Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill, Education Amendment Bill

Third Reading

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Education Amendment Bill amends the Education Act 1989. It will play a key role in supporting the Government’s objective of how we get five out of five students achieving educational success. This Government is absolutely focused on that. We do not want educational success for a few—for some—but for all, so we have focused on a full range of measures that will deliver that possibility to all New Zealand school students and learners. This bill helps deal with a number of things, in fact. It creates the legal framework by which we will establish partnership schools or kura hourua. It also looks at the provision for how school staff may exercise search and surrender provisions, in order to ensure that schools are safe and secure places while protecting the rights of students. It also makes provision for a number of other areas that will allow greater flexibility in the delivery of education in New Zealand.

Starting with the two significant or substantial provisions in terms of creating the legal framework for partnership schools or kura hourua, we know that it will help us deliver a third option for educational provision in New Zealand. It will enable us to have a legal framework that allows for partnership between the community sectors, business, and education, because this Government recognises that there is not a monopoly on how quality education can be delivered. In fact, it can be delivered through a number of ways, and we are interested in exploring all of those ways, because we will leave no option unconsidered in how we ensure that we raise educational achievement for five out of five kids.

We know that our education system in New Zealand is world class but not world leading. We know that it is top performing as an education jurisdiction. It performs for the vast majority but not for all. We know that those who have been traditionally underserved by our education system are the same groups of people year in and year out. So there is a system response that we need to make. We want those parts of our education system that are performing well for the majority of our students to continue to perform well and, indeed, to perform better, but we also want to address those parts of the system that are not performing as well. That means working with all of the schools that we have—and we have over 2,500. Those 2,500 schools already canvass a range of options. We have single-sex and coed; we have total immersion in English and total immersion in Māori, and bilingual units; we have faith-based and secular-based schools; we have small, medium, and large schools; and, of course, they are spread the length and breadth of our country.

What partnership schools do is offer us another option—another option that is focused on results, on transparency, on ensuring that the sponsors who propose and go through a very thorough approval process are focused on how they will deliver educational results for the students whose parents choose that they should go there. There will be no compulsion in this. Partnership schools provide another option, but it will be transparent in terms of what is expected. It will be transparent in terms of the conduct of its business. It will be transparent in that the disciplinary provisions of the Ombudsmen Act will apply. It will be transparent in that all of the requirements will be specified in a contract between the Ministry of Education, on behalf of the Crown, and the successful sponsor, and all the reporting that will be expected in respect of that, whether financial, operational, or educational, will be reported to the Ministry of Education, which, of course, will ensure that it is captured by the Official Information Act.

The bill provides that the sponsors may recommend that a proportion of their staff may not be registered as teachers, but that is not to be confused with not having qualifications and not having skills. Indeed, kura kaupapa had the same kind of difficult birth that the Opposition would try to attend partnerships schools with. There was a belief that kura were so different from the rest of the mainstream system that they could not possibly be good, when the facts, which have been incontrovertible since they started, are that children and young people who go to kura by and large, on average, do better—Māori kids—than they do in the mainstream system. The kura will tell us that much of that success is due to experts in te reo me ōna tikanga, who may not be registered teachers but nevertheless deliver learning in ways that ensure educational success. We envisage the same sort of track record occurring here with partnership schools. So what this legislation does is put around it a legal framework that makes this option clear, stable, transparent, and focused on getting five out of five kids being educationally successful.

As I have said, there will be no compulsion for a parent to send their child here, as there is no compulsion for a parent to send their child to any particular type of school. And, as I have said many times before too, it is not the type of school; it is the quality of performance. We will be holding these schools to the highest standards. We will be expecting that they will be able to deliver successfully to these kids, and if not, the ultimate sanction will apply, and that is that they can, and will, be closed.

A second part of this legislation focuses on ensuring that we are very clear about what the rights are of not only teachers and principals but also other authorised staff to ensure a safe and secure environment wherein learning can break out, potential can be realised, and educational success can be within reach of every one of our students. But we are realistic. We know that schools are also microcosms of society and that there can be dangers and unsafe instruments or behaviours that are brought into schools. We want to ensure that our teachers and other authorised staff have the ability to exercise search and surrender responsibilities that ensure that where staff suspect that a student may indeed be harbouring inappropriate equipment or anything that might present a danger to other students, staff have the ability to require these young people to disclose those.

The Education and Science Committee members have worked really hard together, and with the sector, to strike a very good balance between ensuring the safety of all students and protecting the rights of the dignity and privacy of other students. This has been a very challenging balance to strike, and I think that this legislation does that. It will be reinforced by the establishment of guidelines, which will be formulated under the Secretary for Education’s auspices, but also through involving a working group from the sector. After all, principals and teachers are the ones who every day face these challenges and want to know that they are going to have sensible and practicable provisions by which they can exercise these cautions.

The final part of this legislation deals with a range of other provisions, all of which are dedicated to this Government’s commitment to raising educational achievement for all kids. One of the things it starts off with is a recognition that boards of trustees are Crown entities but, unlike every other Crown entity, they have no purpose articulated at law. This legislation remedies that omission by making it very clear that the role and purpose of boards in everything they do is to focus on ensuring that every student has the opportunity to do well educationally. So, whether it is the management of property, financial responsibilities to be discharged, the kind of curriculum programme that is to be taught, or the kinds of skills that are to be employed at the school, the board is doing all of that with one clear focus, and that is to raise the achievement of all.

Allied to that is a provision for making timetabling flexible. We learnt from Christchurch that by enabling schools to have flexibility in their timetables, they could cater for a whole range of students, but in particular for that very permeable interface, which this Government has made more permeable, in the secondary-tertiary transition, where young people go off to trades academies for 2 or 3 days a week, or take up other options such as internships, practicums, and so forth. We do not want a hidebound structure within schools that precludes that possibility. We want educational success to not only be in reach but also be achieved by five out of five students, and this legislation puts that within their grasp.

Third Reading

Before I begin the substantive comments that I want to make on the Education Amendment Bill, I have a quick question for the Minister of Education. I would like her to name one school board of trustees that is not focused on student achievement. Which one?

