Education and Training Amendment Bill

Members, the House is in committee for further consideration of the Education and Training Amendment Bill. When we were last debating the bill, we were debating Part 2. Part 2 is the debate on clauses 63AAA to 70, “Amendments to other legislation and revocation”, and Schedule 4.

Last week, it was mistakenly ruled that Schedule 1 could not be debated during the debate on Part 1. This, unfortunately, prevented some members from debating Schedule 1 at the appropriate time. I’m therefore ruling that members may debate Schedule 1 as part of the debate on Part 2. However, this does not open the debate to matters and questions about Schedule 1 that have already been addressed. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Point of order, Madam Chairperson. Just a question about your ruling. Thank you for that ruling to make that clear. Having discussed with some colleagues on this side of the House who were present for that entire committee stage, the only parts that we are aware of that were touched on in Schedule 1 were some of the changes to 6A—an amendment in relation to that—and also an exchange between myself and the Associate Minister of Education in relation to information on the transfer of employment. So we’re just raising that at this initial stage to make sure that we’re clear that matters that are not related to those two subject areas will be within this debate.

Yep, that’s fine.

Speaking to the point of order, I’d like to remind members that there was an extensive debate about the transfer and ownership of assets, which is covered by new clause 117 in Schedule 1. That considers quite a lot of it. In addition to new clause 119, that actually covers several parts of Schedule 1. However, the member is right that other aspects weren’t debated.

Just on the point of order, we do have a list of what’s already been debated. So if it hasn’t been debated, that’s OK, but we will watch for repetition. But if they’re new points, we’re open to that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just did have some questions in relation to the first part of Schedule 1, in relation to new clause 114 and the situation of a board dissolving—so I’m referring to new clauses 114 and 115 in Subpart 2.

In terms of the interpretation section here, I have a question for the Minister around the definition of “converted school”. It was notable to me when I read through this section that “converted school” means a former State school that has become a charter school, and I wanted to ask the Minister: does that mean that a converted school is no longer part of the State school system, or, if that’s incorrect, how would a converted school under this definition be considered to be part of the State school system? I understand the intention of this, but I think that especially in definitional sections, it’s quite important that we get that right, and I’d appreciate it if, hopefully, the Minister will be able to address that.

In relation to new clause 115, I had a question around the dissolution of boards of trustees. Obviously, what the Minister is doing with this charter school bill is changing the way that a school is run in terms of the converted schools. A board of trustees that is democratically elected by parents at the date of the conversion will no longer exist and will be dissolved, and I wanted to ask the Minister whether, in relation to this particular point, he had engaged with boards of trustees in relation to the timing of this dissolution. Would there be any involvement for the boards of trustees either to be consulted in relation to the change from a school to a charter school? What would that, effectively, mean in terms of their responsibilities? My understanding is that they end on that particular date. Can the Minister explain whether he has had any engagement with the representatives of boards of trustees—I understand that there is an association of boards of trustees—and whether they would have any feedback?

I don’t recall any submission from them, but in terms of that particular democratic mandate, as a parent myself, I’m aware that there are regular elections in relation to boards of trustees. I wondered if that would be a consideration into the date of the conversion as well, or whether that wouldn’t be a factor at all, because you can imagine a situation where a board of trustees has just been elected or several members have just been elected, and then suddenly there’s a conversion into a charter school and they don’t have any opportunity to implement the mandate that they went to other parents for in order to make a contribution to that school.

I understand what the Minister is doing and that he doesn’t want boards of trustees in relation to charter schools. I want to ask if he has considered an option of maintaining some kind of democratic representation in relation to sponsored schools. Would it be possible for sponsors to decide within the character of their charter school that they are going to have an equivalent of a board of trustees? These are important questions in terms of the mechanics of charter schools that under his new system, New Zealanders—parents and the many thousands of people who do really incredible work on our boards of trustees—might not be aware of. So, in relation to those initial clauses, I wondered whether the Minister had any comments.

Both of these issues were well canvassed in previous debate on this committee stage. In relation to new clause 114 of Schedule 1, do we define a “converted school” as a State school? Well, it’s a charter school, but as we discussed at the time, charter schools are, for all intents and purposes, part of the State school network. They have a different name, but they perform a similar function in that sense.

In relation to the question about boards of trustees, as was widely traversed in earlier discussion on this committee stage, it is true that the authorisation board should seek community support, and obviously a board of trustees would be an important stakeholder in deciding whether or not a State school had the ability to convert.

