Sitting date: 15 Oct 2025

EDUCATION AND TRAINING AMENDMENT BILL (NO 2)

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill covers a number of issues and items in the Education and Training Act. The purpose of this bill is to make amendments across a range of matters in the Act, to give effect to new policy decisions, and to make other minor and technical changes.

When I go through this legislation, one of the goals is to provide New Zealanders and those studying in New Zealand with the skills, the knowledge, and the capabilities that they need to fully participate in the labour market, society, and their communities. That also includes health, wellbeing, and safety, of course. This bill covers compulsory education sector primary schools right through to some of the changes that the Government is proposing in our universities.

This bill, in my view—and I lean heavily into the university tertiary education component—is an absolute Government overreach, no matter which way you look at it. It will enable ministerial micromanagement and undermine the teaching profession and the academic profession in our universities.

When the Government has made such big promises on change to our education system—the slogans that they've put out there—here is a bill of bits and pieces that is simply unnecessary, with several of the amendments already in practice. These things already exist or can already be done.

The bill removes some of the key parts of the Act that aim to promote and protect the rights of our tamariki and young people, such as those rights under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and under the National Education and Learning Priorities. School strategic plans will no longer be required to be holistic approaches to educating our tamariki and young people from complex and, in many cases, diverse backgrounds.

This bill deprioritises Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and I think this is actually maybe our third or fourth example of legislation under the National Government where they do this. Once again, here we are. It removes local curriculum, and this is incredibly concerning, knowing the work that educators have done in our local schools to understand local contexts, whether that be in a regional or an urban setting or within a historic setting. Those things are important.

Schools already have attendance management plans. Anyone that's visited a school—and I know many MPs in this House visit schools—knows that every single school has attendance management systems online, that they look at their data, that they use that, and here we have a bill that enforces this to happen. That reads to me as low trust of the sector and low confidence in our teachers and schools and in board of trustees and their ability to educate our kids to ensure that they are in school learning in the best way that they possibly can.

The Teaching Council should be independent. The National Government introduced this professional body and it should not be politicised here through ministerial overreach. The National Education and Learning Priorities were collectively developed by schools. Removing these now creates a narrowness in the curriculum offerings that we see that are offered in our schools and to our children and tamariki learning in those environments. So that's my summary. Here we are, with the Government focused on big ideas and slogans, but this is a mish-mash of a bunch of small things that really speak to influences, I think, of the minor parties set up in this Government.

I'll turn to one particular part, which is about protecting freedom of expression and academic freedom in universities, but before I do, those of us in the Education and Workforce Committee that went through the process of hearing submissions from right across the sector—and there were hundreds in total that we received in written and oral submissions. Only 13 percent supported this bill in its totality—13 percent out of hundreds of submissions that were received.

While this bill aspired to present thoughtful and future-focused approaches within our education system from womb to tomb, it simply hasn't, and that is concerning. Whether it be breaches to Te Tiriti o Waitangi—but significantly, across those submissions in each part of the sector, it was acknowledged that there was a lack of consultation, no matter which group in Aotearoa New Zealand that you came from, whether you're a practitioner as a teacher, whether you are a leader within the school board of trustees, at universities, and so on and so forth. It really strips away the commitment that our education system has to equity and to ensuring that everyone has the same opportunity in our education system, no matter where you come from.

It also presents constitutional and democratic concerns in the way that it silences community voices and particular groups of our society. That is not what we want to achieve and the education system that we aspire to in this great country of ours.

Coming back to protecting freedom of expression and academic freedom in universities, this really came from the ACT Party. This was something that was important to them, but I'm still yet to meet a university that says that this is one of their priorities. This is not something that they asked for. This is not something that they saw necessary. And certainly this is not within the expectations of a Government that is supporting them to be at their best, that is supporting them to contribute to economic growth. Instead, the National Government, with their ACT Party friends, have focused on freedom of expression as their priority for universities.

But we saw that more than half of those that submitted disagreed with this piece of legislation when it came to freedom of expression. Out of the 136 submitters that opposed this, they mainly focused on the unnecessary nature of the changes, the risks to academic freedom and erosion of university autonomy, concerns about safety and impacts on marginalised communities, and views that the changes were contrary to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. That comes from the departmental report that we put forward as a select committee.

Most concerning: when I asked the Minister if she had come across any examples, any evidence that validated this particular change, that validated the time that we used in this wonderful Parliament of ours, the only example that Minister Stanford could offer me was Don Brash—Don Brash from Hobson's Pledge and the ex-leader of the National Party. So that's probably the influence on this Government—Don Brash pushing through legislation in this House that isn't asked for and isn't necessary.

At the end of the day, universities in this country are autonomous in their own right. They're able to actually manage themselves and in many cases they do. I know that between Otago, between Canterbury that I visited, between Massey, Auckland, and the Auckland University of Technology, every university encourages academic freedom of speech, but there's also got to be safety in place to ensure that that academic freedom of speech doesn't translate into free hate speech—into free hate speech—in this country that we know impacts those that are most vulnerable. I do not support this bill.

Debate interrupted.

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