Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Much has been said about this bill. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that have been said about the bill don’t actually resemble the facts, so I want to just go back and recap the history of why we are here debating this particular piece of legislation. The organisation now known as the Teaching Council was established by the last National Government. It was then known as the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, the professional and regulatory body for the teaching profession in New Zealand. The clauses of legislation that are being challenged are the clauses that were passed when that organisation was established by the then National Government. The legislative provisions that have been challenged successfully in the court were not put in place by the current Government; they were put in place by the last Government. So let’s be very clear about that.

The overall effect of the court challenge which was brought by the Post Primary Teachers’ Association—the PPTA—was to overturn fees that the council had established under those legislative provisions put in place by the last Government. The Teaching Council has not had a fee increase for over a decade. They had consulted on an increased fee. They had made the decision to impose an increased fee. They had made the decision to move from a three-yearly registration to a yearly registration in order to smooth the cost of that fee increase for the teaching profession.

The courts found that they should not have done that: first of all, that they had made a mistake in law in their decision to shift from a three-yearly registration to a one-yearly registration; and, secondly, that the law, as passed by the last National Government, did not allow them to collect fees to cover all of their functions, which had been the assumption of the Parliament—and I can say this because I took part in the passage of that bill through the select committee process. It had been the intention of the Parliament that the council could collect fees for all of its functions. The courts found otherwise. That left the Teaching Council in a difficult position because it, effectively, means that every fee that they have collected for teacher registration since they were established in 2015 could, potentially, not be valid. That is not a tenable position for the council to be left in.

So this bill does not—again, contrary to some of the claims—overturn the PPTA’s win in the court. The fee that was recently established that the courts overturned remains overturned. What this bill does is validate all of the fees that were collected up to that point from 2015 onwards, because I think everybody should agree—I hope—that it would be untenable to say that all of those fees that have been collected over a six-year period were no longer valid. So it validates those previous fees, but it does not validate the fee that the court overturned. That fee remains overturned. So the fee reverts back to the one that existed prior, and that is the three-yearly lower fee.

The second thing the bill does is it allows people who have paid their one-year registration fee in the meantime to use that as a down payment towards their slightly higher three-year registration fee. So it means that they won’t have to be refunded the money only to then give a slightly higher fee back to the Teaching Council; they’ll, effectively, have to pay a top-up in order to get their three-year registration. I think most people in those circumstances would prefer it that way, rather than getting a refund and then having to pay the money back again almost straight away. So it’s a relatively simple and pragmatic decision.

So, ultimately, this bill creates certainty for the Teaching Council around what it can charge fees for, recognising that this discrepancy in the law has existed since the council was established in 2015. So it simply provides greater clarity for that.

💬 Nicola Willis: Fees go up under Labour.

Well, the member opposite says the fees go up under Labour. Hekia Parata stood in this House when the law was passed and said the fees were going to go up. That was, ultimately, the decision of the Government of the day, and they were quite open about the fact that fees were going to go up under the law change that they were passing. This Government has deferred the fee increases by continuing to provide a subsidy against the fee to defer the effect of the law change passed by National that would have increased the fees before now. The reason we are debating it now is that the Government has, ultimately, reached the point where we’re not going to continue to top up to compensate for the decision made by the last National Government, which is what we have been doing up until this point. So Nicola Willis can shout all she likes, but the ultimate reason the fees are going up is because of the law change passed by the last National Government. Those are simple facts. The records of the House will show that. The Hansard will show that—that the fees increasing now are a result of the law change back in 2015.

The other piece of feedback that did come through the select committee process which I am sympathetic to is that on the leadership provisions inserted into the law by those 2015 changes, the overwhelming feedback from the teaching profession is that they don’t believe that they should have to pay for those through their teacher registration fees. That was something that Labour expressed some concerns about at the time that law change was passed in 2015. We also shared some of that concern. So the Supplementary Order Paper that I have presented makes it very clear that the Teaching Council cannot charge the profession through the registration fees for those functions. If they are undertaking those leadership functions, they will have to do so with the agreement of the Minister, whoever that Minister is, and the Government of the day will have to pay for those functions.

Let’s, again, remember the situation that the Government inherited. When we became Government in 2017, the Government of the day that we replaced was about to transfer to the then Education Council a whole lot of additional functions, including the management of teacher professional development, which teachers would have had to pay for, and, ultimately, that would have meant that the fees would be even higher than the ones that the council has been consulting on. We made a change to reverse that decision of the last Government because we didn’t believe that the fee levels of the magnitude that would have been required under the law and under the processes put in place by the last Government were justifiable.

So the National Party may try and rewrite history, but the facts are quite simple. When we became the Government, teachers were facing an exponential fee increase because the previous National Government were transferring more and more functions to the Teaching Council, or to the Education Council, as it was then known, and expecting the profession to pay for those. They can try and rewrite history, but the teaching profession remembers that, and they know full well what they were facing under the last National Government. So this is very clear, and the Supplementary Order Paper that I have tabled makes it even clearer, that those leadership functions that the profession don’t believe that they should pay for through their registration fees, they will not pay for through their registration fees. If they are to sit with the council, they will be paid by central government, and that is appropriate. This bill gives the council the ability to go back and consult on a new set of fees. They will start that process again. The teaching profession will, therefore, have the opportunity to have their say on what the appropriate level of fees is.

