Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2)

Members, we come now to our final debate. This is the debate on clauses 1 to 3: “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act”.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to take a call on the question of commencement and, drawing on your guidance earlier, am attempting to link some parts of the first part that were not adequately discussed, but very much linking it to the commencement date as per your recommendation.

Now, the commencement of this bill comes into force on the day after Royal assent and my questions are around whether this would apply to all parts of the bill, particularly clauses 11 and 12. These are the parts that confer additional responsibilities on the university councils, or does the Minister anticipate that there’s a transition period for the university councils to adopt these statements on freedom of expression? If it is the day after the commencement, are they expected to have it straight away, or is there more of a kind of gradual transition period whereby the university councils will have time to devise, consult, and create these statements on freedom of expression? I do ask that because I do think some universities have already developed statements on freedom of expression, so that’s not a problem with the commencement date, but others have not yet.

I guess, in terms of the interpretation on some of these things that we didn’t get a chance to flesh out, what does the Minister anticipate in terms of the universities not being able to take public positions on matters? Does that mean that if a university was to take a stance on a public matter after the commencement date of this bill, they would get into trouble? Or if a submission has already been made to an existing legislation, but it was before the commencement date, does that mean that they won’t get into trouble?

I’m just curious on the interaction of the commencement date and the requirement of the university to adopt statements of freedom of expression and how it interacts with them not being able to take public positions on matters, particularly as relates to the commencement date. I think that it is really important to tease out what taking a public position on matters as institutions actually does refer to. Does it extend as far as curricula, for example?

Hon David Seymour: Maybe, but we’ve debated that.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Well, “maybe”—exactly. Well, I mean, that would be terrible. If a university were to equally have to teach that creationism was as valid as, you know, the scientific theories of evolution, I think all members would agree that was a bad thing. I think it’s really important to clarify what that actual relationship with the commencement date is and whether that retroactively applies to existing curricula and existing things that—

Hon David Seymour: Point of order. Madam Chair, these should have relevance. It’s a very narrow question when the Act comes into force. I could help the member. If he looks at the relevant schedule, it’s six months after the Act comes into force that the university must have a plan. The content of it has been debated in earlier parts.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: He’s not the Minister, so—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The member still has the call.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Great, thank you. Oh well, I appreciate the Minister’s contribution.

Hon David Seymour: Well, sit down, then.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Well, I still have one minute left so—but I think that it is particularly important on what does apply with that six-month period commencement. Does that retroactively apply to existing curricula and existing past positions that the universities have already taken on statements? Are they required to retroactively pretend that they didn’t have stances on certain issues to comply with this Government diktat, which, essentially, is forcing universities not to take positions on certain issues? Is there an element of retrospectivity with regard to that six-month commencement date that the honourable Minister very helpfully pointed out? I think it would be terrible if it were to retrospectively apply to existing past statements. Also, whether it applies to curricula as well, or whether it’s just expected that “public positions” actually means statements or actual political positions, and it doesn’t actually affect the teaching curricula of the university.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to speak to the commencement date, clause 2—and I’m just signalling to the Chair, I won’t take a full call because I would like to take a call later on the title. I want to check in terms of that, in conjunction with my Amendment Paper 402, which is to replace “on the day after” with “six months after”.

The reason I put this amendment together is mainly because of the fact that what we have seen, especially with the new amendment that has just come out this morning, is that it has caught school boards by surprise; there has been no indication that sufficient time has been given for school boards to be able to be compliant with the bill once the bill has been enacted. Unlike the section on universities, I haven’t seen within this bill, anyway—and the Minister may like to speak to that—that allows school boards to be compliant with the new requirement, or at least shift towards the new requirement once it has been enacted, if it’s only the day after Royal assent. I think a six-month transition period is sensible for the schools to be able to do something like that, unless the Minister is suggesting that while the commencement date comes into force the day after Royal assent, school boards may not need to immediately be compliant or need to make the relevant changes that we see in this bill. That’s, kind of, one element.