Finally, the sponsor in this legislation can take on any form. Certainly in the past when New Zealanders had charter schools, one of the things that’s been noted is the innovation and governance structure, which means that there’s many possibilities that the people that the member describes could be included in governance of a charter school.

Thank you, Mr Chair. You were in the Chair on Thursday when the debate was interrupted and I was in the middle of explaining my amendment, which was about new clause 111, inserted by clause 70. Since then, I have put a new amendment in which is about removing clause 70 out of Part 2, and the two go together. I reflected on this, and after talking to early childhood groups on Friday and then the teacher advocacy group for early childhood yesterday, I felt that perhaps the amendment that I had about new clause 111, inserted by clause 70, didn’t go far enough, so I have put in the one about removing clause 70, about the revoking of the early childhood regulations.

The reason that I’ve done that is because many of the groups that I’ve spoken to who feel like their voices have not been heard in this have said that this is really important to ensure that we have not just the right provisions in the right areas, but adequate provision. They feel that this particular clause that the Minister has put here is going to be detrimental to our low socio-economic areas and our rural areas. Minister, I want to know from you, that being the case, what thought went into those areas that have low uptake of early childhood education provision in them? That is, the providers in those particular areas are not going in there because they’re not able to make it work for them, or the fact that people are finding it inaccessible because the early childhood fees are too high for them, and so we have a very low uptake in those particular areas.

Also in the rural areas, Minister, I would like to know from you—you must have done some modelling around this, about how this would impact in those rural areas, that some of the providers will not go into those rural areas and they will see that that would be detrimental to their business model. That is something that has been brought up with me from several different groups over the last few days, and so I want to know what modelling has gone in there and what the impact of this will be on those areas.

Now, just going back to that amendment that I made that we interrupted the debate on—and I was halfway through that—if we’re not going to delete clause 70, then I would move to new clause 111, inserted by clause 70, and replace new subclause (2). One of the issues that we have is that we have a number of early childhood education centres, and we talked about this, but we didn’t put a geographical area on how many centres should be in any given area. I’ve made this amendment to say that network provision, if it was to be repealed, then it would then apply if there was a centre that was being established within 1 kilometre of another centre.

I think from talking to those teachers in the groups that I have spoken to over the last few days, they see this as a compromise but they also see it as a sort of a halfway provision. I want to know if there was any thought that was given to having a halfway provision and not just going the full hog out, but also the groups other than the Early Childhood Council that might have influenced the Minister’s decision in this. Those groups that I have spoken to who are not unions—because I know that the Minister has an adverse reaction when the word “union” is brought up—

Hon Phil Twyford: Allergic.

Hon JAN TINETTI: Allergic reaction—yeah, no; exactly. I’m just wondering what other groups might have influenced in that area as well, to see if we could get some sort of halfway provision.

Look, the member’s not the first to assume I must have done modelling, but in this case we’ve actually covered the issue pretty widely. Actually, we talked about the policy decision that we want parents to choose what they support, rather than the Government to choose what’s allowed to be open. That is the policy decision agreed to by the House at the second reading and, therefore, we don’t support the member’s proposed amendments that would, effectively, require the Government to continue choosing which centres were able to open, in spite of parent choice.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I would like to speak specifically on Subpart 1 of new Part 6, inserted by Schedule 1. I’m more broadly looking at new clauses 111 to 113, but I mainly want to focus on 113.

I think one of the things we’re hearing in terms of this particular committee stage is that we are asking similar questions in some sense because we’re not getting the information from the Associate Minister of Education on the response or even on the evidence and some of the data that we’re looking at here, or some of the modelling. We have already seen, in terms of the regulatory impact statement, that some of this modelling is a little bit lacking. Some of these things, particularly when we’re looking at transitional arrangements, may not be well-thought-out because no one was consulted on it. As we have seen from the Education and Workforce Committee process, when people do submit, their advice and their opinion—which we then have put in as amendments—are not taken on board by the Minister. Forgive us, Mr Chair, but we do want to just get some form of confidence from the Minister that this particular transitional bit in Schedule 1 is well-thought-out, because it is very much to do with process and procedure and operationalisation of this particular phase.