The Government’s also doing some further work, which will come through in subsequent bills, to look at the overall costs that the council faces. There’s no question that the changes made to the way the council undertakes its disciplinary functions—again, changes made in 2015—have increased the overall cost structures and cost pressures on the council. Some of those costs are justified; some of them are not, and so there will be further legislative change coming in that area to ensure that the teaching profession only pays the level of fees that are absolutely necessary to ensure that the council can perform its core statutory functions around registration, around discipline, and around those other specific processes that are so important to the self-regulating teaching profession that the Government is committed to and that I think the teaching profession itself also wants to see.

So this is a good bill. It is a necessary bill. It is a bill, of course, we would prefer not to have to pass through the House, but it does provide certainty to the council and to the profession about what can be charged for through fees. The fee-setting process can now start again. The profession can have their say on that, and if the National Party wants to put forward a bill to reverse the changes they made in 2015, of course I’ll look forward to seeing that.

Well, the Minister of Education has spent time in the House giving us a history lesson, and I want to simply explain what he has said. What he has said is that after a decade of relatively stable fees charged to teachers by the Teaching Council, on a Labour Government’s watch, fees are going up, and that Minister of Education is perfectly happy about it. Well, we on this side of the House do not think that this bill is justified, and I’m going to tell this House why.

The first thing is that as a matter of principle, we do not think that it is appropriate to be letting the Teaching Council off the hook for acting unlawfully. I’m going to quote the court, who looked at the council’s decision to change fees from three-yearly increments to one-yearly increments, raising costs on teachers. What the court said about that was the Teaching Council’s decision to set “a fee for issuing a practising certificate amounted to an unlawful tax;”—an unlawful tax.

Now, this isn’t a conceptual thing or a notional thing; this actually happened. Everyday teachers, who, by the way, under this Government are facing a rising cost of living on every front, whether it’s at the pump, whether it’s at the supermarket, or whether it’s the house that they want to rent or buy, are also being slapped with an unlawful tax from their professional body, and instead of the Minister of Education deciding to stick up for teachers and take a role as their defender, in this instance, he has said, “Oh well, Teaching Council, I’m on your side on this. I’ll tidy up the law and get you off the hook.” That’s what he had decided to do.

But then he’s taken it a step further. He’s said, “Well, actually, we need to make sure, Teaching Council, that you can confidently increase fees well into the future.”, and that’s what this bill does. It allows the Teaching Council to charge fees and levies for a broad range of functions. This is why submitters to the select committee are concerned, because when they look at the role of the Teaching Council, they say, “Well, look, there are some things that, yes, we might be happy to pay for: registration and certification, setting standards for qualifications that lead of registration.”—those are narrow functions—“performing disciplinary function when misconduct occurs.”

But then we have this other function, and this is where we’ve got the empire creep happening. We’ve got the Teaching Council having big views about itself and what it’s there to do—that is, providing leadership to teachers and direction for the education profession. Well, how big a leadership function is that? That is actually the question, because that could be as long as a piece of string. That could go on and on, that leadership function, and what teachers expect the Minister of Education to do is to say, “Well, there are limits to that because someone else is paying for it.”

We shouldn’t be creating a situation where teachers are expected to pay ever-higher fees and registration costs because there’s a quango in Wellington that wants to expand its role, and there’s evidence of this. In 2016, the staff costs of the Teaching Council were $5.3 million. Fast-forward to 2020, those staff costs had leapt up to $8.2 million. This is an organisation that is very comfortable about spending other people’s money—about spending money that came from everyday teachers, that came from their wages, that came from their household budgets—and I note that, actually, this isn’t an entity that is well loved. There has been significant dissatisfaction with its performance—in particular, in relation to the way it ran roughshod over sector concerns and introduced huge and unprecedented increases in fees. They have been slapped on the hand for poor consultation. The Minister has acknowledged as much—that they should have consulted better; that they should have done a better job of that—and yet they will be allowed to continue. What that speaks to, I think, Minister, is arrogance that, actually, this is a body that thinks it can just increase fees for the people it serves and not face any consequences.

Now, a Minister of Education has a choice when an organisation does something like that. He can choose to confront it and say, “Well, actually, I want to see you performing much better in future. Here’s how I’m going to require that of you.” But, instead, what this bill is is the Minister of Education making a deliberate decision to look the other way, to leave the Teaching Council unfettered in its ability to keep riding roughshod over teachers, to keep increasing fees and levies, to continue to consult poorly, and to continue to grow its role, expand its functions, and expand the costs it imposes on others.

I want to turn to another issue, and that is the role of the Government in funding the leadership role of the teaching profession in New Zealand. Now, the simple reality is that for many years, the Government has played a significant role in partially funding the leadership function of the Teaching Council and that has meant that that has offset the costs that would otherwise be imposed on teachers, and this Government has decided to bring an end to that. It has decided that, actually, no, despite spending literally tens of millions of dollars more on staff at the Ministry of Education—despite finding the money to expand the functions of the Ministry of Education phenomenally to see it hire tens, hundreds of new officials—it’s not prepared to keep in any way funding the functions of the Teaching Council.