I think the other element that we haven’t had a chance to discuss and I think is quite significant is to do with how the commencement date is going to work with the Minister’s Amendment Paper 364, on the changing of the composition of the Teaching Council. Now, this has raised significant concerns since this amendment has come out, and I want to check with the Minister, because I’m assuming the Minister isn’t going to respond on whether this is actually considered now that the membership is dominated more so by Minister-appointed members, as opposed to independently elected. The Minister may or may not wish to address the fact of what that meant for the independence of the Teaching Council, which is a huge concern.

But, from a commencement date perspective, I want to check: once this bill comes into effect the day after Royal assent, at what point the Teaching Council will need to change its membership, noting that in section 486 of the Education and Training Act, the Teaching Council does have at least a mandate on how they are meant to do their nomination and process. But does it apply to the Minister-appointed members on that committee? I’m seeing a shaking of the head from officials.

Now, if the Minister wouldn’t mind just elucidating this committee on how that particular election process and transition from an independent majority Teaching Council to a Minister-appointed majority Teaching Council is going to work after the commencement of this bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is my first opportunity to make a contribution in this bill—regretfully at the latter stages of the debate, focused quite narrowly on the three clauses that we have remaining in front of us—and so I wanted to make a couple of comments around a few of those.

First of all, with the commencement. Now, this is not a bill that I have worked on at the Education and Workforce Committee at all. So when I was reading it today, I read the primary amendment piece of legislation, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2), and I looked at it and tried to understand. I looked at the original piece of legislation that it’s amending, which is the Education and Training Act, and tried to piece those two together. But, of course, as the House and the committee will be well aware, it’s not possible to understand this particular Act by reading those two pieces of legislation and draft legislation because of the number of Amendment Papers that have been put forward.

I think this is relevant to clause 2—“Commencement”—because of the late nature of the two Amendment Papers, and the primary ones that I’m looking at are 364 and 428, which I’m not looking to debate at this stage, but I think that because they raise such significant changes to the bill, perhaps the Minister of Education could consider later commencement dates for the changes contained within those Amendment Papers.

For example, Amendment Paper 428, which looks to remove the Treaty clauses and instead replace that with other duties that could, for example—and I suggest this amendment to the Minister now—come in, say, “one year after Royal assent” as opposed to “at Royal assent”, to give time for this to be socialised with the sector. Obviously, we haven’t had a select committee stage; we haven’t had the ability to hear submissions on this. We haven’t had a particularly long committee stage, Madam Chair. That’s not a criticism, that’s just a reflection of the fact that committee stages are, by their nature, not perhaps the best way to scrutinise these. That would be a suggestion that I would make to clause 2 of the bill.

Also, in addition to that, obviously Amendment Paper 364. I was checking with my colleagues, and they said that a number of these changes haven’t been traversed in relation to the Teaching Council that extensively. These were quite surprising changes that I saw reported in the media; that there was going to be a significant change to the way that the teaching profession was going to be regulated. There is a question, I think, as to whether it is appropriate for those significant changes to come in without a select committee process, without the chance to socialise that, not only with the Teaching Council, those employed by the Teaching Council, those affected by the changes to the governance of the Teaching Council, those impacted in the wider education sector, the profession. I think that would merit consideration of a later commencement date for those changes contained within Amendment Paper 364. I’d like the Minister, if possible, to comment on those.

In terms of the title, obviously there are other probably not very realistic titles that I could suggest and are often suggested at this stage. It’s not my intention at this stage; although, perhaps maybe some other members would like to suggest some title changes that may be more reflective of this bill.

But, actually, the fact that we’ve already had two Education and Training Amendment Acts this year, I think, warrants consideration of whether it should be changed to a title—not a title which doesn’t reflect the content of the bill, not a title which is a ridiculous suggestion, but something that actually reflects what this actually does. My suggestion to the Minister would be instead of the Education and Training Amendment Act (No 2) 2025, whether she would consider changing that to the “Education (Removal of Teaching Council Provisions and Removal of Treaty Clauses) Amendment Bill” because that is what the bill actually does. I wondered if the Minister would be able to seriously consider those suggestions around commencement and the appropriateness of the commencement of this—we’ve got such a short period of consultation—and also whether the title does, in fact, reflect the bill.

