Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I would indicate at this point that it be sent to the Education and Science Committee.

This is a very, very short bill, but none the less a serious one. It has been in the ballot for quite some years now, and arises out of a situation that was made apparent to the Education and Science Committee at the time, concerning the election of a person to a board of trustees who had not long since been released from prison, having served a sentence for crimes that related to inappropriate activity between that person and children. These are generally known as crimes related to the conduct of paedophilia.

While it is not in my nature to go around wanting to ban people from doing things, and it is not my natural inclination to encumber organisations with too many rules, I think it is important that the law does whatever it can to protect children. There are some criminal activities that should prohibit people from being involved in certain activities from that point. I think this is one of those examples.

So all this bill sets out to do is to amend the Education Act by inserting in section 103, and subsequent other sections, about 11 changes to the Act, which make it very clear that where each of those changes is made, a crime is specified, and if someone is convicted of those crimes, regardless of whether that person has served his or her sentence appropriately, that person cannot serve on a board of trustees in a school. That may sound a little bit tough, but I think that these days school boards, and the activities that go on around schools, are increasingly being seen as the hub of communities, even in the most urban of areas.

People often say that people do not join organisations these days. The idea of volunteering is not as strong as it used to be, and community service does not seem to have the same ranking in people’s minds as it used to. I always think we need to look at the many schools throughout this country, about 27 in my own electorate, each with its own school board, and each with its own family, parents, and friends association. All are working towards the betterment of the community by providing extra services to the school.

Some people might ask why a person who had served time for a crime should be prevented from being part of that. The fact is that that person has not been prevented if the school wants that person to be involved at some level—although I would advise that the person should not be involved—but they are prevented from taking up a statutory role such as that on a board of governors.

I hope that the Education and Science Committee has this bill referred to it tonight, and I hope the committee considers it carefully, and brings a report back to the House that recommends that it be passed. There is no need to say too much more. The bill is very, very short. It is quite explicit about what it sets out to achieve, and I commend it for members’ consideration.

On behalf of the Labour Government I would like to stand and support this bill, but to a point, because like the member, it has a number of flaws. The comparison stops there, but the bill is flawed because it misses out other important sex offences, which include sex violation and related offences from the Summary Offences Act and Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. I think it is probably indicative of the member that the work on the bill is far from thorough. Its purpose is to ensure that those convicted of sex offences against young people cannot become school trustees. In recognising this, we have to recognise that the instances of this occurring are rare. According to the National Science Teachers Association there have been over 70,000 trustees—hard-working, committed trustees in our schools—of whom only three are known to have been convicted for sex offences. This is because the nature of school elections makes it highly likely that sex offenders or other people who are not perhaps suitable to be part of a board of trustees are identified by the community, and the issue is then resolved through community pressure, and that is a good thing.

Given the number of cases that occur, I would have to say that this bill is a little bit like a sledgehammer being used to crack a nut. There is an irony that a member who is so opposed to any form of regulation or protection in most other areas is so committed to this. In most cases boards of trustees do not have direct contact with schoolchildren. They usually meet, as we all know, outside of school hours. I would like to acknowledge the hard work that boards of trustees put in outside of school hours. They go far beyond the call of duty. We in the Government really recognise the hard work and the commitment that our hard-working boards of trustees do.

There are also many protections. If they were having contact such as being teacher-aides, the Education Act has been amended under this Government to require police vetting of all staff. So it is with some misgivings that we give support to this bill, but we support it to go to the select committee. In doing so, we know that it will go to the Education and Science Committee. Whilst I am speaking, I would like to acknowledge all the hard work that that select committee does. I would like to acknowledge Mr Donnelly, who is in this House, who is an excellent chairperson of that committee. I would like to pay tribute to his fairness, his sincerity, and his overall commitment to making sure that that committee works effectively.

To a lesser extent, but of no lesser importance, I would certainly like to acknowledge the hard work of the deputy chair of that committee. Her commitment and diligence in ensuring that that committee works hard is second to none. So I have misgivings about the bill, but utter confidence in the hard-working people on that select committee, in particular the Labour members. And I have to acknowledge Bernie Ogilvy. He has much to contribute—much common sense. When this bill goes to the select committee I think we will be able to cobble through much of the nonsense and be able to get some common sense out of it.