Now, that is a deliberate choice, and Minister Hipkins should not talk down to teachers such that he would expect that they’re not aware of that choice. He has made a choice not to continue partial funding, and the result is clear. The result is that everyday teachers struggling with the cost of living are going to be expected to pay ever-higher fees and costs, and what an extraordinary situation it is when it is the National Party that is standing alongside the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) saying, “Well, actually, when the PPTA takes the Teaching Council to court and has a finding that it has imposed an unlawful tax, don’t rely on the Minister of Education”—the union-aligned Minister of Education from the Labour Party—“to stand with you, because he’s nowhere to be found. He’s got other things to worry about. But, actually, National will stand up, because at a principled level we believe that the Government should be as careful in the way it spends your money as you would be.”

We believe that before a Government takes a dollar from someone else, it should ensure it’s pulled its own belt in, and we don’t see evidence that the Teaching Council has had to do that. We see no evidence that the Minister of Education has stood up to the people spending teachers’ money and said, “I need you to do a better job. Treat teachers with more respect. Actually, they don’t have endlessly deep pockets. So, before you go off and expand your leadership function and hire more staff and do more things that give you great joy, please think about the people paying for that. Please think about the everyday teachers.”—who are really struggling, by the way, under this Government, because rents have gone up, on average, $100 week, the price of a house has gone up $200k in the past year—“It’s actually pretty tough out there, Teaching Council. So we would like you to be a bit more careful in future. And, by the way, don’t ever again put New Zealand teachers in a situation where your consultation over increasing fees is so bad that it ends up in court and the PPTA have to take you to court to fight you, to get a finding against you. Don’t put us in that situation.”

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’m trying to remind the member not to bring the Speaker into the debate. Thank you.

Madam Speaker, I apologise for bringing you into the debate.

There are two entities in this debate, and they are, on the one side, everyday teachers in New Zealand, who are facing rising costs and who, under this bill, can expect to be paying increased registration and certification fees in many years under a Labour Government, and on the other side is the Minister of Education and the Teaching Council, who have been given absolute freedom to increase fees. It is a Labour Government that is increasing fees for teachers. National stands on principle to say that we believe that the Teaching Council should face the same constraints as everyday New Zealanders. We oppose this bill.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand on this bill.

That last speech from Nicola Willis was riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations. The first was some suggestion that the Minister, by this bill, is endorsing the unlawful behaviour of the Teaching Council. It’s simply false. We heard the Minister state quite clearly that the illegal fees are not being reinstated and that the teachers council has to go back and correct its error, and to suggest that this legislation in some ways gives carte blanche to the teachers council to impose what fees it wants flies in the face of the legislation and, indeed, the select committee report, which was at pains to make sure that there was clear guidance and constraint about what the teachers council could charge its teachers and to make it very clear that it could only charge for the costs of discharging its statutory functions.

Anyone who has sat on the Regulations Review Committee would know that it is often times a question for that committee as to what the fees, charges, and levies should be. There is a very robust framework for testing those, and the select committee should be commended for its work in addressing the question and making it very clear that this council—a teachers council which is majority run by teachers elected by teachers—can only impose fair and reasonable charges and levies to discharge its statutory functions.

This is an important piece of legislation to correct an error inherent in the National Party’s previous work. It’s unfortunate that it’s had to come to the House to tidy that up, but it’s entirely appropriate that any professional body should meet the costs of operating its professional organisation, and that is all that this bill does. I commend it to the House.

This bill came before the Education and Workforce Committee. I wasn’t a member of that, and members who are speaking, addressing the House today, were. I note that there were 1,033 submissions from interested groups and individuals, and there was oral evidence heard from 112 submitters.

It’s well-known by our first speaker, Nicola Willis, that the National Party is opposing this bill for the grounds that have been outlaid. May I just for the benefit of the public traverse how this bill came to the House.

Essentially, it was because there had been an action brought by the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to the High Court against the Teaching Council for actions that they were seeking to impose, which was, effectively, that the Teaching Council sought to impose a fee, or was charging an annual fee, as opposed to what used to be a fee every three years. So it was noted that prior to the Education Act 1989, which is the relevant legislation for this case, the PPTA took proceedings to the High Court and they were successful on the grounds as follows: that the Teaching Council failed to consult before imposing annual certification, that the Teaching Council failed to properly consider the merits of annual certification, that the Teaching Council misconstrued and misapplied key elements of the statutory regime relating to payment by instalment in the default three-year certification period, and, furthermore, that the Teaching Council’s decision to set a fee for issuing a practising certificate amounted to an unlawful tax.

It’s inaccurate that members across the House say that that is incorrect. There is a High Court ruling and decision which clearly states that a fee that was set for issuing a practising certificate amounted to an unlawful tax.

So as a result, this bill, the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill, is to reset the course of that High Court decision to reset and impose the fees. The National Party opposes this bill because it is inappropriate for that to be done so, and I pick up on my colleague Nicola Willis’ saying that it’s somewhat peculiar that here we are, as the National Party, standing in support of the PPTA when it’s well-known that the party for the unions is the Labour Party—the very Government that is seeking to impose what the High Court deemed to be an “unlawful tax”.

