissioner; their employers are the boards of trustees. That is the relationship that should occur, and schools ought to be funded directly on that basis.

That gives real power to the boards of trustees, to the community, and to the teachers and principals in those workplaces. It strengthens those relationships. It makes ultimately for a more harmonious working relationship, because people know where they stand. They have to have that direct relationship between themselves and their employer, whereas the Government would have them hiding and buried within this collective of the Post Primary Teachers Association, which would undertake all the negotiations. That may advantage the not-so-able teacher, but it certainly does not advantage the range, diversity, and abilities of teachers throughout the school system. If we want a modern 21st century education system, we will celebrate the diversity and ability of those teachers. That way we will attract the best people into the teaching profession.

Dr Lockwood Smith, former Minister of Education, knows the importance of giving real power to boards of trustees. That is why he was such an advocate, as Minister, of Tomorrow’s Schools, which now, unfortunately, are “yesterday’s schools”, because this Government has crushed initiative. This Government would bring power back to the centre, back to the State Services Commissioner, so that the Minister could have his cosy little relationship with his mates—I guess they are former mates, in the sense of colleagues in the PPTA—and have those kinds of negotiating powers.

I can understand why the Greens are voting against this legislation, but I cannot understand why National and ACT are voting to enable teachers to continue the practice of going on strike and withdrawing their labour, and still being paid for it.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: It’s a philosophical point.

Dr Mapp said that it is a philosophical point. It is a philosophical point about schools having power, devolution of decision-making, site bargaining, bulk funding, and giving real power to boards and teachers. I mention to Dr Mapp that after 9 years of National being in power in the 1990s, we ended up having the centralised negotiation of collective employment contracts with the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) and the New Zealand Educational Institute. That is what we ended up with after those 9 years, and now National is telling us that it will lead us to a new nirvana.

Dr Lockwood Smith criticised New Zealand First for not supporting children’s education, because of one of the amendments the Education and Science Committee has made to this bill. I ask Dr Lockwood Smith how many days were lost through strikes, and how many days and hours of teaching were lost through rostering off, in the 1996 negotiations. In the 1998 negotiations that New Zealand First was involved in with the PPTA and the New Zealand Educational Institute, not one day was lost. There was not one day of strike action as a result of those negotiations. I ask Dr Lockwood Smith who really does care about the educational well-being of students.

The point is that in this particular case, National is claiming that it wants bulk funding and site bargaining, and that that will resolve all the issues, yet National had 9 years to put that in practice, and it did not advance it. National did not advance that when it had the opportunities to do so. Lockwood Smith’s formula would never have worked, because it was based upon the average teacher’s salary—hence there was such resistance by the teachers association and the educationalists who really thought about those issues. It was only when New Zealand First came into the coalition Government and said that if there had to be a formula, we should make it a fair one—at the top of the scale—that we had something that might have made the bulk-funding situation work. But the fact is that we went way past that, and by the end of the 1990s even National was not prepared to impose the fully funded option of bulk funding. National had the opportunity to do that, and failed to do so.

New Zealand First says that if teachers withdraw their labour—and they should have the right to withdraw their labour—they should lose their pay. That is what this legislation is about. There may also be a reorganisation of schooling in certain areas, and people may be offered another job. For example, up our way in Northland three schools are being merged on one site, and the name of the school will change. Some of the teachers at one school called Punaruku—which will now be called Whangaruru—will have their jobs offered to them. New Zealand First believes that if that offer is made, those teachers should be required to take up those jobs and should not be entitled to a full range of redundancy payments.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: Stick to the right part.

This is the right part. I ask Dr Mapp whether he would like me to read out that provision. Obviously he has not read it. New Zealand First says that it is only fair and proper, and in line with all other industrial negotiations, that if that sort of thing takes place, people should not receive redundancy payments. New Zealand First fought in the select committee to make sure that the wording of that provision was tidied up—because there was a need to tidy it up—but it supports the principle at stake.

The only question New Zealand First really wants to ask the Minister is why he came to the House for the first reading with such a dog of a bill. Why did he not get it right, and why did he leave it to the select committee to make all the changes? Other than that, I say New Zealand First is flabbergasted at the positions taken by National and ACT. We will support the bill, because we believe that given the circumstances left by National in 1999 regarding centralised negotiations, these mechanisms are necessary to ensure a level playing field between the taxpayer and teachers.