It is not only the Education and Science Committee; many select committees in this Parliament work really hard. What a great system we have! We can hold our heads high on the world stage because of the work our select committees do. There are many times when we have misgivings on this side of the House about the calibre of a bill, but we have confidence that in sending it to a good, hard-working, well-chaired—and deputy-chaired—select committee, some common sense will come out of it. So the Government supports, with some misgivings, this bill going to select committee.

After those accolades it is very difficult to make any negative comments about the Labour Government at the moment. There has been a whole lot of comment about how New Zealand First has not been very friendly towards National recently. But I have to tell a little story. Late last year when this bill was drawn from the ballot I received a phone call from the deputy leader of National. He said: “Hey, Brian, my bill has come out. Can you tell me what it’s about?”. We were able to explain it to him. It takes us back to the genesis of this particular bill that obviously the previous speaker was not fully aware of. It came about as a result of teachers at a school that I have close connections with coming to me during the 2001 elections. They said to me that in preparing for the board of trustees elections for that year it was brought to their attention that one of the candidates was a convicted paedophile. At the time the board of trustees felt it totally inappropriate to proceed with that person on the ballot paper. They then looked at the law as it stood and found that there were in fact no laws that could prevent somebody who was a convicted paedophile from standing for a board of trustees.

At the time I raised the issue in the House, and the Minister of Education, the Hon Trevor Mallard, was very much inclined to doing something about it and looked at the possibility of making an amendment to the amendment bill that we were putting through at that time so that we could address this particular situation. At the same time, Mr Brownlee put his member’s bill in, but we were trying to address this in another way. We had a briefing from the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education was not as keen to pursue any amendment to the law as the Minister had shown himself to be in the House.

At this time, the only people, other than those who are not New Zealand citizens, who cannot stand for membership of a board of trustees, are non-discharged bankrupts, but once one is a discharged bankrupt, one can. But there are no provisions that prevent anybody else from standing as a member of a board of trustees. Some of the arguments put up by the Ministry of Education were issues around principles such as the principle of natural justice. At that time we were talking about anyone who might have been convicted of a sexual offence, and the ministry pointed out that earlier on it had been illegal to be homosexual, and people could have been prevented by such a law from becoming a member of a board of trustees.

However, on the whole the ministry tended to favour the notion—and I think it was the notion that was reflected when Lynne Pillay talked about the School Trustees Association—that communities would sort them out. I can only say that from the experience at the school that I was talking about, it was not as simple as that. It was not public knowledge that this person had been convicted of this particular offence; therefore the board was not in a position to be able to broadcast that so that the voting public would have been able to say they did not want such a person on their board of trustees.

The comments about members of boards of trustees not having much to do with children are possibly true for larger urban schools, but even then not completely true. It has to be remembered that members of boards of trustees are often involved in things like school camps. But for the schoolteacher, the complexity is that they are also the employers of the schoolteacher. If one is a schoolteacher on a camp and has his or her employer turning up to give support, it puts one in an invidious position, and so it puts the children at greater risk. We know that paedophiles are predatory. That is the very nature of the criminality.

Therefore, New Zealand First certainly will vote for this bill to go to select committee. We believe there is great merit in this legislation, and unless something comes forward at the select committee to change our minds we will certainly vote for it all the way through. If, for example, there are additional criminal activities that have to be included, then we would be open to including those. However, we believe that our children deserve the highest level of protection under the law, and at present it seems there is a minor loophole that needs to be closed.

I am pleased to rise and speak to this bill, which I do think has a great deal of merit. It is important that we provide a really safe environment for the children in our schools. This Government has put in place police checks on staff in schools, and that goes a long way towards covering most of the instances that could put children at risk. People employed around the school—contractors, and those sorts of people—can also be subject to those checks if they work regularly at the school. However, there is still the possibility of risk with regard to school trustees, and I agree with Brian Donnelly that although it may be a reasonably remote possibility, any possibility at all needs to be closed off, because we cannot let that happen. In the environment of the elections for school trustees I think it is entirely possible that someone who is quite new to a community—his or her past history may not be known to the members of that community—could stand in the board of trustees elections and may possibly be elected simply because nobody knew about his or her past. In large urban areas people get elected on to boards of trustees, and the people who elect them have very little knowledge about them except for what goes out in the curriculum vitae that accompanies their election nomination.