I think it’s important in standing and speaking and addressing the House today to acknowledge the teachers of Aotearoa New Zealand, their students, and also the families of teachers and students during this COVID-stricken period, and, particularly, thoughts turn to Auckland, where our children, our students, have been locked out of learning for the last nine weeks and still hold with bated breath the Government’s announcement today as to what plan, if any, there’s going to be to provide some measure of certainty. The certainty that this bill provides once it is passed into law is that it is highlighting, yet again, that we have a Government who will turn its mind to do what it sees fit, dispensing with and not listening to the very people—the teachers of Aotearoa New Zealand—to what their plea and their plight has been. It’s certainly important that when actions and proceedings are taken to the court to seek clarity around legislation, there are rulings that are favourable and, indeed, take heed of the plight of the applicants. In this instance, it was the teachers of New Zealand.

I will have colleagues from the National Party who sat on that committee, who will be able to speak to the detail of the bill, but a key message is that this has been an incredibly untidy process by this Government, which perhaps reinforces the action that has been taken by this Government in leading the way with a lack of clarity and a lack of certainty during this COVID time. But the untidy process from the Government in response to the High Court decision is to bring this bill with its amendments before the House.

The National Party acknowledges the important work that the Teaching Council does regulating the profession, and that the council requires revenue to, effectively, execute its role in doing so. However, it has not been the teachers’ fault that the Teaching Council did not consult—did not consult—adequately with the teachers, much in the same way that this Government chooses not to consult with the nation of Aotearoa in the legislation and the policy imposition that it imposes on us.

So the hard-working teachers of Aotearoa New Zealand—particularly during these COVID times of the last 18 months—have done the most remarkable job in helping students through this period of time. However, the uncertainty remains and we are told, as a nation, just to wait until the Government is ready and the Minister is ready to make announcements. So we await with bated breath what may come out from the Minister this afternoon as it impacts on our teachers of New Zealand, on our students of New Zealand, and on the families in support of them.

The National Party have a minority view, and that has been recorded in the Education and Workforce Committee’s report. The reality is that the National Party, and in Opposition, we do not have the numbers for this bill to be thwarted and halted. The reality is that the Government holds power, holds the numbers, and will put through whatever it deems fit, irrespective of the views of its people, of its entities, of its groupings of New Zealand, and, in this instance, of the teachers.

So, as is known, the Government is yet again amending another piece of legislation, a bit of a hatchet job patching and fixing things up along the way, when it should have been done when the Education and Training Act 2020 was before the House. So, again, we have evidence where things are untidily done by this Government, and it’s as an afterthought it comes to try and repair.

So the Teaching Council, as I said—in summary—is an independent body. They are responsible for registering and certifying our teachers of New Zealand, keeping a register of all teachers, protecting the reputation of the teaching profession, setting standards for teachers’ practice and behaviour, managing concerns about conduct or competence, and making sure teaching students and new teachers get the right training. It somewhat goes against the grain when we have, again, a bill coming before the House and the Government seeking to—as they think and as they see fit—amend something that goes against the grain for the teaching profession here, within Aotearoa New Zealand.

So, rather than addressing the fundamental failings in our education system, here we have a Government led by its Minister, for what seems like the umpteenth time, doing a one-off, fix-up hatchet job to the Education and Training Act 2020. The Government’s education priorities are wrong. They’ve lost sight of the basics in education. The Minister should be focused on getting our children back into school regularly, teaching them a world-class curriculum, and measuring performance—ensuring that they are making progress. During COVID times, our schoolchildren and our classes in Auckland for the last nine weeks have been thwarted and halted from having access to learning and education.

As I say, we wait with bated breath to see what announcement-pronouncement comes from the Government today. In the meantime, I stand as a member of the National Party in opposition to this bill, because what it does is it undermines our teachers of New Zealand by doing a hatchet, patch-it job on another piece of legislation. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m delighted to take a short call on this bill. I want to initially begin by acknowledging the very hard work that occurred during level 4 lockdown to get this bill to the state that it is in at the moment, and I acknowledge my friend and colleague Marja Lubeck, the chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee, and the entire team, including officials, for doing such sound work in trying circumstances. It was a limited period of time that was select committee had, but they had over a thousand submissions and heard from over a hundred submitters during the select committee process.

The thing that I am really delighted about is the changes that the select committee have made to the legislation. One of the two things I’m particularly delighted about is ensuring that the council does not set unreasonable fees or levies. So this change, basically, says that the fees and levies need to be fixed to cover actual and reasonable costs. That seems to me to be a very sensible change.

The second thing that I think is particularly good about this bill is that the council must consult before fixing fees or imposing levies. So there is built into this legislation an obligation and process that means that they must listen to their membership and speak to their membership. This is not holus-bolus open slather on changing of fees at all; it is about a consultative and careful and respectful process.

I would also like to remind this House that we have done this legislation for one reason and one reason alone: this was set up wrong in 2015 by the previous Government, and we are fixing it. I commend this bill to the House.

Fakaalofa lahi atu, Madam Speaker. Fakaalofa lahi atu ki a mutolu oti. I’m just wanting to recognise that it’s Niuean Language Week, and the theme for Faahi tapu he vagahau Niue—Niuean Language Week—is “Kia tupuolaola e moui he Tagata Niue”, which means “May the Tagata Niue thrive”. Actually, I’m sure all of my Niueans would agree that they would hope that not only all Niueans thrive but, actually, all of our teachers thrive as well, and I would like to begin by acknowledging all of our teachers who are doing all the hard yards at the moment, teaching our kids, but particularly those in Auckland, who are doing their jobs but then also doing them from home as well. It’s a tough job, and I know that teachers don’t just do it for the money. They do it because they love our kids, and they love to make sure and to see our kids and our families and communities grow.