In terms of this bit, one of the questions I have is around the existing applications that are in there. In terms of new clauses 111, 112, and 113, it talks about what happens when someone applies for a licence and they’re currently under consultation by the Ministry of Education. I have two questions around that. Number one is: considering this bill is going through the House, what has this meant for the Ministry of Education’s approval process under the existing system, knowing that when we get to the commencement date of this particular bill, or after Royal assent, everything you have to do needs to be put to a stop? One of the examples is in new clause 113(2), it says that when the bill comes into force, the application must be treated as if it has been withdrawn and you also have to refund the applicant the prescribed fee.

I want to know from the Minister what the modelling is, or what conversation the Minister has had with the Ministry of Education around whether there’s been a focus of trying to get all of the applications done before the commencement date or if it’s being deliberately dragging it out so that way nothing is approved currently and then we’re waiting for the commencement date, in which case nothing then applies. Has there been a hold up in the existing approval process; if there has, how much of a hold up is there? There may not be, so I’ll be interested to hear if the Minister is able to clarify that.

The second question I then have is, considering that we are discussing this bill as it goes through, that people who are interested in applying for early childhood education service obviously know that this particular part is going to be repealed, so they may potentially hold off on applying in the first place while waiting for this bill to go through the House. Then that hold up is going to have a tangible impact on how we look at data for 2024, and particularly we’re looking at the year to date, etc. When we are looking at that data, has the Minister or any of the officials from the Ministry of Education considered whether that is going to skew the data around the new early childhood education centres that are going to be open, because people are holding out on applying because of this bill?

So I have two questions: what modelling has the Minister had in terms of whether the Ministry of Education is going to hold up on approving this, knowing this bill is going to go through, and does the Minister know if that hold up, or the process going through, meant that people are not applying to open centres because it’s going to be repealed anyway?

Well, I thank the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan for his questions regarding new clause 113, which—just for people who may not have seen it or are watching this video from home—says that if this law is passed by Parliament, then anyone who has applied for a licensing consent to grow or open a new early childhood education centre will have their application basically cancelled and their money returned so they can just go back to choosing to invest and meet parents’ demands according to whether parents want them to do it, not according to whether the Government wants them to do it.

The member also asked the question has the Ministry of Education been going either faster or slower than usual in anticipation of this change? I would expect that the Ministry of Education respects that this Parliament makes the laws in New Zealand. They shouldn’t try to anticipate what Parliament does; they should just follow the law and be good public servants, as I often expect they are. In terms of whether people out in the sector anticipated this change and have chosen to either, you know, hold off on an application to expand because they know that soon that the Government will be getting rid of it, or at least they anticipate that—they very well might have. There’s certainly been a lot of support and enthusiasm for this change from within the sector, so I’m sure that’s true.

I’ll just say something to the member about modelling. I’m one of the very few people in this House who has actually studied mathematical modelling (MM) to some extent—a really tough three years of MM: one, two, and three, and then, in fourth year, it gets harder. It’s called engineering school. One thing you need to know about modelling is: garbage in, garbage out. I don’t know what data the member thinks that we would have used to anticipate people’s propensity to apply sooner or later, based on an upcoming law change. It’s certainly a very, very interesting thing to model from an academic point of view, but I don’t think it would make a very good use of time. Sometimes, people talk about modelling because they think that it makes them sound smart, but if you’ve actually done a little bit, you understand what its limitations are.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want a reasonably quick question of the Minister in light of the answer he gave to my colleague the Hon Jan Tinetti. When she asked around whether any modelling had been done as to the impacts of this, the removal of the network planning, the Minister noted that it was all about parents and giving parents choice. I agree with that; I think it’s really great that parents do have a choice as to the types of services that they send their children to. However, I would be interested to know how much consultation the Minister did with actual parents of children that attended the centres that are likely to be negatively impacted by this piece of legislation.

I think particularly to, say, the community-based centres who have been around for many, many years in different areas around the country, and the impact that will be seen on them negatively when you can have these big corporates that move into town, and also the impact that it will have—and I think, negatively impacting—on those small individual centre owners, like the type of centre that I used to own, when you’ve got the big corporates that move into town. I want to know just how much consultation the Minister did with those particular groups of people—the individual centre owners, the parents themselves—or did he just simply listen to the grumblings from the Early Childhood Council?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Just before the Minister, I will—it is about transitional arrangements. That’s probably been covered in Part 1, but I’ll leave it up to the Minister whether he wants to answer that.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It was interesting to hear about the Minister’s studies in engineering, and I’d like to follow up his musings on his past learnings to also focus on something that I studied when I was at university, which was the law of trusts, because there is a section in here, new clause 118, in relation to that. I’m pleased to see the Attorney-General’s presence in the Chamber, and she will, hopefully, be able to assist if there’s any elucidation that the Minister in the chair needs on the law of trusts as we discuss this section.

This is an interesting section because it covers, as far as I can ascertain, a situation where a school that is not yet a charter school has property that is held in trust, and the definition of “school” is broad. It is not just the school—the board of the school, which you might assume—but also any other person who may hold it for the benefit of the school that’s to be converted or for students or former students of the converted school. That’s quite a large ambit of what could be considered a relevant trust under this section.

All good so far. New clause 118(2) states, basically, that the trust continues, which is, I think, probably what we would expect, because a trust owns private property and it’s the legal owner, and so changing that by the statute would be somewhat problematic. However, then it goes on, at some length, in new clause 118, new subclauses (3) to (8), to go through a very, very complex system where it allows those trustees, who are perfectly entitled to hold that property in trust, as far as I can see, for as long as they want within the confines of this bill, this to-be piece of legislation, where they may apply to the Public Trust, who then may involve the Solicitor-General, in order to alter their trust deed. I wanted to ask the Minister: why have you put in this extremely complex procedure involving the Public Trust? The Public Trust does very good work, but there are certain fees that come with using the Public Trust that may not be apparent in other ways of dealing with property that’s held in trust. Why are we using the Public Trust, and then why do we need to involve the Solicitor-General? Why, Minister, can the normal law of trusts not apply in this situation?

It seems to me quite unusual that we need this complex arrangement, involving these two otherwise uninvolved and irrelevant bodies to this particular bill, in order to fix some kind of problem that could be easily solved just under the law that currently exists. I wanted to ask the Minister, in relation to new clause 118: what’s the purpose of it?

Thank you, Mr Chairman. Schedule 1, new clause 119 deals with the transfer of employees of converted schools. I raised this knowing that the Associate Minister in the chair is not someone who places a lot of importance on the employment rights of teachers, because he believes, somehow, that to focus on the rights of teachers is, somehow, to take away from the value that we should place on students. He doesn’t understand or believe that there is a symbiotic relationship in our education system between the wellbeing of teachers and the wellbeing of their students. Nevertheless, new clause 119 deals with the transfer of employees of converted school to charter school. “On the conversion date, every employee of a converted school becomes an employee of the sponsor”.

Now, this provision will be of great interest to the many tens of thousands of teachers who work in our State school system, and they will be interested in how their rights will be treated in the event of a transfer—in the event of the Minister pointing the bone at a particular school and telling the board they must apply to be converted, to undergo David Seymour’s particular brand of conversion therapy for schools. Subclause (3) says, “A transferred employee is not entitled to receive any contractual notice or … payment, benefit, or compensation from the board of a converted school”—i.e., redundancy—“on the grounds that—(a) the person’s position in the converted school has ceased to exist; or (b) [that] the person has ceased to be an employee of the board as a result of the person’s transfer to the charter school.”

When someone’s job changes, the principle of redundancy is well established in our legal system. It is reflected in many, many employment agreements and collective agreements around this country and indeed in some statutes. The effect of this provision is to take away the rights of people by deeming that they are not entitled to any contractual notice or payment as a result of that position ceasing to exist. I want to draw the committee’s attention to Jan Tinetti’s Amendment Paper that would replace that subclause (3) with one that reads “An employee of a State school converting to a charter school who does not wish to take up employment in the charter school may deem their employment to be ended and be entitled to any compensation afforded by their collective agreement or the Employment Relations Act.”

My question for the Minister in light of that is: why does he see fit to take away the employment rights of people whose job—and it’s very easy to imagine a situation where in fact their job does change. Not only does their employer change but let’s say a home economics teacher gets transferred to a converted school that, because of its religious beliefs, does not teach home economics, the person’s job may end up being completely different, or any other shade of whatever that teacher is teaching or is being asked to do may change. Under the bill as it stands, the person is not entitled to claim redundancy even if redundancy provisions were included in the employment contract in their original school. Not only that but also why would the Associate Minister want to place individual teachers in this invidious position? Surely it’s impractical. If someone’s job changes, if someone’s employer changes, why would you not allow them the opportunity and the right to take redundancy in the way that most other workers in New Zealand would in a commensurate situation?

I’m just going to call on the Minister. I just want to say with that last set of questions, I allowed the redundancy because we’re talking about transition here. We’ve talked quite a lot about the rights of teachers, and I see there was some repetition from the Hon Twyford into some questions that you’d had in previous calls.

Just in response to Camilla Belich—a very interesting question. Property is held privately in trusts or trust, as the member said. Some of the best advice I’ve ever had is wear your learning lightly. The reason for the Solicitor-General potentially being involved—but bear in mind that, after 90 days, the solicitor’s involvement lapses by default—is that the beneficiary of that property held in trust is changed because there’s now a new operator of the school. That is something that the Crown has brought about by its policy and the conversion of the school from State to charter that’s taken place.

It’s kind of, I guess, you might say, a reserve power for the Solicitor-General and the Public Trust to ensure and look after the rights of the settlors of the trust, which might be an old pupils’ association or some other type of group. As the member will see in Schedule 1, new clause 118(8)(a), the Solicitor-General can only approve a scheme if “it modifies the trust concerned so as best to give effect to the intentions of the testator, settlor, or other person or body by whom or which the trust was established”. This is very much about preserving the rights of the people who put the trust in place, given that there is a slight change in the beneficiary because of the change of administration of the school, which is something the Crown’s brought about, and, therefore, the Crown is there with the Solicitor-General to ensure that everyone’s rights are looked after.

In respect of the role of teachers, the principle is very simple: the simple proposition is that we want people who work at a State school to be re-employed on terms no less favourable. The member brought up an example. He said, “Well, what if the school converts to a school with special character and the new character is a religion that doesn’t believe in home economics?” Well, first of all, that’s not going to happen because you can’t take on a religious character through conversion if you didn’t already have one, which is also in the legislation. Second of all, it’s kind of an absurd example. I can’t really think of a religion that doesn’t believe in cooking food. The member might well say, “Well, yes, but it’s just an example.” The fact he had to come up with such an absurd example maybe suggests that he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel for questions.

Lawrence Xu-Nan, and I am looking for new questions, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have just seen some advice that we are looking at Schedule 1 as well as Part 2—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Only the piece of Schedule 1 that has not been discussed before—new information.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: I’m actually going to—for us, anyway, we’re going to move from Schedule 1 and talk more broadly about Part 2. The clause I’m looking at is actually clause 69, which is around Schedule 4. The thing that I wanted to raise with the Minister, in terms of Schedule 4, is around the part that talks about “Education (Stand-down, Suspension, Exclusion, and Expulsion) Rules 1999”, and particularly the part that is at the bottom of page 53 and the top of page 54 around replacing rule 16(1).

Now, the rule itself I have no issues with; I think it’s done in a way that is structured and formatted as the rest of the legislation. However, I am curious about the new term that we actually haven’t seen throughout this entire bill, which is “governing member of the sponsor”. One of the things that we see in this bill when we are looking at a comparison between what is the existing system within State schools and what is going to be the system in charter schools—we’ve seen the equivalence of equating board with sponsor, principal with the person responsible for teaching and learning, and that is, essentially, it. However, what we’re seeing in this particular part in 1B is that there is a new term that has been introduced that equates board members, which we understand in a State school there are, and the governing member of a sponsor.

I’m curious to know from the Minister: what is a governing member of the sponsor? One of the things we’ve heard throughout this thing is that you are allowing for flexibility, you’re allowing for all of the things, and for the schools to make their own decisions, but what we’re seeing here is a somewhat entrenched organisational structure in the sense that there must be governing members on top of the person in charge of teaching and learning and on top of the sponsor

I would be very keen for the Minister to paint us a picture of who these governing members, then, would be. Is there any consideration, then, on what we consider to be the size of a governing council at a charter school, which, then, undoubtedly, possibly, would then include the sponsor—“the person in charge is responsible for teaching and learning”—and additional members. Would these members then be elected from the community, as we see with board members, or would it be simply drawn from other parts within the charter school organisation? For example, the welfare manager could be a governing member, the academic director could be a governing member, the person in charge of compliance could be a governing member. Can I just get some clarification from the Minister on this term that we have not seen in any other part of the bill but that exists here. Thank you.

I thought that was an excellent contribution. The member actually asked and answered his own question. He asked why a person in a governance role in a charter school might not necessarily be called a board member, and then he gave a whole range of other types of people that might play a governance role, and really gave good examples of how the flexibility of the model could be used. In fact, I think, if this debate goes on long enough, then Mr Xu-Nan could become a strong proponent of charter schools. It’s true—I’ve always managed to convert the intelligent ones.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I’ll take a call from Camilla Belich, but I’m really narrowing it down now to very specific new questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have a number of specific, new questions still, in Schedule 1, and, on this particular side of the Chamber, we haven’t even moved—Mr Xu-Nan has taken a few questions in relation to Schedule 2, but we haven’t. We do have a number of—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): That’s fine, so long as they’re new questions.

CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah. I’ve got three questions still on Schedule 1 which I want to raise with the Minister.

The first is in relation to new clause 121 in relation to pay equity claims that transfer, which I understand has not been discussed in detail. I think that this is an appropriate clause to have in this bill. It’s good to see that pay equity claims and the obligations that existing schools and their sponsors will have continue and will be transferred under this bill, so I don’t oppose this particular clause, but I do have a question around how this will work, considering the Minister’s amendment in relation to the multi-employer collective agreements. Essentially, pay equity claims have a similar effect in imposing pay rates on a particular subset of employees, no matter who their employer is, in a similar way that a multi-employer collective employment agreement would have—which the Minister has very objectionably and wrongly, in my view—unilaterally decided to ban under this piece of legislation. I wanted to ask him about that, so that’s my first question.

The second question I had is in relation to new clause 122, in relation to the transfer of holidays and liabilities. A type of clause of this nature is obviously necessary. We need to make sure that people aren’t losing entitlements. I’ve read through this clause a number of times, so I’d appreciate it if the Minister could clarify exactly how he thinks this is going to work in practice, because the way I read that clause is that existing liabilities in relation to holiday pay—and, of course, we know the system we have in New Zealand in relation to holiday pay is that, often, people have quite a number of weeks that they might build up and that would be considered a liability by the existing school that they are employed by. As far as I can see in this clause, on the conversion date, those liabilities transfer, then, to the Minister on behalf of the Crown. The liability for paying the holiday pay that might be owed is then not held by the new employer. It’s not a transfer of that liability, as far as I’m aware—I’m happy to, if I’m wrong, have the Minister correct me.

My question to the Minister is, then: what happens to that person’s holiday pay? How do they then get that back off the Minister in whom it’s now vested? Will the Minister be paying that holiday pay out as a cash payment? Will they be able to still use that holiday if they want to actually take a holiday but they’re employed by a charter school? Maybe I’m missing something here. I’d appreciate it if the Minister could clarify exactly how that would work, because I do think it is an important point for people, teachers, and other employees of schools that may convert to know where does their holiday pay sit. For a lot of people, it’s quite important for them.

My last question, if I may, and I do appreciate that it looks as if the Minister will be addressing some of these questions, is in relation to new clause 124, the Government Superannuation Fund. I was surprised to see this in this bill. I wonder if the Minister has received any advice as to how many people currently employed by schools in New Zealand are actually members of the Government Superannuation Fund. As I understand, they may have to be quite well advanced in age to still be a member of this fund, which was quite generous, as I understand. Obviously, everything in a piece of legislation needs to have a purpose, and so I wanted to know, is there actually any need for this clause? How many people are actually affected by this?

In relation to the questions around new clause 122, first of all, the principle here is that a person who works at a State school will be no worse off by their school converting to a charter school. They may find themselves in slightly different conditions, but no worse off. We’ve made that commitment, and I think it’s a fair commitment to be made. Some liabilities vest in the Minister at the point of conversion, but bear in mind that the Minister is also contracting with the new sponsor, so you can see how they might have the possibility of transferring liabilities, depending on the circumstances.

In relation to the Government Superannuation Fund, I have sought advice that is a rather limited number of people, given that I think you had to be teaching in the early 1990s in order to be a member of that still. None the less, I do caution the member against her apparent attitude towards teachers in advanced age, some of them are very valuable.

Madam Chair—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’ll just make the point here that I feel like Schedule 1 has now largely been traversed. The member over here talked about Part 2. Is the member’s question on the schedule or Part 2?

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: On Part 2.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): OK, thank you. Can you make it brief and to the point.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: I’ll do my best, Madam Chair. My contribution—which will, hopefully, be a brief one tonight—will be on Part 2, clause 63AAA, “Principal Act”, and 63AAB, which amends the Local Government (Rating) Act. I don’t think there have been questions tonight on this section, although I think, last week, there were some questions around it and some excellent contributions from Labour members about the pan tax, which is the first that I’ve heard of it. My questions are in a different vein but kind of relate to the idea of local government and their ratings and the potential impact that these charter schools might have, and the implications for local government funding.

I won’t belabour the point, so I won’t read the purpose of the Act, but I just want to summarise the purpose of the Act that we’re amending, which is the Local Government (Rating) Act. In summary, it, basically, gives local government powers to set rates and ensure that the rates are being set in a manner. Now, the schedule that we’re amending is, I believe, Schedule 1, Part 1, clause 6(f)—in that, essentially, the amendments we’re making are consistent with the wider purposes of the clause around that, which is that “Land owned or used by, and for the purposes of, any of the following as defined in section 10(1) of the Education and Training Act 2020:” It covers a State school; a State integrated school; a specialist school; a special institution; an early childhood education and care centre, except an early childhood education and care centre that operates for profit; a private school, except a registered school that operates for profit, and an institution. Clearly, it’s meant to be covering a wide range of institutions, which would include charter schools, except, potentially, the ones that operate for profit.

Now, my question to the Minister is around this idea of—you talked earlier today about how you were expecting, I believe, 78 new charter schools from this process. Of that 78, how many are from private schools that are currently operating for profit? I guess this is really where my question is getting to. Do you foresee any impacts on the rating basis of these local governments? We’re in an era when local governments are having to put their rates up. There’s a potential for further rates shortfalls. And I guess the second leg of the question is: are there kinds of implications in terms of setting up new charter schools and the potential needs for infrastructure that they might create in local jurisdictions? Are there provisions that cover for that? As much as we on this side of the House oppose charter schools, we also want to make sure that they’re not deliberately being set up to fail, because that wouldn’t be fair to the children or the parents or the communities that service them. So we do want to see them resourced for the infrastructure.

As I promised, I did keep my contribution as brief as I could. I hope I can get some answers from the Minister. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Very quickly, welcome to Parliament to the member. I said, at question time today, that there are 78 applications. There are, in fact, 15 new schools and 35 conversions budgeted for. Whether or not those will be approved is yet to be determined by the Authorisation Board if this legislation passes. The identity of those—whether they are independent schools—I do not know, because I have not seen the list, and I do not intend to. It’s an arm’s length process.

Are we concerned about the impact on local councils? I don’t think it’s plausible that a relatively small number of schools, 50 of which would be converting State schools anyway—so you’re down to 15 relatively small schools initially—could affect the rating base of councils, but if they did and charter schools became so popular and were doing so much for children’s education that they started to distort the rating base of councils up and down New Zealand, I think it’d probably be a good thing.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have some quick questions for the Minister in relation to Part 2. We know that charter schools are not subject to the Official Information Act, and that’s been traversed, and we’ve had amendments that the Minister hasn’t accepted. In Part 2 here, we have an amendment to the Ombudsmen Act 1975, and that is in relation to the Charter Schools Authorisation Board. The question I have for the Minister is in relation to the Charter Schools Authorisation Board: will the Charter Schools Authorisation Board be subject to the Official Information Act? That’s my first question in relation to Part 2.

My second question is in relation to the change to the Public Audit Act, which also includes the Charter Schools Authorisation Board. What scrutiny does the Minister envisage that the Charter Schools Authorisation Board will have? I know that there’s an amendment to the Public Audit Act. I haven’t had a chance to check that Act to figure out exactly what that amendment means, but would, for example, the Charter Schools Authorisation Board be something that would be covered in our select committee’s annual reviews? For example, the Education and Workforce Committee looks at a number of public organisations that have important responsibilities in relation to education, and I would like to know whether he envisages that the Charter Schools Authorisation Board and some of their activities would be subject to that type of parliamentary scrutiny.

Also, my last question on this section: in relation to the change to the Public Records Act 2005 in Part 2, clause 68, what type of records, in terms of the historical records that regular schools are meant to maintain for students for a period of usually seven years, would charter schools be required to maintain in order to ensure that there wasn’t a difference of treatment? Obviously, the Minister said that charter schools are out doing things differently and having flexibility. Is that in relation to record keeping as well?

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Hon Jan Tinetti’s tabled amendment to delete clause 70 be agreed to.