I realise that there are some deficiencies in the bill as it has been presented. That is often the case with members’ bills, because we do not have the same specialised knowledge that goes into Government bills. People draw them up and there needs to be a lot of work put into them. But I think the Education and Science Committee is a very good select committee. It is one of the hard-working committees, and in all the time I have been on that committee—under the chairmanship of Tony Steel originally, then of Liz Gordon, and now of Brian Donnelly—I have thoroughly enjoyed being on the committee because its members always seem to have a real commitment to the principles of education. We work really well on legislation, wherever it comes from. We do our best to work together. I know that sometimes Opposition members will say they actually disagree with a bill, and are going to vote against it. But they will still have a constructive discussion about the legislation as it is going through the select committee, so that we all arrive at the best possible outcome. I want to say that I do appreciate the work that all members of that committee put in—

💬 Lynne Pillay: I was there, as well!

—and I would like to add my accolades to Lynne Pillay. I think that Brian Donnelly does a wonderful job of chairing the committee. Whatever flaws there are in this bill, and I acknowledge that there are some, I am sure that we will be able to correct them in the course of the select committee consideration of it.

I did not have Brian Donnelly’s knowledge that Gerry Brownlee had forgotten what this bill was about, but I say it is a very useful bill. I think it will add something to our education legislation. Whatever problems the bill has at the moment, I am sure that the select committee will correct. If those corrections are made the bill will come back to the House in a form that will, I hope, enable it to be supported by everybody.

I must say I was rather pleased to hear Helen Duncan’s speech, because I had been sitting and listening to Ms Lynne Pillay’s speech, and I thought what a mean-spirited speech it was. Could she not give a bit of credit to an Opposition member who has come up with something perfectly sensible? I find it totally distasteful, especially on members’ day, for a member not to give a bit of credit where it is due to somebody who has come up with a bill that I think the whole of New Zealand will be in favour of—with the exception, of course, of paedophiles and those kinds of elements within our society, which, regrettably, we do have.

💬 Lynne Pillay: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is just a correction. Whilst I did have some misgivings about the bill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): That is not a point of order.

Let me make it very clear that both myself and the ACT party are far more interested in the rights of children to be safe at school, at a playground, in their homes, or wherever they might be, than we are interested in protecting the real or imagined human rights of these individuals whom we know as paedophiles—which is what, it seems, some on the Government side are interested in.

It would be far more appropriate for my colleague Deborah Coddington to be standing here. Unfortunately, she is out on the road doing God’s work on another issue. Deborah Coddington is a hugely courageous lady whom I think this House should recognise. I am a little saddened that none of the members on the Government side have even mentioned the fact that Deborah Coddington published a register on paedophiles, and received quite a substantial amount of abuse and, I understand, even death threats from those individuals for having the courage to tell the public of this country that they exist within our society. She has made it much easier for people in the community—for those involved with schools, for example. They can look up that register and see whether an applicant, or somebody standing, has been convicted of these appalling crimes. I think it is appropriate in the first reading of this bill to pay some substantial homage to Deborah Coddington’s courageous work on this issue.

Most members’ bills, as far as I am concerned, should go to a select committee for consideration, and especially, of course, a bill of this nature. But I would ask this question, my having got a bit of barracking from Government members: “Why is this bill not sponsored by the Government?”. It is a perfectly fair and reasonable question. Why does not one of the Government members, or the Government, say to Mr Brownlee: “Look, we would like to sponsor this bill. We would like to take it over and assist its passage through the House, because we think it is an important bill.”? There is dead silence from the Government. Its members do not like to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. They do not like to give an Opposition member a little credit. They are a mean-spirited bunch, these Labour Government members; even on an important bill such as this they tend to denigrate the efforts of the Opposition, rather than say: “Well done, Mr Brownlee. Thank you for bringing this bill before the House, because it is of some very real significance to our society.”

Most of the previous speakers have touched on all the important points, but one thing I would like to say is that I would not personally restrict this bill to the trustees of schools. I would like to extend it to every public body throughout this country. I do not care whether these people have served their time or whatever. Personally, I would bung a few of them into stocks in the town square, and make sure that the public of this country really do know who these people are, but we apparently—regrettably, in some cases—have moved on from those times. I think this kind of offence is a crime against humanity, of course, but a crime against humanity is even worse when it is against our youngest and most vulnerable.