In talking in the Committee stage and addressing Part 1 of this bill, I say the ACT party will vote against this legislation all the way through. We have heard a lot of argument about why we should not be opposed to this bill removing the right of employers to pay employees who are on strike. If that is the situation Labour and New Zealand First believe in, why do they not bring in legislation that would remove that power from private employers, too? Private employers can still choose to pay or remunerate their employees in some way if they want to reward them—if they have some sympathy for the reason they are on strike. They can do that. A lot of boards of trustees did not pay striking teachers. The actual figure is not available, because, as usual, this Minister does not bother about detail when he brings in legislation like this. I have tried to get details of the actual number of boards of trustees that continued to pay teachers when they went on strike, but we do not know that, so we do not even know whether this legislation is necessary.

Of course, that is not the real reason we are bringing in this legislation. The real reason is that this Minister wants to overturn Tomorrow’s Schools. He has commissioned research that shows the ideal situation is to have one board of trustees for every 200 schools. That is a de facto education board situation. Even now, parents who are on boards of trustees tell us that they are having less and less say in the actual running of their school. They are required more and more to deal with form filling, and they have to make sure that their school complies with over a dozen pieces of legislation. When Brian Picot came up with the idea of Tomorrow’s Schools, based on very sound research from a Labour Government—which is now being overturned by another Labour Government—we had the situation whereby more power and control was to be devolved to communities and parents to run their schools. This legislation will rip more of that decision making away from parents and boards of trustees.

In trying to overcome the issue of teachers double-dipping when a school is closed or merged, the Minister has got himself into a pickle. In trying to get himself out of that pickle, he is further reducing choice. To try to get away from the situation in which a teacher is made redundant because a school closes and then gets a job at another school down the road or at the newly merged school, but still receives a redundancy payment as well as being paid for the new job, he is reducing the right of schools within that locality—that is the exact wording in the bill—to be able to choose the best teacher for the job. They will be caught between a rock and a hard place. They may not take the teacher that the State Services Commissioner directs should go there, who will otherwise not be compensated for losing his or her job, because there may be a better applicant. If it is a small rural locality or provincial area, the schools will probably know the people concerned personally. They will know their families. They will have to decide whether to put that person out on the street or to take the best teacher for the job.

That is exactly why there should not be central control. People in Wellington do not know what is best for people at Blackball on the West Coast, or at Russell in Northland. They do not know what is best for those people, I say to the Minister in the chair, Trevor Mallard. The Minister does not know that, and nor do the bureaucrats. The only people who know what is best for those communities are the people who live there—the parents, the principals, the boards of trustees, and the teachers. If we could just go back to bulk funding, we would not need this bill.

United Future is concerned about some of the comments with regard to Part 1 of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3), which is before us today. We are concerned because of the misunderstanding that exists in some of the statements that National and ACT members have been trying to argue in the Committee. I note that both parties oppose the bill because it reinforces the ethos of “centralised bargaining”, in their words. However, that can never be the reality unless the boards also have the power to negotiate employee agreements, and that is not the case. If it were the case, then taking the position that National and ACT have taken may apply, but it is not the case, so we are looking at the reality here. Otherwise, we would do as National proposes, which is that teachers should be paid while they are on strike. I am sure that is not the case. Clause 3, “Purposes”, states very firmly that teachers cannot be paid while they are on strike, and provides for a mechanism to be set in place to ensure that that does not happen. Otherwise, it will happen, and there will be confusion between the employer—the State Services Commission—the boards of trustees, the teachers, and, worse still, the children who are being taught at school.

United Future is concerned that there has been quite a misunderstanding of the purpose of the bill. To emphasise that, a recent case came to my attention that highlights the confusion surrounding exactly whom the employer is when it comes to schools. One could be forgiven for thinking that the board is responsible for employment decisions made by a school, but that is not so, according to a recent decision by the Employment Relations Authority. This is what happened. A teacher complained that his salary was reduced after his qualifications were found to be incomplete, and blamed the board for not following up on the issue of having the salary restored. But it was the ministry and its payment agent that made the decision to cut the salary, so they were obviously held to be responsible for it. The judgment was consistent with the intent of this bill, but I wonder whether it resolves some of the questions that will continue to exist surrounding the status of boards as employers.