Hon Hekia Parata: We’re providing a legal basis for all of them.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, right, there we go—the Minister of Education cannot name one school board of trustees that is not focused on student achievement, because the reality is that when parents put their names forward to be on school boards of trustees, they do so specifically because they care about their kids’ educational achievement and because they care about the educational achievement of other kids within their community. I think it is absolutely disgraceful that this Government does not acknowledge that and that it seems to think it has to legislate for something that is blatantly obvious. It is blatantly obvious because parents, teachers, and everyone who works in the education system go into it with the view of improving the lives of young people in New Zealand. They already want to do that. They do not need to have the Government come in here and accuse them of not doing that, which is what Hekia Parata is constantly doing all of the time.

This is a sad day for the public education system in New Zealand. It is a very sad day, because it is a day when the National Government put politics before education. So when did this all start? We know how this bill came to be in the House. It was all to do with the cup of tea between Mr Banks over there and John Key—the one that was inadvertently recorded, and the one that they went to court to try to cover up. The cup of tea between John Banks and John Key is why we are debating this legislation in the House today. It is not about education. It is not about what is going to be good for education. It is riding roughshod over public opinion, which is something that we are well used to this National Government doing. Eighty-two percent of New Zealanders are opposed to the idea that charter schools should be allowed to employ unregistered teachers, yet this Government is bringing this bill to the House to deregulate the teaching profession, effectively, and it is ignoring the public’s concern about that matter. It voted down Supplementary Order Paper 221, which I put forward, which would have ensured that there were qualified, registered teachers in schools.

Seventy-one percent of the New Zealand public are opposed to the idea that a charter school operator should be able to make a profit, because New Zealanders know that money taken out of charter schools in profits is not money—

Hon Hekia Parata: Specious numbers.

CHRIS HIPKINS: “Specious numbers.”, Hekia Parata says. I think it was a One News poll.

Hon Hekia Parata: We don’t make up stuff like the Opposition does.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, she says they do not make up stuff. They do not make up stuff like the Opposition does. I am sure this is going to get better. Seventy-one percent of New Zealanders are opposed to charter schools making a profit, because they know that the money that is sucked out of the education system in the form of profits is not money that is going into educating kids. And why should the taxpayer be lining the back pockets of the National Party’s and ACT Party’s mates who want to set up their charter schools, rather than putting that money into education? This Government is putting $19 million into these charter schools, and in the very same Budget it cut the funding for a programme like Te Kotahitanga.

Hon Hekia Parata: Rubbish!

CHRIS HIPKINS: A programme that has a proven track record of lifting student achievement has been cut by this Government. Hekia Parata says that is rubbish. How much money is going into Te Kotahitanga next year?

Hon Hekia Parata: It is called building on success and actually—

CHRIS HIPKINS: No. That is right. That would be no money going into Te Kotahitanga next year—no money at all going into Te Kotahitanga next year, not one cent. The Government has cut the funding for it, because it has decided that charter schools are more important—charter schools, which the international evidence proves do not actually work.

Let us look at the United States. The Government seems to be so in love with the charter school system in the US. Stanford University did research into charter schools and found that for 37 percent of learners, they produced significantly worse outcomes—for 37 percent. For 46 percent they made no difference at all, and only 17 percent did better in charter schools. These are the sorts of numbers that the Government thinks justify its experiment in charter schools in New Zealand. This is not an experiment that is designed to improve the outcomes in education. This is an ideological experiment that is designed to privatise aspects of the education system, when what we should be focused on is ensuring that every school in New Zealand is a great school, and that every New Zealander has the opportunity to fulfil their full potential—their full potential—through access to lifelong learning opportunities and a quality public education system.

Hon Hekia Parata: No, every New Zealander hasn’t—not under that Government. They’ve just wrung their hands and said: “Isn’t it terrible that every year more kids are not passing—more Māori, more Pasifika.”

CHRIS HIPKINS: Hekia Parata has got the audacity to talk about Māori educational achievement, when that Minister cut the funding for the best Māori education programme in the country—cut the funding completely. It is gone. It is completely gone from next year, and Hekia Parata is talking about Māori educational achievement when, actually, she has been the Minister who has cut the one programme that had outstanding results. Why? Because it was too expensive. And what was her excuse? “Oh, well, we have got to come up with something that is a lot cheaper.” She has decided that it is going to be cheaper to cut corners and to cut the programme that works. That is how much Hekia Parata cares about Māori students’ educational achievement. She wants to cut the one programme that actually works.

And Hekia Parata wants to put unregistered and unqualified teachers in front of these Māori students. They are not going to have to learn the New Zealand Curriculum. They are not going to have to learn the New Zealand Curriculum in these schools. If Hekia Parata is so confident that they are going to be such good-quality schools, why are they not going to be subject to the Official Information Act? We hear nothing from the Minister. Deathly silence—nothing. Because the Government does not want the public to know what goes on within these charter schools. If the Government is so confident that these charter schools are going to act in a manner that is totally appropriate, why is it that the Ombudsman’s powers do not apply to the entirety of the charter schools’ operations? Another deathly silence from the Government. No answer to that question. We know that the Ombudsman’s powers in regard to the State school system have been used judiciously and have highlighted major systemic problems—

Dr Rajen Prasad: Bullying.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —including systemic bullying in one particular school, which the education agencies did not pick up. This is the sort of stuff that the Government wants to hide in charter schools by making them not subject to the Official Information Act and not allowing the Ombudsman the power to investigate. In short, the Government wants to shortcut the democratic process. It wants to hide what is going on in these schools.

The Government talks about the priority learners. Here is another question for the Minister: name one learner who is not a priority learner.