The Greens will be supporting this bill going to a select committee; we believe that it definitely deserves consideration at the select committee. But let us just be clear about some of the broader issues around this bill, as well. Legislation for individual circumstances that arise is not always a good thing to pursue. That does not mean it is not good in this case, but we need to be aware that this bill arises out of one specific incident. We need to be very careful, as legislators, that we do not just indulge our power to make laws for specific circumstances as they arise. But, that said, this bill and the issues behind it are very, very serious.

First, I shall consider the issue of double jeopardy. If we as a society truly consider rehabilitation to be an important of the process of justice, and if we are truly of the mind that once a person has been convicted of a crime and served his or her punishment, that person should not then be continually punished throughout his or her life, then we do need to give careful consideration to the way that the laws deal with people who have ongoing criminal convictions. Hence the support in this House for the clean slate legislation that was passed just recently. Those are very important issues of principles of justice that we must not forget in our consideration.

None the less, there are always public-good exceptions to those principles—particularly when we are talking about the protection of our children—and here in this bill lies one of those. Already in the education sector there is police vetting of, and restrictions on, the employment of criminals. For members of boards of trustees, it is also very important. I myself have been on the board of trustees of a primary school in an urban area. It is certainly true that board members do have considerable contact with the children in their schools, if they are involved in the activities of the school itself. They are around during school time, having meetings during school time and at the end of school, when children are still around. There are issues of safety. Members of boards of trustees who have these kinds of paedophile convictions really do need to be kept away from our children.

Many members tonight have said that in their view the first and most paramount concern of any society, and of this House, is the protection and welfare of our children. While I understand that the many who have said that feel that it is an honest reflection of their beliefs, we have to remember that children are not properly protected in our legislation, in our society, or necessarily by the legislation passed by this House. Other areas of serious concern for children exist where they are under threat and at risk of death and serious injury. For example, I bring this House’s attention to the failure to address the issues of section 59 of the Crimes Act, where it remains lawful for an adult to beat a child with a piece of hose or a piece of wood if it is considered to be justifiable in the circumstances. That is not a situation where this House is protecting children. Those sorts of issues also need to be addressed by this House. They are just as serious as those raised in this bill. We must not forget that we have an obligation to protect our children from all of the circumstances that place them under threat.

I might also raise for this House another particularly serious concern in terms of the safety of our children, and that is that this country has one of the highest rates of child road deaths in the Western World, caused by cars running over our kids. Yet we continually refuse to deal with the issues of traffic reduction and road safety to protect our children from being killed on the roads.

The Green Party will certainly support this bill going to the select committee, and I look forward to dealing with those issues constructively in the select committee. But let us not forget that our children are under threat from serious injury and death from a wide variety of measures that this House still continues to refuse to deal with. We must make sure that we are consistent, if we truly consider that the health and well-being of our children is paramount in our lives and society.

I rise on behalf of United Future to support the referral of the Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill to the Education and Science Committee. We have some very good reasons why we want to do that. United Future believes that every mum, dad, or parent in the country would probably want to see this bill looked at, and I would hope that every teacher would also want to see it go to the select committee to be examined. So we are not alone in that proposal. We do think that this is a good bill in the sense that it is technical, very specific, and one that I would call a good amendment bill. Some amendment bills are so convoluted that one wonders what their point is. This bill is very, very good, very specific, and to the point.

I note that we are dealing with trustees, and most of us are well aware that the role of a trustee is a very solemn duty. Therefore, if that is true, then we should at least make the criteria for selection as high a bar as we can set. The bar will always be inadequate, because of whatever human nature produces in different people, but if we can help in that process—and I believe that this bill is a step in the right direction—then we are helping trustees to be selected, as well as to be the best trustees for their community, which, after all, is what they are there for.

We support this bill as well because of the wording in it that people have to be convicted of specified sex offences. If the offences were not specific or if the offenders were not convicted, we would not be happy to see this measure go through as a bill. But the offences are also, as everyone notes, against the most vulnerable in our society—that is, children or young persons. I just remind the last Green Party speaker that the clean slate legislation does not apply to that kind of activity. I think that she may well have been aware of that, but she raised it and my mind was sort of taken off the subject by that.