I pointed out earlier that, due to the submissions made on the bill as introduced, major corrections have been made to the bill in order to conform to the purposes of the Act, so that it can work properly. We now have before the Committee something that is workable, something that I would like to commend, and something that United Future supports.

The once-proud Labour Party headed by the Rt Hon David Lange gave New Zealand Tomorrow’s Schools. Today, very appropriately, a few MPs mentioned that the current Labour Government is fast returning them to yesteryears. I am surprised that Bernie Ogilvy is concerned that National and ACT are voting against this legislation, and is confused as to why that is the case. We were hoping to see a movement towards teachers and boards of trustees being able to bargain a fair outcome for both parties, on their own terms. All that the Minister has done, with the endorsement of New Zealand First, United Future, and the Greens, is to transfer the power to conduct wage bargaining from the boards of trustees to the State Services Commissioner in Wellington.

Clause 3(c) of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) actually provides that boards of trustees have to report to the State Services Commissioner on the conduct of strikes that affect their schools. Let us think of the unnecessary bureaucracy that is being introduced by this legislation. A board of trustees that is on site at a school will now have to monitor a strike situation, and report to the State Services Commissioner in Wellington. That is the person who is supposed to be able to carry out good-faith bargaining with teachers. Why introduce another layer of complication into the situation? I was quite interested to find that members of the Labour Government—which is supposed to trust teachers—today during the debate seemed to be suggesting there has been all sorts of undesirable behaviour by teachers. According to those members teachers are not to be trusted, so that is why the Government has to empower the State Services Commissioner to bargain with them.

National and ACT have taken a very consistent and logical stand, in saying that Tomorrow’s Schools was about self-governance by schools, together with parents, principals, and teachers, and with input from students, in order for schools to conduct their business in an inclusive manner. Today, this bill once again introduces a bureaucracy—a centrally controlled structure—into the bargaining process of schools. Does the Labour Government not trust boards of trustees? Does it not believe that, if empowered, they can carry out those functions? Why introduce a bureaucracy, and then have the boards of trustees continue to monitor the situation and report to the commissioner, who is based in Wellington? That simply does not make sense to the National Party.

We will certainly oppose this bill. Tomorrow’s Schools, when it was introduced, was well intentioned, and taking away self-governance from schools is a retrograde step. I hope United Future will take another look at the legislation and study it carefully, because, after all, it claims to be a party of common sense that trusts teachers and principals, and believes that people, left to their own devices, are able to come up with decisions that are acceptable to all parties.

When Caldwell and Spinks went around the country in 1988-89 talking about self-managing schools, we in the education sector knew that that was always going to be limited, and limited for one reason—the allocation of funds. Contrary to what I have heard in this debate so far, that was always the intention, and in 1989, in 1990, throughout the total years of the National Party’s administration till 1996, and during the period of coalition from 1996 to 1999, that was so. So, looking at clause 3 of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3), I am finding some difficulty in understanding the arguments being pursued in the Chamber—ones of a supposed deep philosophical mind. What are they? My experience in the secondary school system and my knowledge of the primary school system do not tell me there were any changes with regard to salaries, maintenance, and the bulk of school funding throughout the whole of that time, by any of the administrations, nor are there so at the present time.

But the reality was that in 2002 there was a problem. The problem, which is reflected in this bill, was that some boards—or principals in the secondary school sector—in trying to show particularity towards their staff, did wrongfully, I am suggesting, not acknowledge that staff were not at school during some planned strike actions, while some principals took extreme care with regard to docking teachers’ pay for every absent hour of every day. That must be the rationale behind the segments of clause 3 that bring to hand the actions of the State Services Commissioner. Who else would have the ability to say to boards that deductions in respect of strike days lost should have been made, which in some cases, because of the particular atmosphere of that strike action in 2002, was not done? So my experience conveys to me that this measure is reasonable. I certainly do not concur with the suggestion made by Deborah Coddington that, somehow, taxpayers’ funding is equated with private funding, and that therefore there should be some gratis payments of taxpayers’ funds. It is an appalling idea, and if she really thinks about what she said, she would be sorry that she said so in the Chamber, because it is taxpayers’ money.