In particular, I’d like to acknowledge the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA), and as I listened to the submissions, I could hear the frustration coming through the Zoom call. They were so frustrated that they took this to the High Court. We’ve heard from other speakers the results of that, and we’re also appreciating that this piece of legislation is about trying to fix up some of the stuff that was set up in 2015.

The Greens believe that our education system should give everyone the best possible start on a lifelong journey that happens inside and outside the classroom, or even in the Zoom room. Every child is entitled to high-quality, free, accessible public education that gives them the best possible start in life. Education is a public good that should be publicly funded, and we should centrally fund teachers and their activities. We value the contribution they make to Aotearoa and the work to increase the number of skilled teachers.

There’s been a lot of work been put into this bill. The bill is the result of a Government decision in 2020 to reduce funding for the Teaching Council, which led to the council having to increase the fees that teachers pay in order to cover its costs. The Teaching Council is a statutory body set up for the Government to handle the registration and certification of teachers. They investigate teachers’ misconduct, handle professional complaints, and provide professional leadership for the workforce.

I’d like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee and the chairperson, Marja Lubeck, for pulling us all together. We were doing it under lockdown, and I know that each—well, I felt that each member of that committee was committed to getting the best possible outcome for teachers and for our schools and also, of course, for our communities as well.

I had heard that the teachers were frustrated, but I was surprised at the extent of the frustration. In all of the submissions that I heard, none of them were in support of the legislation—I heard there were a couple, but none of them showed up for me, as well—and I guess some of that is around information not landing properly, but then also a lack of clarity around some of the provisions of the legislation.

So we welcome the changes made to the education and training amendment bill in terms of some of the concerns that were raised in the submissions, and we also acknowledge that it is nudging in the right direction—in particular, the provisions which will ensure that the council consults with the teacher profession and turns its mind to the actual and reasonable costs in the carrying out of its functions when setting fees and levies—and, hopefully, this will provide reassuring checks on the powers of the council. However, despite these changes, we remain concerned that the council is now expected to fund core functions independently, having received partial funding from the Government for long periods of time.

I have heard that this has been signalled for quite some time to the profession, but the thing is that when we talk to the professionals, we’ve got to make sure that that stuff lands with the rank and file. I know right now that there are next to no teachers listening to these speeches—next to none. They’re all working, teaching our kids. So it’s all very well for us to have these monologues, but in order for a communication to land, we need to have dialogues, or multi-logues, to make sure that when we communicate things, they land appropriately in the way that we intend them to land.

Fee increases, even those that are reasonable and actual, will be necessary, and we are concerned about the subsequent financial burden that this will represent for Aotearoa’s teachers. At the heart of that, what I got after listening to all the submissions was that there was a direct mistrust and opposition to the council and the way that it operates.

I get that this legislation is about unlocking potential and trying to sort things out after the issues from the 2015 set-up of this legislation as well, but there are problems with the relationship between teachers—particularly those affiliated with the PPTA—and the Teaching Council. For me, I was thinking about relationships the other day, and I guess the way to describe it as a relationship—I was just thinking about food, actually. A good relationship is a boil-up—you know, you’ve got to give it a bit of time. You’ve got to put the ingredients in, you’ve got to let it simmer for a little bit, you’ve got to then kind of check in on it, and you’ve got to give it time to actually get the fine taste of the kai. It’s a boil-up; it’s not a fry-up. You don’t cook it up really, really quickly, and then sort of expect for it to taste well.

So my concern here is that we have boiled up this legislation and then turned off the stove, waited a little bit, turned it back on, and then, 10 minutes later, chucked in a bit of salt and then maybe turned it on a little bit later, and that is my concern about this, because this hasn’t landed well with a lot of teachers. So for me, I think, in terms of nudging our way towards an outcome—because I think we all want that, right? Well, I hope we all want that. We all want the teachers to have confidence in the Teaching Council, because when you have that and that relationship is solid, that is the best thing for schools, for teachers, and for communities.

I have some questions that, hopefully, we can get some clarity over, or even a response from that corner of the House, even in the committee stage. Given that the Teaching Council does not intend to possibly be able to fulfil its intended legislative functions without a substantial fee increase, how will the Government mitigate the financial burden for teachers, because we are talking about some new teachers that are just starting, early childhood education teachers, and then, of course, relief teachers as well. I remember one submission from a teacher, and she talked about how she had to budget right down to the next dollar. So, all of a sudden, you’re going to have 10 years’ worth of increases, potentially, showing up, and then what will that mean for that teacher?

Instead of amending the legislation to allow for levies to be charged as well as fees, why does the Government not just fund those aspects of the Teaching Council that are for the public good, such as the disciplinary functions themselves, instead of making all teachers pay for a process that the vast majority might not need? Why does this legislation seek to expand the Teaching Council’s fee-setting powers to cover all of those expanded functions when the submissions to the select committee were very clear that teachers want to remove those expanded functions and not pay for them?

I did want to acknowledge the comment from the Minister of Education around the leadership functions and how the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) will take out those leadership provisions, and so thank you for that clarity. But I do have some questions about what leadership means when in reference to that SOP. There are three types of leadership elements that I think we need to address to get that clarity, to get the best ingredients possible in this boil-up that I was talking about.