Also, there are other reasons why this legislation should go to the good Education and Science Committee. There are some things that we could even add or insert in the bill, because of the things that are coming into the House, or that are in the House right now. For instance, under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill we are dealing with child sexual abuse images. That may well be something we could dovetail in, and I think that the chair, who is nodding his head, can see some point in that. The work being done on those issues by international organisations, as well as New Zealand ones—like End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes New Zealand and others—has highlighted something in a current bill, and we need to tie that into this legislation. So there are some areas where the select committee will have room to move.

United Future will vote to send this bill for further examination to the select committee.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this very specific and very tight little bill. I think it is for that very reason that the bill is a little flawed, but I support my colleagues in saying the bill should be referred to the Education and Science Committee. It is worrying that even the sponsor of the bill—the member whose name this bill is in—did not sound very enthusiastic himself about it when I listened to him, in order to be inspired as to the rationale behind the bill. I agree with the Green member Metiria Turei that we are all concerned as parents about the protection of our children from sexual predators. But this is a very narrow bill. Even Mr Bernard Ogilvy expressed the view that that it misses out on any reference to some other legislation that will capture sex offences and sexual violation, such as the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill that we debated last night and the Summary Offences Act. That is worrying. This bill is far too narrow, which I think is a real fault.

It is also deeply concerning that even though we are really concerned about who stands and who is eligible to be a trustee, we do not trust the community any more to know who is a good, upstanding person with the skill sets required for boards of trustees. The perception that a person may be a sexual predator is something that we do not want to become embedded. I am pleased to see in the bill that at least a person has to have been charged with and convicted of a crime. But we on the Government side of the House do believe in restorative justice. For some crimes, such as possession of pornography and others, there are instances when those sexual criminals can be rehabilitated into society. I am sure that those are not the crimes that Gerry Brownlee meant to be captured in this bill. We are starting to define the broad spectrum of what sexual violation is and what sexual offences against children are. Hopefully the select committee can spend a bit of time on coming up with a much tighter definition than just “sex offences against children”. I think we need to look at other laws such as the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act, because trading in pornography may be something that takes years and years to become public knowledge. A community would never know about it at the time that a person put himself or herself up for election to a board of trustees.

I think that we need to look at the hard facts. Over the years that many of us have stood for boards of trustees, over 70,000 people have stood to be trustees and only three have ever been known to have convictions for sex offences. So this bill is rather a “sledgehammer to crack a nut” approach. In some areas that we represent, it is very, very hard to get people to stand for boards of trustees.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: They don’t always have an election though, so you don’t know.

That is right; people may not know. I think Mr Brownlee had lofty intentions—he is lofty, and this is a lofty ideal—when he brought this bill in, but I do not like any legislation that is a knee-jerk reaction. I feel it may have been something—[Interruption] That is right. That certainly was not. The smoking legislation was about public good for hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders.

💬 Simon Power: And this isn’t?

This certainly is. It will save more lives. We have to look at the hard facts about actual convictions.

Labour will support this bill. I think it needs a lot of tidying-up in the select committee, but it is going to a very good select committee. Labour will support the referral of this bill to the appropriate select committee.

I thank Mr Speaker for the call; it was a wise choice in the circumstances. I thank Steve Chadwick for her contribution. She is a member who should have gone to Cabinet instead of David Benson-Pope. She would have handled this week much better than he has.

💬 Hon Mark Burton: It’s members’ day; let it go.

Yes, I say to the Minister that it is members’ day, so that is fair. The Education (Trustee Ineligibility) Amendment Bill is useful legislation. When I first returned to my home town after completing my law studies, I ran for election to the board of my old secondary school. I am not sure whether the situation is the same now, but back in those days one did not need to have children at the school, which is just as well because I was about 23. One probably does not have to, even now. Does one have to have children at a school in order to run as a board member? [Interruption] No, I do not believe one does. I ran and managed to get myself elected to that board. I can tell members that it was fascinating, 6 years after leaving school, to be on a board of trustees, and particularly to be on the appointments panel for people who had taught me. I just say that I thoroughly enjoyed that, and I will leave it there.

It is also worth noting that in my final 18 months to 2 years as a practising lawyer, I did quite a lot of work in education law. One of those areas involved training new trustees on Privacy Act issues and other matters. What I thought was quite interesting about conducting those seminars for new trustees was that their hearts were huge. They were in there doing their bit for the community. They had stood for election. They wanted to help at the school their children were present at, in order to make a difference. But generally speaking—and I do not think this is too harsh a statement to make—once the realities of governance were put before them, it was clear to me that perhaps it was a step more than they had initially thought it would involve. I guess that some people had probably formed the view that it would be a little like being on the Parent Teachers Associations. Of course, it is not. The legal obligations of being on a board are huge, and the potential liability is huge.