To come back to 1989 and the issue of the so-called reforms, accountability was always going to be an issue with regard to the spending of the dollar. It still is. That is not easy in the school system, when there is never enough money to go around, as the Minister said yesterday; there is not enough money today and there will not be enough tomorrow, and every dollar counts. Not least is the issue of salaries. Salaries were not, under National Party administrations or under any other administrations, paid—[Interruption] If we go to a voucher system, that may be an answer, but it will never be the total answer to week-by-week, fortnight-by-fortnight payments to teachers. It was an answer for those who are part of the support staff; it has never been so for those who are part of the teaching staff—and it was not entirely satisfactory when it was.

The second issue I want to raise as the reason for this measure is that the schools did not, in the main, have salary service agents within their own school administrations. They were centralised from the very start. In 1989 they were centralised. In 1991, under a National Party administration, they were centralised. So, again, where is the deep-seated philosophical change of heart? [Interruption] I tell Mr Power that what we have here is a cheap argument without real substance being advanced on what is a simple, straightforward, administrative bill, which clarifies what was not known, and should have been clarified, in 2002.

I move, That the question be now put.

I have sat in the Chamber and listened to the contributions that have been made from various parties. I think it is worth making a couple of points of clarification. I must say that, like my colleague Pansy Wong, I am extremely surprised by the United Future party’s decision to support this legislation through these stages. It seems to me that this bill is a sort of apology from the Minister of Education to the Post Primary Teachers Association, and an attempt—[Interruption] I have always noticed that about Mr Donnelly: sometimes he was part of the Government in the 1990s and sometimes he was not. It just depends on which piece of legislation we are debating. [Interruption] Was that from Rick Barker—“That member will never be in Government.”? Well, if the choice is doing that or signing off JP nominations, it is a pretty tight call!

Clause 3 begins: “The purposes of this Act are—(a) to enable the State Services Commissioner, in negotiating collective agreements applicable to employees of Boards of Trustees, to exercise … the powers available to an employer …”. Lianne Dalziel has contributed to the debate by saying that wages are centrally funded, so the commissioner should be able to exercise the rights of an employer during that negotiation. In a strange way, Lianne Dalziel has gone right to the heart of the matter, because that is the problem. The whole problem is that we are saying to boards of trustees that they are the employers, and will take responsibility for the running of schools and the employment of teaching staff, but at the same time we are removing the very thing that binds the employer–employee relationship, and that is the payment of remuneration. Various members have stated that the opportunity arose from time to time to remove that particular provision, and the point has been well made and acknowledged. Let me assure those members who have an interest in this matter that when the Government changes, so will some issues around this particular matter.

What is really going on here is we are removing further individual rights of boards of trustees members, and recentralising them around the funding arm, the State Services Commissioner—effectively, a de facto employer standing outside the contractual relationship that should exist directly between the employing board of trustees and the employee teacher. That fact is the difficulty we find ourselves in, in every school around the country—that there is a third party butting its nose into the relationship between schools and boards of trustees, and the teachers.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: It always has been.

That does not make it right. The simple fact of the matter is that in order to give a bit of exercise to local parents and local schools, these matters should be the subject of negotiation directly between the boards of trustees and the employee teachers themselves. There is no good reason why the Post Primary Teachers Association should be negotiating directly with the State Services Commissioner over issues that are particular to each individual school and the learning requirements of individual children in that school. My colleague Dr Wayne Mapp has made the point very clearly that all that this bill is designed to do is to firm up and protect the collective bargaining arrangement that has existed for far too long between the Post Primary Teachers Association and, in this case, the State Services Commissioner on behalf of the Government, when or if this legislation is introduced. It is high time that schools were left to get on with this business on their own merits.

This is very confused legislation. On the one hand the Minister is protecting the collective bargaining arrangement of the Post Primary Teachers Association, but he is also quietly putting the slipper in, in clause 3(d)—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Quietly?