So with leadership, is this about providing leadership to teachers and direction for the educational profession, or will that be covered by the SOP? Will it be to enhance the status of teachers and educational leaders? That’s the second element. Will it be able to identify and disseminate best practice in teaching or leadership and foster the educational profession’s continued development in light of research and evidence of changes in society and technology? So I would like to get more clarity around those three elements of leadership, or different types of leadership, to see if this SOP will actually cover that, to make sure that this is nudging in the right direction.

I think a longer period of consultation over the changes in this bill would be more constructive and better. We did work hard in the select committee process, and I know that the teachers themselves have been feeling frustration, but at the heart of that is this relationship. We need to be able to get that relationship well and to make sure that it is as solid as possible, and we did hear that they are actually running out of money, and so on and so forth. But, for me, that’s not the fault of teachers. Teachers did not do the 2015 legislation and they’re not responsible for this legislation, so why should they have to stump up extra money in a way that is not clear for them?

So what I would encourage this House and, of course, the Minister to do is to work with the teachers—particularly the PPTA, because the frustration is coming from that corner of our education ecosystem—and to walk with them to make sure that we do the best thing possible and get the best possible outcome for teachers, for students, and for our communities. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill. ACT opposes this bill for a number of reasons, but the main reason being that teachers have lost confidence—and rightly so—in the Teaching Council and, really, it doesn’t need tinkering; it needs a complete review.

Teachers do a great job in an increasingly stressful situation. More accountability and all sorts of pressures have gone on to teachers just recently. They need a teachers council that, actually, they trust and that they support, and that they know supports them.

I renewed my teachers’ registration last June. I was the envy of a lot of teachers because I got in just before the teachers council were going to change it to a one-year registration. We know the result of that: the teachers council made that change, despite all the negative feedback from teachers who didn’t want that. But they changed it, so their trust has gone.

I was on the Education and Workforce Committee and heard many submitters, and, like the previous speaker Teanau Tuiono, I never heard one submitter who was supportive of this bill. Many issues were raised and they all had pretty common themes. The extra powers that have developed over the years—no one actually knew what the teachers council did. The rushed process was questioned: lots of submissions, but they still felt that they didn’t have enough time to be heard. Concern that the teachers council weren’t the right people to deliver the professional development: science teachers know best what they need to know; every department is more OK with what they need to learn to teach the kids. There was a concern that the Teaching Council keeps changing requirements and then requiring teachers to do professional development so that they can meet those changes. Also, a concern whether the teachers council—the body that handles the discipline of teachers—is the appropriate body to provide the professional development and the leadership.

A number said that the vast majority of teachers pay for the teachers council for the discipline side of things, but it’s never actually used. Many mentioned that the key 13 staff in the teachers council averaged $187,000 while they were on a pay freeze. There was a certain amount of disdain that the teachers council had a budget, and so it should work within it like everyone else, and almost every submitter, like I said, was concerned at the lack of consultation.

The select committee report acknowledged that the profession doesn’t trust the teachers council, and a number of teachers have been asking whether the Minister will be calling for the resignation of the leadership. They made it clear that they wanted to remove the expanded functions of the teachers council and not add to them, or do whatever they decide. The Supplementary Order Paper offers no real comfort, and if it really does separate the council’s leadership functions from its other functions, we don’t need the bill—user-pays.

Teachers haven’t been fooled by semantics. Fees, levies, or whatever—they’re not silly. The teachers council should stick to its knitting: registration and discipline—although I’ve heard some pretty horrific stories about the latter over the last few months.

ACT opposes this bill, but I’m quite happy to see it pass as it shows the people of New Zealand the contempt this Government has for process and it highlights the self-interest and agendas that we’ve come to expect. We already know this Government doesn’t care about kids. The appalling treatment of charter schools—successful charter schools—shows this, but it also shows teachers, those hard-working and often loyal Labour supporters, that they really don’t care about them or their opinions, either. ACT does care about kids and we also care about teachers, and we oppose this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill. Just in response to the previous speaker Chris Baillie, I just want to make some comments, I guess, about the excellent work that the Education and Workforce Committee did do on this bill, which involved listening to teachers, specifically about some of the concerns that they raised.

I just want to draw attention to the House of two particular changes that were made to ensure that teachers’ concerns were addressed as part of this bill. The first was around ensuring that the fees used by the Teaching Council and collected from teachers are only used for the specific cost of performing their function. So one of the concerns that came through from teachers in the select committee hearings was how that money that is collected is used and the purposes of it. So the bill is going to be amended to ensure that it only focuses on those specific functions of the Teaching Council that relate back to the work of teachers.

The other which I think is really important is the importance of consultation. I note in the select committee report that the Teaching Council came to select committee and has assured members that they will be co-designing a consultation process alongside teachers and their representatives. Look, from my point of view, consultation that is genuine and fair—this is an important matter for the Teaching Council to be focused on. The select committee certainly agreed with the views of teachers on that and welcomed the position from the Teaching Council around having a proper focus on consultation around fees, because that is exactly how fee-setting in this type of context should occur.

So I think that the select committee has done an outstanding job here of listening to those concerns and amending the bill to ensure that they are addressed. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

I rise as the member of Parliament for Southland, on behalf of the National Party, to speak on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill and to oppose it on behalf of the National Party. It is somewhat ironic that when we have just received news that we have got the biggest increase in the cost of living in a decade, inflation of 4.9 percent from this time last year, when the costs of living and the costs of buying essentials is going up for our hard-working teachers, among others, in our communities, this bill is going to retrospectively justify, effectively, doubling the cost of registration for teachers over a three-year time frame.