I was also fortunate to be in a position on several occasions to give boards of trustees advice around the greater Manawatū-Wanganui region on how to remove non-performing senior staff members. The comments that Brian Donnelly made about the criss-crossing of the employer as well as governance roles is absolutely lost on most trustees when they first find themselves in such a position of governance and influence. They are people who just want to put their hearts and souls into helping their school communities, and I do not want to take that away from them for one moment.

But the point made by Helen Duncan was dead right—during the elections we do not know a lot about the people who run for election. Steve Chadwick spoke about smaller rural schools. I have about 69 schools in my electorate, and in many of those schools there was no election. People simply put their names up and were appointed by the returning officer to the boards, without any election or any background work being done by those wishing to make informed decisions. For that reason, legislation like this is very important. I was on a board of trustees at the time when a very unfortunate incident arose in relation to a particular teacher. Legislation of this sort will be very important, indeed.

I finish by saying that members’ day is about giving ideas such as this a crack. The support that Government members are giving this bill at its first reading is welcomed by the National Party, and by the Opposition. I think it is an idea worth pursuing in the Education and Science Committee, and I endorse the comments made by other members of that committee who are present. Yes, we have our moments, but, generally speaking, good educational outcomes are paramount in the minds of all the committee’s members. I would like to think that this bill will continue its passage through the House and protect those most important people whom it is designed to protect. No member of this House would disagree with this closing statement: if this bill makes it safer for kids to be at school, we should pass it.

There has been a very good debate this evening on this bill. I agree with Simon Power’s final statement and with much of what he said during his contribution. I think everybody in this House wants to ensure that our children are safe at school and have the best educational opportunities possible.

But having a responsibility within the education sector, whether one is a teacher, board member, member of the parent teacher association, friend of the school, or member of whatever organisation, is onerous. Although a number of concerns have been expressed this evening by members who have contributed to the debate, I suspect that, whether the school is large or small, most board of trustee members are generally pretty aware of what are unacceptable behaviours that may be exhibited by other board members, and are usually awake to any odd behaviour of other board members. So in some respects, although it is certainly worthwhile having this bill go through to a select committee, I would be prepared to wager that most board members would exercise a sort of self-governing, self-disciplining role through observing the behaviours of other board members.

I think many members in this House have served several years on school committees and boards of trustees. I have served probably 16 years, I think, on a school committee or a board of trustees. In fact, our children were at university and I was still on a board of trustees! It is a worthwhile experience. With the advent of Tomorrow’s Schools we have board of trustees, whose role is much more responsible and onerous than that of the former school committee situation. It brings issues of responsibility, like the employment of staff, with it.

One of the comments that has been made by other members is that although this bill has merit—and I am sure that the debate in the select committee will be very interesting—it is a bit like that phrase about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I think the intention behind Mr Brownlee’s bill is well founded, but I suspect he has had a lot of correspondence from people in the wider New Zealand community who are interested in education, who have read the first draft of his bill, and who have given him information that he may not have had when he first drafted it. I say that because the other aspect that was also mentioned earlier on tonight is that it is not always easy to get people to stand. If it is a requirement that criminal offending be declared before people can go on boards of trustees, I think we will have a heck of a job getting people to stand. Even if the offence certainly would not fall into the sex offence category, not everyone wants to declare that when he or she was 15 he or she pinched a chocolate bar from a dairy, or did something even less serious than that. I know we have legislation whereby people who have led a blameless life for a number of years will be able to have their convictions expunged—the Clean Slate Bill—but there are still some people who are very, very conscious of the fact that in their “misspent youth” they did something wrong, and they do not want to go anywhere near a process whereby they have to declare they pinched a Moro bar from a dairy when they were 16 and thought they were 10 feet high and bulletproof.

That is where the aspect of this bill being a case of our using a sledgehammer to crack a nut needs to be considered. There is provision already within the Education Act of 1989 whereby police vetting of all staff, including teacher-aides and those who may work closely with pupils, is already taking place.

I support this bill and wish the member well.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Education and Science Committee.

The House adjourned at 9.45 p.m.