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

Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clause 7, which amends Schedule 1 of the principal Act—“Validations and other transitional provisions”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

I have to remove my mask and so forth—thank you, Madam Chair. Look, the primary sort of issue in this legislation, as we’ve traversed, and our primary concern on this side of the Chamber, is the speed with which it has been rushed through this House. I suppose the question that we have that the Minister was touching on in Part 1 is the fact that it is his assurance to the profession that things will be more tightly constrained and limited. But the problem is with Supplementary Order Paper 68, that he brought in and that we just sort of dealt with, is that the Teaching Council can do a whole lot of stuff if they get written permission from the Minister. So that doesn’t necessarily tighten things dramatically.

So, when we come to Part 2, we’ve got the Schedule included, which sort of goes through the details of the mechanisms to fix up the problem it would solve, it doesn’t resolve the fundamental issue that we have with this, that the teachers themselves, concerned about the extra levies and fees that they have to pay, are wanting to have a decent debate about where that boundary lies between registration, certification, and doing what the Minister quite rightly said. Everybody agrees it is important to ensure that every pupil and student and school can feel confident that the teachers that are in the classroom have been through a proper process and that difficulties and breaches in terms of basic sort of teacher requirements can be dealt with effectively so that we can all have confidence in the quality of the teachers that we’re dealing with—all those things everybody understands. But it’s the drift into these other issues that has been the concern for many teachers, and how they pay for it. So all we’ve been asking for through this legislation and through this debate and from this Minister is a proper opportunity to deal with that in a timely fashion.

So when we come to Part 2 and the changes made to Schedule 1 in the principal Act—and we’ll come to the question of the introduction of levies as well as fees, and what’s the difference between a levy and a fee, and why are we adding that to the mix as well as costs, and what can they do with the permission of the Minister, and what can they not do without the permission of the Minister? All this, frankly, the profession hasn’t had the opportunity to talk about it in the detail that it requires. So the only question I have for the Minister is: why did he accept the line that this legislation needs to be urgently run through the House right now, rather than extending the period of time that traditional funding—and, yes, I accept that there may have been some risk of further challenge to the previous fees, but that was not guaranteed in any way, shape, or form; it’s a risk, but it’s not something that’s guaranteed—and done the job properly, once and for all, rather than this two-step process?

It’s not something that is going to fundamentally alter the basis of education in this country. It’s not the most important issue that we have to face by any stretch, particularly when more than 200,000 students in Auckland still are not face to face in the classroom—haven’t been for 12 weeks. I mean, it’s very strange to understand how the House can move with urgency to deal with an issue like this, and yet we seem to be taking our time when it comes to actually getting the schools reopened in Auckland. But that’s a debate for another day. But I’d be very interested to hear once more from the Minister on this topic.

Just very briefly, as I indicated previously, the reason for the urgency is that, in relation to Part 2, this validates the fees that were collected since 2015—I note, when National was in Government. Without the validation allowed for in Part 2, the Teaching Council potentially never would have collected a valid fee in its entire existence. So this resets the clock for them. It does not overturn the decision of the court.

Members, we move now to the Schedule, for which there is no debate.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 68 in the name of the Hon Chris Hipkins to the Schedule be agreed to.