So just to be clear: the Labour Government, earlier this year, rewarded essential workers with what was a wage freeze, and now they are telling teachers, who are the unsung heroes of the pandemic and who are making sure that our children continue to be educated—something that is critical for the future of themselves, their families, and this country—that they are going to have to pay more to be a teacher; in fact, double over a three-year time frame. This is not good enough.

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association—the PPTA—took a case to the High Court earlier this year, and the High Court was quite compelling in what it said: firstly, that the Teaching Council had failed to engage teachers, and, in fact, teachers had no opportunity for meaningful or, indeed, any input into the decision to move to an annual certificate renewal. The court noted that the move to annual certificate renewal was likely to create more work for teachers than triannual certification, and the council had incorrectly said it could not legally accept instalment payments or fees for a triannual certificate. The court said, “I have reached the conclusion that the change to the period of certification was a significant one that produced detriment for a large number of teachers. The teachers had no opportunity for meaningful or indeed any input into the decision.” This just brings to mind, for me, a number of other things that this Government has done itself which are not engaging in meaningful discussions with people who its decisions affect, and, unfortunately, we are seeing this extended to this bill, which is retrospectively justifying a doubling of certification fees for teachers. It is, frankly, mind-boggling.

I note that this Government has found a significant amount of money—in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars—for the Ministry of Education restructure, yet it cannot find a few million dollars for teachers at the front line of our education system. What message does that send to our hard-working teachers, who are keeping the wheels of education moving during this pandemic? Why should hard-working teachers, who have done such an incredible job, literally have to pay more because this Government has not been on the ball?

It is not the teachers’ fault that the Teaching Council did not consult with teachers adequately, nor is it the teachers’ fault that the provisions of the Education and Training Act were inadequate to achieve Parliament’s objectives. While the Act is, admittedly, large and complex, Parliament should cop the High Court ruling on the chin and pay for its mistake. It sets a bad precedent for Parliament to rewrite an Act immediately and retrospectively in response to one court decision.

National does acknowledge the important work that the Teaching Council does in regulating the profession, and the council requires revenue to execute its role. But this is the wrong way of going about it.

New Zealand’s teachers have done an extraordinary job during these lockdowns, and are continuing to do so during the lockdown that we are experiencing in parts of our country. They have been spending a lot of time online, making sure their students continue to learn, and I want to especially extend my appreciation to them. New Zealand owes our teachers a debt of gratitude. The National Party very much values our teachers. With that, I would say the National Party does not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to make a much more positive contribution, or a more positive speech at least, than the previous speaker Joseph Mooney. Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this bill, the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill, and I say the title there because we’ve seen the Supplementary Order Paper—which will, of course, be discussed in the committee stage—that changes that title to the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill. So that is the part that I’d like to discuss. The parliamentary process, which I think, has been very good, is making some changes via the select committee process and then by the Supplementary Order Paper.

I say that because I’m delighted to be a member of the Regulations Review Committee—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: A fabulous committee.

—a great committee—and that committee has the joyous task of looking at all the bills that come before this House where there is a regulation-making power. So the Regulations Review Committee looked at this bill, and this bill, as I’ve just mentioned, referred to fees but not to levies, and the Regulations Review Committee wrote to the select committee looking at this bill and said, “We think you need to be clearer about when something is a fee and when something is a levy.” Fees are for a specific private benefit, whereas with levies there is more of a benefit to the part of the community that the regulation is relevant to.

The Regulations Review Committee wrote to the other select committee—the Education and Workforce Committee—and the select committee picked that up in their report and made the changes to the bill that we’ve heard the Minister speak about. Those are furthered in the Supplementary Order Paper, with that change to the title as well.

If this is something of interest to anyone, I can recommend the Auditor-General’s recent guidance: Setting and administering fees and levies for cost recovery: Good practice guide. That has just come out in the past couple of months—great reading, with a two-page summary, which is very handy.

I’d like to end just by agreeing with the previous speaker about the importance of teachers, particularly in these COVID times. As a mother of three, I certainly appreciate all the hard work that the teaching profession is doing. On that note, I’d like to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak in opposition to the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill. There’s a number of ironies to this bill which people have already alluded to, but the irony for me is that this bill has come about because the Teaching Council didn’t consult sufficiently with teachers. So what was the Government’s response to that? Well, they rushed through, with only a handful of weeks for consultation for the poor teachers, this bill during term time while most teachers were teaching remotely in lockdown conditions. So they were adding insult to injury in terms of the amount of consultation with the teaching profession.

The Teaching Council is an important body, and we recognise that it has an important role in regulating the teaching profession and in the certification of the teaching profession. But when they moved outside the scope that the teachers had given them into professional development that the teachers had not asked for, and increased their fees because of that, and moved to annual registration, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) felt forced to take this case to the High Court. The teachers were, quite rightly, incensed by this. They would have been very pleased that the High Court found in their favour, and, on five counts, thought the Teaching Council had failed. They had failed, as I said, in their consultation with the teachers. They had failed to consider the merits of annual certification. They had misconstrued key elements of the statutory regime that they were operating under, and their fees, therefore, amounted to unlawful taxes on the teachers.