I’m not sure if the member Camilla Belich was here earlier when we were discussing the fact that we are giving schools a whole additional year to do their next strategic plan. The last bit we’ve just finished voting on moves that from 1 January next year to 1 January 2027, and so there is plenty of time for schools to look at the new section 127 and the new regulations, and then put them into their strategic plans. We’ve already discussed that.

In terms of the Teaching Council, it is a very minor change. It’s just an additional person and we will make that change immediately, and so there’s no reason for us to do that.

The member also suggested a change saying that, essentially, the bill is only about two things; the bill is a lot more than that. Unfortunately, members in this committee stage didn’t ask any questions on any other part of the bill. That’s why we didn’t get to talk about it, and so it’s really unfortunate. But there are a lot more things in the bill, and so I think that the bill’s title should stay the same.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just wanting to pick up on that point that the Minister of Education made. Just for absolute clarity for all of our schools and kura out there, are you saying that their current strategic plans which give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which outline the things that I said earlier about the legislation, which have now been replaced with the strategies in your Amendment Paper—so for all of next year, their current strategic plans are the ones that they will be governing their schools in accordance with? Your changes are not required to come into effect until 2027, is that right? Could you just clarify for all those schools in their planning?

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Madam Chair.

I’m going to call Lawrence Xu-Nan, but I can’t hear much more new material coming in.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for this opportunity. I do want to address the title of this bill because I have a number of amendments to the title. But I want to, first, thank the Minister of Education for responding to my questions. That’s very helpful. So thank you, Minister.

In terms of the title of the bill, we’ve heard previously from my colleague Camilla Belich that the title should reflect the bill, and this is the second education and training bill, not including the early childhood education reform bill that’s coming up as well. But I think to capture everything, like the Minister suggested, my tabled amendment is to call it the “Education and Training (Broad Objectives, Attendance, Teaching Councils, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill”, which does, in fact, capture everything and is inclusive of that.

But looking at the title, summing up what we have discussed in the committee stage today, there are things that I think are better reflected within the title, because one of the things that we have heard consistently is the fact that we are removing the giving effect to Te Tiriti in section 127 of the Act. We are removing, even in some of the supporting objectives, the idea of local tikanga Māori and mātauranga Māori. We are looking at the fact that te reo Māori for ākonga Māori in mainstream is only available should they ask for it, as opposed to the default.

I think I would like the Minister to seriously consider my amendment, which is to call the bill the “Education and Training (Recolonising Education) Amendment Bill”, because that’s kind of what we’re seeing here in terms of the amount of things that have been removed as part of this bill. It’s really important when we do look at education, Minister, that we are looking at education that is appropriate in the context of the students and in the context of those who are learning and who are being educated in our system, because if they cannot find relevance in there, it is much harder for them to get the educational outcome that the Minister has mentioned throughout this committee stage.

In many ways, this is very similar to what we’re seeing when we first start to learn about things like phonics, which the Minister has mentioned throughout this debate. When we’re learning about our A, Bs, and Cs, we’re learning that “A is for Antelope, L is for Llama”, and those are kind of the things that, for some students, they may never see in their entire life. How are students able to relate to that, how are students able to learn best from that if they cannot find the relevance? My amendment that I would like the Minister to consider is changing the title to the “Education and Training (Antelopes and Llamas) Amendment Bill”.

Finally, I would like the Minister to consider the fact that when we’re looking at the packaging of the changes to section 127 with the removal of giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we are looking at the changes that we are making to the Teaching Council. We are looking at the fact that we’re introducing a redundant piece of legislation on freedom of expression, as many universities already have a policy on that. A better title of this bill is the “Education and Training (Atlas’s Puppet) Amendment Bill”.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment to clause 1 to insert “(Board Objectives, Attendance, Teaching Council and Other Matters)” be agreed to.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s remaining amendments to clause 1 are out of order as not being an objective description of the bill.

The Hon Willow-Jean Prime’s 14 tabled amendments to clause 1 are out of order as not being an objective description of the bill.

The question is that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 402 be agreed to.