That is a fair point. The Minister does not usually do things quietly, but in clause 3(d) he is quietly putting the slipper in. To sort of make up for the G3 stuff-up, he has slipped into clause 3(d) the purpose “to preclude compensation for technical redundancies”.

We are debating Part 1 of the State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3), and from my left there has been a shrill cry of “School by school!” in astonished tones, as the honourable Lianne Dalziel tries to interrupt Mr Simon Power with what she thinks is the killer punch—school by school negotiation. What a shocking idea that boards of trustees—all 2,000 of them, or however many primary schools there are, and another 500 or so secondary schools; I cannot remember the figures—might be entrusted to sort out the terms of employment of their own teachers. That is horror for the left. That horror is what this bill is about, and that is why the purpose provisions in clause 3, with their very anodyne words, do not really say it as simply as they might. This is the coffee the Minister of Education has when he is drunk. It is a dreadful policy, and a foolish reversal of the Picot reforms. To take away bulk funding—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, the member should not say that. He will withdraw that remark.

I withdraw. If I may I will explain to the Minister, in case he felt grave offence. Sometimes when one makes a mistake and is drunk—and I think this is typical of teenagers—the way one that tries to cover it up is to drink coffee. One makes desperate efforts to look sober. What we have in this legislation is the inevitable consequence of the State Services Commissioner having to negotiate terms and conditions of employment, because the commissioner is responsible when boards will not be responsible. If they are not able to deal with their funds and set their priorities themselves, of course they are irresponsible. As a former trustee myself, I know that I would do exactly what boards of trustees do in circumstances where they do not have the power to determine the terms and conditions of employment, they do not have the power to determine wages, and they do not have the power to pay their best teachers what they are worth, and to get rid of their worst teachers, in the way that an ordinary, private sector employer can; of course they conspire with the teachers against the person who has to sign the cheques.

So we get a bill that still leaves the appearance of an employment relationship between the board and the staff, still leaves some selection power, but recentralises negotiations, and therefore plays directly into the hands of incompetent teachers and the State sector unions—the ones that contribute so much to Labour’s election prospects. The teaching unions are getting a reward. That reminds me of the reward being offered to the prison officers’ union. The only competition that really shows up the poor performance of the State prison sector is being killed off by the Government ending the private prison contract. This bill—and its purpose provisions make it reasonably plain—will make more concrete that the employment relationship between the board and the teacher is a farce. It contains the powers that the Minister needed when he ended genuine employment by school boards of teachers.

I do not think the Minister has taken a call in this debate, but I would be very interested to know just what input the State Services Commissioner intends giving to boards now. I know I cannot debate the next part of the bill, but it is very interesting that the powers that the State Services Commissioner will now have include powers to require trustees, in effect, to jump to the State Services Commissioner’s order. That is disguised in the purpose clause. Paragraph (c) is the only purpose that covers it, and it states: “to require Boards of Trustees to report to the State Services Commissioner on the conduct of strikes that affect the schools of those Boards;”. What that little purpose provision does not say is that it can also allow the State Services Commissioner to threaten boards if they do not do exactly as he says. The commissioner now has the power to decide whether they were negligent or not in their dealings.

I move, That the question be now put.

The part we are discussing in this bill essentially talks about the purpose of the bill, which is to give validity to an appalling industrial relations situation that exists between the teaching fraternity in this country and the payers of the salaries of those teachers. It ignores the relationship between teachers and boards of trustees that, for all other purposes, are considered to be the employers of teachers. It is the sort of legislation that occurs when a Government decides that it will regulate everything in any area it chooses. I want to know from the Minister: if the Employment Relations Act is so good—the Act that was touted by Margaret Wilson as landmark legislation for industrial relations—why do we now have a bill that gives the State Services Commissioner certain exemptions from the provisions of that Act? What is the need for this bill? Why are teachers being treated differently from other employees?

Further, why are teachers not able to negotiate directly with their own boards? Why cannot they say to their boards: “Not only do I do my time in the classroom but I also do a bit of drama, I also take sport twice a week and then on a Saturday, and I think I should be paid more than someone who just does their classroom teaching.”? But they cannot do that, because the Government has said: “No. Every teacher is the same, and they must be paid on a scale.” I know that the Minister will stand up and say: “Oh, but we have put in place management units.” Right?

I ask the Minister, if he is going to stand up and give us a lecture on those management units, whether he can tell us how many teachers in this country receive their management units exclusively for sport or exclusively for cultural activity, outside the classroom. There will not be many. There will be very, very few, because the Minister knows that those management units are overwhelmingly tagged for curriculum matters as they pertain to the classroom. I want to know from the Minister whether it is necessary—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: As it should be.

The Minister actually chipped in then, and I do not want to give his interjection credibility except to say that he said that that was as it should be. That is an admission from the Labour Government that sport in schools does not matter, cultural activities in schools do not matter, and that all children in schools should simply be confined to the classroom and their education delivered along the narrow lines of chalk and talk. That is what the Labour Government’s vision of education is for this country, and it reinforces that, with a bill like this that ties the hands of both boards of trustees and, for that matter, the many teachers in this country, who might want to be better off by being able to negotiate their own circumstances.

I can look at the faces of those people sitting across the other side of the Chamber and see how worried they are. They know that as they go into their dying days as a Government, some of their key legislation is likely to be undone by the very people it is supposed to affect—in other words, the many thousands of teachers in this country who will not vote for that Government because their professional integrity is just being kicked in a heap. They are being told they are a single mass who will simply take a salary for doing a job, regardless of how well they do that job.

The other fascinating point in this part is the requirement for boards of trustees to report to the State Services Commissioner on the conduct of strikes that affect the schools of those boards. What does that say? Is it saying that there are some strikes they do not have to report? Is it saying that they have to make some assessment of how well the strike went?

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to bring in a new point that has not been raised yet. However, I will start by responding to a question put by Gerry Brownlee, who asked why teachers could not negotiate directly with their employers. The answer is quite simple: for the 9 years National was in Government it never gave teachers the opportunity to do so. The system was not in place for the Labour Government to take away, because it was not there in the first place.

Stephen Franks says that teachers are getting a reward. Some reward, I have to say! This legislation actually reduces the powers through collective negotiations of the teachers associations or unions. Some reward! It is National and ACT that want to retain the powers that the unions now have. The point is this: why do we have to put this through under urgency? Why are we putting this through in this timely fashion? The public needs to know, the Parliament should know, and Annette King and Gerry Brownlee might like to know too that we have collective negotiations coming up very, very soon.

💬 Gerry Brownlee: What for?

For secondary, primary, and area school contracts. I ask members to remember that we have a situation that is chaotic, as a leftover from the last set of negotiations with the secondary school teachers. The Government has a mess of the Minister’s own making. This bill tries to make sure that the Post Primary Teachers Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute do not have those extraordinary powers to utilise when those negotiations come about.

Do people want to see another round such as we saw prior to the last election? Do we want the sorts of decision-making processes where they had to go to an arbitration panel and the Minister gave them an open cheque? It created more problems for the future as well as costing the taxpayer a lot more money than the Post Primary Teachers Association would have settled for. If that is what we want, members should vote against this legislation. This is what I am asking ACT and National to consider, because what they are doing is saying that they would continue to allow the Post Primary Teachers Association and the New Zealand Educational Institute to have extraordinary powers to withdraw their labour and still get paid for it.

In this respect New Zealand First is saying that those collective negotiations have to be done between now and the next election, so why should the taxpayers’ representatives go in with their hands tied behind their backs? That is an issue that does not seem to strike home to the ideologues from National and ACT who, in their 9 years, did not do anything about this issue, anyhow.

The point is that we need to be worried that we have some untidy negotiations coming up. For the good of our children and education I hope that is not the case. I hope the Minister has learnt a whole lot of lessons from last time around, but I do not think that is the case, because he is starting off behind the eightball with a very untidy situation around the G3s. Unless that can be resolved, it will not be only the Post Primary Teachers Association that is going on strike, it will be the New Zealand Educational Institute as well. Therefore, it seems to me that it is responsible to ensure that the negotiating teams—the State Services Commission or, by delegation, the Ministry of Education—have this legislation passed so that they can negotiate on behalf of taxpayers on a level playing field. I put that to both the ACT and the National parties to consider very seriously.

I move, That the question be now put.