So the teachers could have, at that stage, expected: “Right, we’ve stood up, we’ve been counted, we’ve been heard, it’s going to be fixed.” The Government had two options at that stage: they could have taken it on the chin and they could have funded the shortfall, or they could have asked the council to do what most businesses have to do across this land, and that is to cut their cloth to the budget that they have. But, instead, the Government decided to rewrite an Act of Parliament to change this. Now, that’s an amazing signal that this Government is giving to the teachers.

There have been a number of people that have said there’s some irony in having the National Party stand alongside the PPTA; actually, I don’t find any irony in that at all. I’m very comfortable standing beside our teachers. I’ve spent the last two decades working productively with the Tertiary Education Union, and I know that when you walk alongside unions, you may have different points of view on a number of things, but, actually, you have a lot of similar aims and objectives. So this signal that this Government—this Labour Government—have given to their teachers is absolutely astonishing.

I’d like to go back to what the teachers said. As my colleagues have noted, there were 1,033 submissions and 112 of those submitters asked to be heard, and, like my Green Party and ACT Party colleagues, I didn’t hear one teacher in support of this bill. So every MP on the Government side who has stood up and said how this is a wonderful, positive bill and such a good thing for teachers must have been listening to different submissions than I heard, because not one teacher agreed with this. They were incensed, they were furious, and they were angry, and I think my Green Party colleague noted that he was surprised at the level of anger from the teachers.

But they noted quite sensible things, like they never asked the Teaching Council to expand into professional development. They want to do the professional development with their colleagues in the same discipline, so the music teacher explained in her submission that her professional development is with the music teachers of New Zealand and the science teacher talked about how their professional development needs to be in the science field with their science colleagues. But we saw within the Teaching Council that, actually, what they were doing with an amount of their professional development was actually following indications from Government about some ideological changes that they wanted to see in the teaching profession. Now, this is astonishing that then the Government has refused to pay for that, given they were expanding the scope of what the Teaching Council was doing to cover their ideology—but they wouldn’t pay for it.

I think the teachers of New Zealand should be able to expect from their Minister that he would be interested in the big issues for their sector. A teacher could expect that their Minister would be worried about truancy levels, which were horrendous even before COVID and are going to be a nightmare for schools and teachers, and they will need support and resources to bring those truancy levels down. Teachers should be able to expect that the Minister would be absolutely focused on what is happening with our maths and our science in schools, and how our levels are dropping against peer jurisdictions across the world. They should be able to expect that that’s exactly what the Minister is focused on. They should be able to expect that this Minister is concerned about the resources and the equipment and the facilities that they have to teach our young people. But, instead of these very big important issues for our education sector, the Minister is fiddling while Rome burns by putting through bills like this to impose more costs on teachers.

Now, we shouldn’t have been surprised when we saw the anger and the frustration from these teachers. No wonder they are angry when this is what their Minister is worried about: getting more costs on to our teachers, taking away their ability to meaningfully be in consultation with the Teaching Council and with this Government. It is an insult to those teachers that the Government rushed this through at a time when teachers were absolutely pushing to the limit to look after young people remotely in lockdown, and all the issues that they have to deal with with those young people—to push this through and expect them to make submissions at that time. Many of the submissions spoke to that, and spoke to how angry they were about how the Government had treated them so arrogantly.

So I can absolutely sympathise and understand, and I’m happy to walk alongside the PPTA and other teaching unions because they are seeing—exactly as our ACT colleague has pointed out—that this Government does not support our teachers, our teachers that have done amazing work over these last two years, when students have been in lockdown. They have done amazing work trying to keep their home lives going while they are teaching, and then they are being asked to put submissions in and go in front of select committees remotely to try and get heard by this Government that has purported to be the Government of the teachers. Well, I think that façade is slipping very fast, and teachers will understand that there is very little empathy and very little support coming from this Government for our teachers.

So the National Party is standing in opposition to this education and training amendment bill. Thank you.

That previous speaker, Penny Simmonds, is living proof of the axiom that politics makes for strange bedfellows.

Every speaker here today has mentioned professionalism, so let’s understand what we’re talking about. A profession is defined as a unique body of knowledge and skills—something that our very professional teaching organisation has. It has an institutionalised learning and standards of qualified entry—again, describing our teachers. It has a code of ethics, it has a service orientation, and it has—important in light of this legislation—a self-governing professional association or sanctioning body, and that’s what we’re talking about here. To be able to call yourself a member of a professional body, you simply have to have those five attributes, and our teachers, fortunately, do. However, without a self-governing professional association funded sufficiently to be able to do the job it is required to do, then one cannot regard oneself as a member of a profession.

What does that professionalism allow? The first thing it allows is it allows mobility. It allows New Zealand teachers to be able to go and work in Australia, in the UK, and in Canada because they have a recognised profession. So the price to pay for being part of a profession is to be part of a self-governing body, and it means somebody’s got to pay that bill.

This legislation is about ensuring that that bill is paid and that teachers can justifiably stand and call themselves professionals. They are professional. We are well served by our teachers, but it is important that there is a self-governing body around that to ensure that those standards are enforced. That’s what this bill is about. For that reason, I have absolutely no hesitation in commending it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The question is,

Amendments agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Name changed to Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill.