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

Well, the only point I want to make—and it’s an obvious one—is that we don’t agree with the urgency of the commencement, because we don’t agree that the whole thing should have been done quite so quickly. People watching this might say, “Why does he keep banging on about this?” and “Why is it important?” and “The Minister is a very busy man and he has, it’s fair to say, a number of issues that he needs to deal with—for example, when are the people of Auckland going to get their freedoms back and when are we going to be able to get our kids back to school?” and a whole lot of things—and so he’s got a lot of things to deal with, and it must be very irritating for him to have to sort of go through these tedious processes.

But the simple point I’m try to make is: effectively, as a Parliament, what we’re doing here is coming to fix a problem that a previous Parliament did in passing legislation. One of the issues that all of us as legislators learn in our time in Parliament is that a certain percentage of time, maybe almost half the time, legislation passed in this House doesn’t achieve what it set out to achieve. In fact, in our haste to pass legislation, we don’t get the words quite right. That’s why it is so important to, whenever we possibly can—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: I remember giving this speech!

—go through the processes. The hardened, cynical Minister remembers making these speeches, and now we’re on the other side, he’s in favour of speed. With speed, as our friends in the police often say, the bigger crash and the bigger the mess. That’s why it’s important to take your time on these things and listen to the Minister’s good friends in the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association and in the union, and hear their cry. You know, at bass, the cry was a question of trust and it was a question of concern about the cost of living, fundamentally, and being irritated at the prospect of the council being able to turn the wheels of Government in order to fix their little financial problem, and a sense that the teachers who were struggling to make ends meet were looking at the potential of higher levies, fees, and costs.

So my question to the Minister is: why the great hurry? Why the commencement date coming on the date that it comes in—I can’t currently put my finger on it, but it’s not far off—and the date at which it achieves the Royal assent? Maybe he could explain himself on that matter before we set this bill on its way.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to echo the sentiments of the previous speaker, Paul Goldsmith. Look, the Minister is probably getting a bit exasperated as to why we’re, as a previous speaker said, banging on about this. But he hasn’t managed yet to explain to us why he wasn’t able to give this bill at least another couple of weeks. What pressing matter was there that was so pressing that wouldn’t allow him to push this out just for one or two weeks? We’re not asking for a number of weeks more than that, but just a couple more weeks for those teachers, as Penny mentioned earlier, who were in the middle of lockdown, who were teaching—it was term time—to be able to get their thoughts on paper or appear in front of the select committee.

So why the great haste, I guess, in terms of this particular part that we’re talking about, the commencement date—why the great haste? What pressing matter was there, what imminent threat was there, that the Minister couldn’t have given the bill an extra couple of weeks and pushed the commencement date out just a couple of weeks? He hasn’t been able to answer that. All he’s told us is that he had to do it for a number of other reasons, but no specific date that he was working to—any particular thing that was going to happen.

So I would like the Minister to specifically answer the question why we weren’t able to get at least an extra couple of weeks. Given that teachers only had just under two weeks, I believe it was, to get their thoughts down—in fact, it may have been shorter than that—and why they were so angry. So why was it that we couldn’t have even had an extra week or two? What was it that the Minister was working to? What threat was there?

As I’ve indicated, the reason for the expedited process through the House was to give the Teaching Council certainty around the fees that it’s collected since 2015, when it was established under the previous Government. I would note that once this bill has been passed, they will be able to go back and consult with the profession about what the fees should be in the future. The appropriate place for the members of the teaching profession to direct their feedback on what the fees should be is not to the Government—we don’t set the fees—it is to the council.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Does the Minister believe that the way in which the bill has been rushed through is going to add to the concerns of the teachers that we heard—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Not the title clause.

Sorry?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member has the call—the member has the call.

Oh, thank you—that the teachers showed their concern about the consultation not being real, that the Minister has stepped in when the courts have flagged that the consultation wasn’t real. And does he believe that this is going to resolve or create an even worse division between the teachers and the Teaching Council in terms of a lack of trust, lack of faith, and concern that the consultation, when the Teaching Council does undertake it, will be nothing other than a sham—as we have seen with numerous changes to the Education Act, under this Minister, where a consultation has taken place and submissions have been received, and the Minister has decided that 29 percent of the submissions for it is an overwhelming majority. Does he think that he might be perpetuating a feeling amongst educators, be it at compulsory or tertiary or, indeed, early childhood level, that the Minister is not genuinely interested in consultation with the sector?