Hon Hekia Parata: All of them are priorities, but that Opposition—

CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, all of them are priorities. So when the Government talks about its priority learners, what on earth is the point? They should all be priority learners. So it is absolute weasel words when the Government talks about priority learners. What is it that Hekia Parata has against parent-led boards of trustees? What is that Hekia Parata has got against parent-led boards of trustees? She wants to allow private charter schools to be set up as profit-making businesses with no parental involvement whatsoever in how they are run. That is what this legislation allows, plain and simple. This is a failed ideological experiment that is being imported from overseas. It is not about improving educational outcomes for New Zealand students. It is not about making sure we pick up the best examples of what is working in this country and what is good for New Zealand students. It is not about that at all. It is about importing failed ideology. It is about the failed ideology that says that if we increase competition, we will get better outcomes. Well, actually, we have had several decades of increased competition in our education system, and the very priority learners whom Hekia Parata talks about are some of those who have been most disadvantaged by that competition that we have within our education system.

Hon Hekia Parata: Under that Government. Didn’t care enough, just published reports, and cried about it.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh, no. No, actually, it was a Labour Government that set up the Te Kotahitanga programme, which that Minister has now cut the funding to. It was a Labour Government that established schools of special character to recognise that there is a gap within the existing public education system. Schools of special character already allow that gap to be filled, yet this Government is turning its back on that, saying that it does not think that schools of special character are of any use at all. It is turning its back on that, and it is saying that it wants to privatise education and deregulate the teaching profession instead. And deregulate the teaching profession it will, because we saw from the Novopay inquiry today the veiled references to further deregulation, to renegotiating the collective agreement to make it simpler. Oh, yes, that is the agenda. We know that Treasury has been working on it. The Government is going to use any excuse it can to deregulate the teaching profession in New Zealand, because the National Party never learns the lessons of history. When we look at the countless examples of where deregulation of professions has gone wrong, we see that we do not need another one. The future of New Zealand’s education system and the future of the young people in it are far too important to experiment on, which is what this bill does.

Third Reading

The Education Amendment Bill amends the Education Act in the two principal ways that we have heard. The Minister of Education gave a very lucid explanation of how it sets out a legal framework for a new type of school, the partnership school. It alters another very important area by establishing powers around surrender to schools of harmful items, and retention by schools of harmful items. These harmful items may be defined as items that pose an immediate threat to the physical or emotional safety of a person or that detrimentally affect the learning environment. These might include such things as knives, drugs, grenades, guns, and items stored in electronic form.

This is a bill that, as introduced, included a number of new sections intended to clarify the powers of schools in searching and retaining students’ property. We made some key recommendations towards that. The Education and Science Committee looked at this in a huge amount of detail, and some of these key recommendations are worth delineating because these were not clear in the original bill. I have to once again acknowledge the hard work of most members of the committee for achieving this end.

Some of the key recommendations on the bill are as follows. We recommended allowing authorised staff members to exercise surrender and retention powers. I want to acknowledge Mike Sabin and his work in this area for a number of years. He made an outstanding contribution. We recommended allowing teachers to require the removal of outer clothing or the surrender of bags, with safeguards. The Minister alluded to the safeguards in this legislation. We recommended allowing teachers to require the removal of any head covering, gloves, footwear, or socks; clarifying that students may be encouraged to participate in voluntary drug programmes; clarifying that drug dogs can be used to search school property; and making it mandatory to have rules and guidelines about the implementation of this. I hear some barracking from the Opposition. This is crucially important. This is legislation that this committee can take great pride in because it has made the life of students throughout New Zealand a lot safer. It has made the life of staff, principals, and members of boards of trustees a lot clearer. So I want to acknowledge this work by members of the committee. There were some who stood to one side, but, in fact, those opposite and Tracey Martin from New Zealand First did work hard on this.

We have mentioned the key recommendations. I would like to now come on to why we have this extra strand in our cable of lifting student achievement that is called partnership schools. One of the simple reasons for it is that the only area in which New Zealand is leading the world is inequality. The gap between our best students and our lowest-performing students is the biggest in the world—the biggest in the world. As one submitter asked—I will repeat it—are we living in two different countries? Can we afford to be complacent? The committee heard that the Partnership Schools Working Group had received from sponsors 34 indications of interest in setting up a partnership school. Groups were saying that they want to do something about this.

Contrast that with the unions, which were ineluctably locked into opposing anything that showed the least bit of innovation. Most of those 2,300 submissions were form submissions, and there was not a lot of original thought, but the people who are actually wanting to get involved with these partnership schools were saying that they want a chance to do something about this. They want to use innovation to enable their kids to engage in learning and get a decent start in life, and they are willing to be held accountable for doing that.

The significant point is that it is a matter of choice. Nobody has to go into a partnership school. As outlined earlier, the most fundamental difference in the relationship between the Minister and the partnership school is that the relationship with the Minister will be contractual rather than regulatory. It is a contract to deliver engagement and achievement outcomes—

Third Reading

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Third Reading

I want to start my final contribution to this debate on this Education Amendment Bill by paying tribute to the parents and the teachers throughout our country who have the best interests of their children and their education at the front of their minds, and that is what leads their actions. Unfortunately, this is a group that has come under attack during the course of this bill’s passage through the House. We have seen attack after attack from members of the National Party on the fact that we had members of teacher unions come to the Education and Science Committee and offer their opinion. Well, these are the trained teaching professionals in our country, the people who have the expertise in education, and, yes, they did have an opinion. They had a unanimous opinion that this legislation is going to do nothing to further educational outcomes in New Zealand.

This is a dark day for education in New Zealand. Before the dinner break my colleague Chris Hipkins mentioned in his contribution that this is a fundamental change to what we understand about education in New Zealand that we are passing through this House tonight. I do not see this as anything to celebrate. I also want to pay tribute to the number of parents who are putting themselves forward for boards of trustees as we debate this legislation going through the House and who have stood to be part of the community governance of their schools, because this is something that charter schools will not have. This is something that the kinds of schools we are creating tonight in this House are doing away with—the very thing that has led New Zealand to have one of the most innovative, one of the most creative, and one of the most community-involved education systems in the world. We are doing away with that system with the passage of this legislation tonight. It is absolutely nothing for us to celebrate.

I want to make it very clear about the future of charter schools under a Labour-led Government in 2014. The ongoing funding and support for charter schools will not be guaranteed under a future Labour Government. We will not guarantee any charter school established during this term of the present Government the right to integrate into the State school system. We do reserve the right to impose additional contractual obligations on any charter school established, such as a requirement to employ registered teachers and the removal of exemption from the Official Information Act 1982. No further charter school will be established under a New Zealand Labour Party Government, and legislation allowing for their establishment will be repealed. Let us not make any mistake about what Labour’s position on these charter schools is. We do not agree with them, and we do not agree with them because they are not in the best interests of the children of our country.

Throughout the various stages of this legislation colleagues have outlined exactly what our problems are with this type of school being set up in New Zealand. It has been well rehearsed. Our objection to unregistered and unqualified teachers is on the record. We would not let unqualified doctors treat any of us, but members opposite think that it is OK to put unqualified teachers in front of classrooms. We do not.

Andrew Little: They don’t respect them.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: We respect the teaching profession and the expertise that they bring to their job. This is not something that we are willing to undermine.

We also object to the lack of scrutiny that these schools will be subjected to—the fact that they will not be subjected to the Official Information Act, that parents will not get that level of scrutiny, and that they will not have that recourse. We have talked throughout the various stages of this legislation and shown examples of when this has come into play and where it has been very useful, and, indeed, needed. I have talked already in my speech about the lack of community engagement by doing away with something that has become a New Zealand institution: the rights of communities to be involved in decision making about their schools through the role of boards of trustees.

But, most disturbing, we know these schools will not work. The international evidence points us in that direction. The very examples that have been thrown across the House by members opposite are actually the very failed experiments. They have touted Sweden as the great example. Well, educational achievement in Sweden went down when they introduced their freedom schools. And, actually, if they had read their Maxim Institute documents, they would know this, because the Maxim Institute has told them this. Right-wing thinktanks are telling them that charter schools do not work, so why do we not actually look at an evidence base for what we are doing with the education of our children? It just does not stack up. What we want is to celebrate the innovation that exists in our education system and to pay credit to the people who have been doing that and the wonderful things they do. Throughout the select committee process we had submitter after submitter come to us and tell us about the wonderful things they were doing and that nothing they were doing now—or, indeed, wanted to do—they could not do under the present legislation.

But for me as a Christchurch member of Parliament one of the most disturbing aspects of this is the guinea pig nature of Christchurch children in the Government’s thinking—that we are having the closure of schools in the Christchurch network to make way for charter schools. In fact, in question time today the Minister of Education refused to rule out establishing charter schools—or “partnership schools”, as she preferred to call them, because she could not quite stomach those words “charter school”—on the site of Christchurch schools that she closed down last week. She is not ruling this down.

Before our select committee we had Karran Harper Royal come and tell us of the experience in New Orleans and the way in which natural disaster is used as an excuse for experimentation. Today in this House we had the Minister confirm that is exactly what she is thinking. She will not give that commitment to the people of Christchurch and the communities of Christchurch. For the schools in my electorate—for Branston Intermediate School and Manning Intermediate School—that are being closed down, I want the Minister to give a commitment that a charter school will not be established on those sites. This is something these people deserve. They need to know that their school closure is not about building capacity in the network so this Government can implement its charter schools, which are the price of coalition with John Banks. That is right. Christchurch children are being used as the pawn in this coalition game. It is the price of a vote. It is the price of getting through all the pieces of legislation that this Government has been able to do by that one vote. This is not something that we on this side of the House feel is anything to celebrate—in fact, it is something that we should all be very sad about, and something that we should all see as a shameful day for education in our country.

This evening I received an email from a constituent. The Minister also received this email from this constituent of mine. She was very, very upset after hearing what happened in question time today and the fact that the Minister was not going to rule out establishing charter schools at the very schools that she was closing. She wrote to the Minister and she copied me in: “The schools you have closed, and you decide to replace them by using the land for charter schools, to me is another kick in the teeth.” This is how people are feeling. This is how people in Christchurch are feeling on the schools that have been closed. The people of Phillipstown are feeling like this. They know they have been let down by their local member. They know they have been let down by this Government. They do not have a school in that community any longer.

This is something that is straight from the playbook of New Orleans. That is one of the most distressing parts of this. We could have sat back and predicted this, given this Government’s commitment to playing from that playbook. This is what happened in New Orleans. And it is nothing about educational achievement. The educational achievement there has not gone up. Indeed, the educational achievement has not gone up anywhere where charter schools have been introduced. Members opposite have not been able to show us this, through all the stages of this legislation, be it in debates in this House or at the select committee, and have not been able to point to the fact that these are going to lead to better educational outcomes. For Labour, that is the bottom line: what will deliver the best educational outcomes for our children. We know it is not these partnership schools. This is not the way to do right by our children, and Labour cannot support this legislation. Thank you.

Third Reading

Charter schools have no future in our country, Aotearoa New Zealand, and I am pleased that the Labour Party has also made it very clear in the last address that it too believes that charter schools have no future in this country. We want to make it very clear to any of those who are considering establishing one that should there be a change of Government in the near future, your schools will no longer exist as charter schools. I have said that we may apply the integration criteria to those schools just to give those kids, at least, a bit of a chance, because changing schools is always very difficult. But if those integration criteria are not met or there are other reasons why those schools should be closed, including the fact that the legislation will be repealed, then charter schools will no longer exist in this country. It is important for those who are considering setting them up to know well in advance the risk they are taking in establishing charter schools in New Zealand. Why do we say that? Because we believe that the public money for education should be spent on a strong, free, and quality public education system, not on lining the pockets of a few wealthy cowboys who will drain the public purse for their private profit.

It has been very disappointing that the Minister of Education herself has shown no real awareness of her portfolio and the impact that the policy decisions she makes has on schools, teachers, children, and their families. We have had the Novopay debacle report today, showing that she did not even know who was responsible for managing this multimillion-dollar disaster. In this charter schools legislation and the policy behind it, we see exactly that same neglect and, frankly, incompetence from this Minister in managing this policy.

One of the key issues that was raised today in question time was the fact that this Minister will not guarantee that the schools that she has just closed in Christchurch will not then be rented out or used by charter schools for making a profit. Those schools were closed apparently because of population decline in those areas. Those schools were closed apparently because of earthquake damage that was too expensive to fix in those areas. But she still retains the power and, obviously, the intention to rent those schools out to the charter school cowboys who have no educational experience, who will be able to make a quick buck off the public purse, and who will, in doing so, exploit vulnerable New Zealand children, because that is who will be running these schools—cowboys. There is no requirement for these cowboys to have experience in education management or its delivery. There are fewer checks on these cowboys than are currently applied to principals and to teachers. Not only that but they will be able to employ untrained people—these are not teachers; these are just ordinary people, but without any training or expertise in education—to teach children who all of the research in New Zealand and before the Minister says need the best-trained, most professional teachers in front of them. If you want to teach vulnerable kids, they need the best possible teachers—those who are skilled and trained in this profession. But these cowboys will be able to get anybody they want, including their mother and father and sister and brother and uncles and aunties and cousins—anybody they like—to come in front of these kids, and get public money for that. It is significant amounts of public money for that.

Not only that but they will be able to get money for, for example, dealing with children with disabilities. I do not know whether people realise that. But they do not have to spend it on those kids. There is no requirement for them to spend it on those kids, and they can simply put it in their back pocket as a big fat profit from the public purse. At the end of the day, it will be New Zealand children who are left to find a decent education somewhere in their area, after being exploited and experimented on by John Banks and his mad ACT policies.

Sometimes I think that Hekia Parata really does not believe in this policy. Sometimes I think, more and more, that she is being bullied into promoting this policy because of a $19 million cup of tea that John Key had with John Banks 18 months ago. I do think that Hekia Parata does know what works for Māori. She has certainly been told by her own people, by her advisers. She has been told. She knows that kura kaupapa Māori are excellent and enormously successful for Māori kids, because they are a kaupapa Māori solution that is developed by the very families that this policy is supposed to be directed at—Māori and Pacific learners. She knows that Te Kotahitanga works and she has been told that Ka Hikitia—Managing for Success needs more resources to be even more effective than it is, but she has had to cut the funding to Te Kotahitanga in order to feed public funds into John Banks’ ridiculous ACT policy and his experiment on our kids. So the successful programmes are being cut and experiments that have a history of failure are being promoted.

I think that she too is nervous about the financial side. During the Committee stage of this debate last week, I asked the Minister very specifically to guarantee that if there is an Official Information Act request to her and her ministry about financial matters to do with charter schools, she would never use the commercial sensitivity clause. She sat here and said that it was OK that the Official Information Act did not apply to charter schools because all of their financial information would be made public. But she would not guarantee that she herself would not hide that information from the public. It does beg the question of why that is the case. I think that the whole reason why the Official Information Act does not apply to charter schools and why the Minister will not guarantee that she will not hide financial information herself, using the commercial sensitivity rule, is that John Banks knows all about the importance of hiding financial information. John Banks, actually, is right in the middle of a serious debate, a serious issue, where he has been accused of hiding financial information from the public.

You know, this is the man who cannot remember how much money he was given by Kim Dotcom for his mayoral campaign. This is a man who took a cheque from Skycity—who took a cheque from Skycity—I understand with his very hand, and still does not remember how much it was for. So this is a man who has deliberately hidden information about his public financial affairs from the public. He is now facing serious action elsewhere about this issue, and because John Banks thinks that he is such a master at keeping financial information secret and clearly is unhappy to have it revealed here in the House, he is making sure that all those charter school cowboys that he is promoting through his party membership—all those charter school cowboys—also get the chance to hide their financial information from the public. They will be funnelled funds and funds and funds—millions of dollars; at least $19 million in this first tranche—of public money, and John Banks will make sure that they do not have to reveal the information. John Banks, the master at keeping financial information secret, will make sure that so can charter schools.

So not only do we have all of the evidence about how charter schools fail these kids the most, fail the most vulnerable children—overseas, only 17 percent of them do better than in the public system; it is less than one in five—but the information about how public education money taken from our State schools will be used is being kept secret, because John Banks wants to protect those cowboys so they can continue to make a public profit. There can be no other excuse for keeping those charter schools out of the Official Information Act. There can be no other excuse for the Minister of Education failing to guarantee that she will reveal all the financial information that is useful, that is critical, for the public to see. She would do that only if she is being bullied by this $19 million cup of tea that forces an exploitative experiment on our most vulnerable learners. We oppose the Education Amendment Bill. Thank you.

Third Reading

What a weak contribution by the “co-loser” of the Green Party. How weak and pathetic, being attacked at this hour of the night by—

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at that insult that was levelled at me—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I think that after the conduct of the member during her speech, and the way in which she lifted the tone of the debate outside the realm of the debate, what the member has said—she might not like it, but it is a response that is to be expected.

Denise Roche: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this a new point of order?

Denise Roche: No, it is on the same issue—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I have ruled on it.

Hon JOHN BANKS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. They get dressed up on television with the lipstick and the make-up, and butter would not melt in their mouths—

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am on my feet.

Metiria Turei: I take personal offence at that comment about my appearance and ask that he be required to withdraw and apologise.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think it is perfectly on the same plane as the remarks that the member made previously and—[Interruption] Order! Look, I understand whether or not a member takes offence, but when the member gives offence and then jumps to her feet, I believe that the point of order is out of order. John Banks.

Hon Members: Point of order.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have ruled on this matter. [Interruption] I have ruled on this matter. [Interruption] Order! Please sit, I am on my feet. But the member will desist from any further comments in relation to personal matters.

Denise Roche: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have ruled on the matter.

Denise Roche: A different issue.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: A new point of order?

Denise Roche: I am offended by the sexism, and you have not addressed that.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I have ruled on the matter.

Hon JOHN BANKS: The chairman of the Iwi Education Authority came to this Parliament. He is one of the most distinguished Māori educators in New Zealand. His name is Dr Toby Curtis and he says that Māori undereducation in this country is institutionalised and expected. Well, we say it is institutionalised, but it is not expected, and we do not like it. We do not like kids going through 11 years of education and, at the end of 11 years of education, not being able to read and write. The Labour Party Opposition, the apologist for the teacher unions, might think that that is OK, but we say that it is not OK, because we want five out of five kids to have a world-class education. The leader of the Māori Iwi Education Authority came to the Education and Science Committee and he said to it solemnly that this bill is well overdue. He wants it to pass in its total content.

Tonight is a celebration. It is a loss for the Labour Party, it is a loss for the Green Party, and it is a loss for the losers of New Zealand First, but it is a big win for kids struggling out there in an education system that has doomed them to failure, and that is the 20 percent of our kids who leave school with no educational qualification whatsoever.

Almost 25 years ago Parliament passed the Education Act 1989 and put the Picot report into effect, giving us Tomorrow’s Schools. Parliament wanted to empower educators and school committees. Parliament wanted to educate educators and school communities, as well. It wanted to decentralise and liberate the compulsory education sector. The then Labour Government said that reforms would address inequality of achievement, but the teacher unions cried foul. The teacher unions said that only education experts like teacher unions, not parents, would be able to govern schools. We on this side of the House say that on this the teachers unions have got it wrong. The schoolkids who are underprivileged, schoolkids who come from deprived homes, and Māori and Pacific schoolkids we are putting on a pedestal tonight, because this bill, promoted by the ACT Party and supported by the National Party and the Māori Party, no less—the Māori Party, no less—says that this is well overdue. In fact, the teacher unions said that Tomorrow’s Schools was a first step in privatisation. I was in Parliament 25 years ago when the teacher unions came here, and the apologists from the teacher unions on that side of the House said that it was the first step in the privatisation of education, and no such thing is happening.

All these arguments, tired and worn out, are ringing in our ears. The truth is that the union opposition to partnership schools has been straight out of the old playbook. They are the same tired old lines they trot out at any attempt at reform of the education sector.

Twenty percent of the education sector is an institutional failure to the kids in that sector tonight, and that is what the Iwi Education Authority came to the Parliament and told us. We have a long tail of underachievement in New Zealand. I say that it is not good enough, the ACT Party says that it is not good enough, the National Party says that it is not good enough, and the Māori Party says that it is not good enough. Tonight kids are the winners. The Labour Party members are losers, the New Zealand First members are losers, and the Green Party members are losers on this philosophical debate, because Parliament, on balance, has said that we are going to change it.

It is shocking that any system could take a child through their formative years and, after 13 years in the system, turn out a student who is functionally illiterate and in no way prepared for the modern world. Partnership schools will make a real difference to New Zealand’s most disadvantaged students, and for the life of me I cannot understand why the teacher unions and their apologists on the other side of the House are opposed to lifting the tide that floats all boats.

The policy is not an attack on our teachers, who, by and large, do a fantastic job. The policy acknowledges the contribution of the 35,000 support staff in our schools who are so frequently belittled by the Opposition because they are not registered. They are belittled—35,000 people who help out in schools every day of the week are belittled. We acknowledge them.

No one is saying that this is a quick fix. No one here is saying that there are not a number of ways of addressing institutionalised failure. We are not going to spend this money on education and find that 20 percent of the kids leave after 13 years of education as failures. Every second Māori has not passed National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1. Every second Pacific student has not passed NCEA level 1. The decision will be based on the needs of students, as it should be, not on the needs of teacher unions, and not on the needs of the Labour Party - Green coalition of losers.

Both the Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission have been invited to work with the Ministry of Education on these contracts. Thankfully, Parliament was not swayed by the Opposition’s attempt to limit the types of organisations that can run partnership schools. Achieving educational improvements and being accountable always mattered more than whether a partnership school is run by a trust, charity, business, iwi, or church group.

I want to thank Cam Calder, the chairman of the Education and Science Committee. I want to thank the Prime Minister and Hekia Parata and her colleague Nikki Kaye for the support they have given us, and I want to thank the Māori Party, because the Māori Party does not want institutionalised failure amongst Māori any longer. The Māori Party does not want kids to leave school after 13 years with no literacy and no numeracy. The Māori Party wants aspiration for young Māori, and the Pacific Island representatives on the other side of the House should be ashamed of themselves for not supporting this—ashamed of themselves. Every second young Pacific student leaves school after 13 years without NCEA level 1 maths or English.

I have good news for the House tonight: 35 quality applications have been made from groups across the country to turn this policy into something very worthwhile, to turn education into an opportunity for everyone, and to make sure that Māori and Pacific kids can foot it with the best of the other kids in the schools and have the dignity of work after a first-class education.

It is a big loss for the small-minded apologists for the schoolteacher unions opposite, and it is a big, big win for kids up and down the country who are wondering what they are going to do when they have had 11 years at school and they cannot read and cannot write. Partnership schools will be established in areas that experience significant underachievement, where students are underserved by the current system. I cannot for the life of me understand why the educated people on the other side of the House do not want a world-class education for everyone. They can sling the abuse and they do not like it, they can wear the lipstick and look good on TV and make a big impression and they do not like it—

Denise Roche: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Hon JOHN BANKS: —but they do not like it, because they come into the House—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! There is a point of order.

Denise Roche: Once more we are having to put up with sexism from that member, and I find it really offensive.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I did ask the member to desist. He will withdraw the remark.

Hon JOHN BANKS: I withdraw. The ACT Party—

Hon Members: Apologise.

Hon JOHN BANKS: If these members opposite would breathe through their noses and listen for a minute, I have got a compelling finish to this great piece of policy change. It is going to revolutionise education in this country for our poorest students, right across the board.

Sue Moroney: Downwards, downwards—you’ll make it worse.

Hon JOHN BANKS: Listen carefully, Mrs Moroney, and you might learn something. The unelected member of Parliament from the Labour Party might learn something if she breathed through her nose, and this is what it is. We want to be associated with partnership schools. These schools will stand or fall on their results, as it should be. I want to thank everyone who has helped support the passage of this bill, and who believes, like ACT does, that every child deserves a world-class education—every single child deserves a world-class education. This is a land of opportunity, and our future is predicated on looking after the poorest of the poor, who can raise their aspirations by having an education that teaches them to read and to write. Partnership schools will make a difference—a big difference. Roll on first day, first term, 2014.

Third Reading

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. You know you are in trouble when the most honest person on that side of the House is John Banks. The vision is actually 50 schools to 60 schools.

Maggie Barry: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take exception and offence to that remark. I am an honest person.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think—[Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. We know that in this House all members are regarded as honourable members. I think the debate will make more progress if we stay away from personal attacks, and debate the issues.

Denise Roche: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this a new point of order?

Denise Roche: Yes, it is. I thought the Speakers’ rulings were that you could not say that you were offended by a comment that went to another member.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is the same point of order. I have already ruled on it. The member is quite out of order raising an issue after I have ruled on it.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this a new point of order?

Metiria Turei: Yes, it is. It is another offensive comment from John Banks, who just described my colleague as stupid. That is not in order in this House, and I—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I did not hear the comment—

Metiria Turei: Well, I did hear it.

Denise Roche: I heard it, and I’m offended.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Did the member—will the member withdraw and—

Hon John Banks: I withdraw.

TRACEY MARTIN: The reality is that this is an emotive issue. These are our children we are talking about. That is why it is emotive. These are the children whom each one of us cares about. I have no doubt that members of the Government care about the education of children. I have no doubt that Mr Banks believes somewhere inside himself that this is a good policy. Unfortunately, as Sir Peter Gluckman just said earlier this evening, this is not evidence-based policy—this is not evidence-based policy. Peter Gluckman was here earlier this evening in the Beehive theatrette promoting evidence-based policy, so that downstream these decisions are endurable. This is not an endurable decision.

New Zealand First needs to join with the Labour Party and the Green Party in issuing a warning. That warning is: please do not mortgage your home to open a charter school. Please do not put yourself in debt to open a charter school, because it is very unlikely that you have a long future. Any best practice developed inside a charter school will be brought inside the State school system, and it is possible that you may want to shift from a charter school to a private school, but, please, I beg you, do not put yourself in debt to do this, because its future is too unstable.

If this policy was about targeting those children who are achieving in the tail—the stanine 1 to stanine 3—and if that was whom these schools had to direct their services towards, that would be different. If these schools had to provide something that is not currently supported for those students whom Mr Banks refers to being in the “tail of underachievement”—for example, dyslexic or dyspraxic children—that would be different. If these schools had closed rolls only to target those students whom we are not supporting well enough inside our public school system, that would be different, but they are not. Catherine Isaac came to my office and said: “No, no, no, no, we are targeting middle New Zealand.” There is no money in decile 1, decile 2, decile 3, stanine 1, stanine 2, and stanine 3 children. They are very intensive work—and they deserve it—but you cannot skim a profit off them. So there lies the flaw. If this was not-for-profit, that would be different. But none of those things are inside this Education Amendment Bill.

I am still trying to find out who is driving this bill, because it is not the New Zealand public. Private schools’ rolls have not increased from the 5 percent for the last 30 years. They have not increased. There is no more demand for that style of education, and yet, possibly—possibly—this door was opened when the recession began in 2008 and private schools’ rolls started to drop. It may be—it just may be—because the public system is doing so well. The public system is doing so well, particularly over the last few years with the extra supports that needed to be in place, and with more professional development, compulsory professional development, around Te Kotahitanga and Ka Hikitia—Managing for Success, then we might have seen even further leaps inside the public system. But, perhaps because the mainstream public school system is doing so well, private schools are under pressure. Perhaps that is what is driving this, because there is no appetite for it out in the real world.

I need to also issue another word of warning. Under this legislation it is not possible to have a school for Māori. It is not possible to have a school for Pasifika students. This is an open-door policy. Mr Toby Curtis and Mr Pem Bird think that they will take 23 successful kura from inside the current Education Act 1989—and I believe my colleague Metiria Turei made the Minister give us volumes in her answer today at question time, while she was trying not to say something. Toby Curtis and Pem Bird—who is the president of the Māori Party, and therefore the Māori Party has a conflict of interest in this House—are intending to take, and I predict, 23 kura outside the Education Act 1989 and turn them into charter schools. They can then throw away the current curriculum, deliver what they believe is more culturally appropriate, and do what they like.

The word is that there is a contract here, though. The Minister says: “There is a contract. Trust us. Trust us because there is a contract.” Earlier today we had a debate about a contract. That was a pretty big contract. It had key performance indicators in it, it had levels of achievement that had to be reached, or it would be stopped. Why should we be confident, with our children, that these contracts will be any different? The point is that we will not know the key performance indicators—we will not know the key performance indicators. If it is a primary school, we have a 6-year window. We have a 6-year window in which to get it right. Are we doing it 100 percent right? No, we are not. But $19 million is taken, currently, out of Vote Education. Instead of supporting literacy support for 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds with an identified need, instead of supporting dyslexic and dyspraxic children inside our systems, and instead of supporting truancy officers to make sure children go to school, we have decided to open another competitor.

The other word that is being bandied about, the other thing that is said to calm us all, and to calm the public, is that this is about “choice”. But, actually, to have true choice, just as Dr Gluckman said earlier today, you need to be truly informed. You need to know all the pieces of information before you can make a choice. There has been information withheld from the New Zealand public. For one thing, there is no transparency around the “high-quality applicants” for the 35 schools. I happen to know one school that has found itself on that list but never asked to be on it. I find that very, very interesting. Apparently it was asked to speak at an ACT electorate meeting, and the next thing it knew, it had its name on a charter school list.

There are things that have not been said. I cannot believe—I choose not to believe that my colleagues on the Education and Science Committee truly support this bill. I understand their circumstances. I understand why they have had to stand and say what they do—very little, to be perfectly honest, because there is very little they can say. But I am sad for them because their names will be on this legislation when it passes through this House.

The other thing I do want to touch on is the clause that has been inserted around governance and around making boards of trustees responsible for the academic outcomes of all students. I find that very interesting. It is interesting because—[Interruption] Why the boards of trustees, is the question. They are not the professional leaders of the school. They are elected parent trustees who are there to govern the school, not manage it. The School Trustees Association has warned that this blurs even further the line between governance and management. Is it possible that what this is about is the fact that the Minister can remove boards of trustees but cannot remove principals or teachers? The Minister has had a problem implementing national standards, and there are still schools—even more schools now, after the farce of e-AsTTle and other testing—that realise that national standards are flawed beyond repair. So possibly the ministry has suggested this is the way to place pressure on, to make sure the national standards will be met.

The final thing is that Mr Banks forgets that of the 20 percent of children in the tail, 5 percent are children with special needs. Every one of those children has an individual education programme, to attain their best. But Mr Banks holds so much ignorance around the field of education that it is impossible to have a conversation with him.

Third Reading

It is a pleasure to take a call on the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill. This bill represents very, very positive options and choices for the public. I just want to put it on record that the House has heard the venom that has come from members on the other side, who have spoken against the communities that have shown a passion to take ownership of the underachievement in education. I stand here tonight to say that it would be a lunacy of any future Government, if the Opposition were to get into power, to do away with communities taking ownership of the achievement of their young ones.

So, on that basis, let us clarify a couple of points that have been falsely represented on the other side. They talk about unqualified teachers. Sadly, when you hear Opposition members speaking, when they are speaking to their friends, they are trying to sound angry because they want to be believed to be wedded to that side of the debate. The truth of the matter is that those people who are unregistered teachers will have to show outstanding qualities in teaching in order to be in a charter school. There will be police vetting. There will not be secrecy around the Teachers Council vetting of teachers. The State system is not the only solution.

What has ever happened to the Labour Opposition? It is not since 1989 that it has had any vision. What have we seen coming out of the National Party? We have seen the Industry Training Act, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority framework, the private training establishments, the trades academies, and more. It gives me great pleasure to support this great step forward, this addition to the Education Act. I commend this bill to the House.

Third Reading

This bill—the Education Amendment Bill; from the crew who tried to convince us that bigger class sizes would be better for educational outcomes—just about says it all. This is the same bureaucratic babble and nonsense that those members tried to foist on New Zealand parents when they said that having more children in classes and fewer teachers in classrooms would be better for educational quality. Well, they were trying to pull the wool over parents’ eyes then, and they are trying to do the same now. Well, actually, they are not even trying to argue, let us be honest about it. National members cannot even sustain more than 1-minute’s worth of arguments for charter schools. They are so embarrassed by their feeble attempts.

I challenge the next National MP who gets on their feet to talk for 10 minutes and argue for charter schools, and not do what Cam Calder did. He is the chair of the Education and Science Committee, and he could not even utter the words “charter school” when he gave his contribution. He wanted to talk about search and surveillance. He would not even address the issue, the main issue, in this amendment bill, and that is that the Government is borrowing a failed system from the United States, like National does all the time with all of its policies. It cannot come up with New Zealand - grown, Kiwi-based success stories, so it looks to wreck our education system by borrowing from a failed system in the United States. Is not that the National Party all over? Is that not also John Banks all over, as well?

The shameful thing about this piece of legislation is that the Government is putting politics before our children. It is putting politics before our children and the quality of the education system. It is trading in our world-class public education system—it is trading that in—for a failed system. I am going to disagree a little with Tracey Martin from New Zealand First on this issue, because she said there is no evidence around charter schools. Well, there is. The evidence is that they fail. The evidence is that they fail. In every other country where they have been implemented, they fail. So we have got the evidence. We know that charter schools do not work.

What is it that the Government does not get about its so-called 20 percent tail of underachievement, which it keeps going on about? The Government says that 20 percent of our children do not achieve. John Banks agrees. He has to agree. That is the line the Government has been trotting out for about 5 years now—20 percent. There is another 20 percent figure I want to remind that Government about. Twenty percent of our children in Aotearoa live in poverty. Twenty percent of children in the land of milk and honey live in poverty.

What do Government members not get about the correlation between those two statistics? Twenty percent of our children live in poverty, and 20 percent of our children, the Government says, are failing. What do those members not get? Why do they not join the dots? [Interruption] Join the dots, Mr Banks, because you and that party over there will do nothing about addressing poverty. They are doing nothing. In fact, they want to pretend it does not exist. That is the way that party wants to address poverty. It wants to pretend it does not exist.

Instead of dealing with the root causes and addressing the issues that New Zealand families are crying out for, in terms of support for their children, what do those members do? They come up with a solution that no one has asked for. They come up with a solution over a cosy cup of tea—well, actually, a corrupt cup of tea, as we learnt afterwards. That is the solution they have come up with—charter schools.

No one asked for charter schools. Well, actually, I may be wrong there. I apologise if I am wrong, because I think John Banks asked for charter schools. This was the dirty deal that was stitched up between ACT and National, so that National could get back into power. They did a dirty deal over Epsom, and they did a dirty deal, over the teacups, with charter schools as well. That today, sadly, is what our children are being exposed to. That is what future generations are going to be exposed to, because of that dirty deal over a dirty cup of tea and that dirty deal over the Epsom electorate.

Hon John Banks: Oh, diddums!

SUE MORONEY: John Banks says “Diddums”. That is a really mature contribution to the debate. That is about the level of it, in terms of maturity. This is the man, New Zealand, who is wrecking your education system and his response is “Diddums”. That is as good as it gets. I want everyone in New Zealand to understand who the mastermind is behind charter schools. The best defence he can come up with is “Diddums”. Well, that about says it all.

On the select committee we had a briefing from a woman from New Orleans, and Karran Harper Royal was her name.

Hon John Banks: How bad was that!

SUE MORONEY: Mr Banks wants to know how bad it was. I think he needs to listen up. It was pretty prophetic, what she told us—not pathetic, but prophetic. It was a prophecy. She warned us that in New Orleans what had happened was that the Government there used the opportunity of a natural disaster to close down a number of State-funded schools.

Dr Rajen Prasad: It sounds a bit familiar.

SUE MORONEY: It sounds a bit familiar, does it not? Those State-funded schools were replaced by these failing charter schools. She came to warn us that she believed that exactly the same thing would happen in Christchurch: a natural disaster, and the Government comes along and closes down State schools, and then opens up on those same sites privatised charter schools without any accountability to the public.

What did we hear today from the Minister of Education? I think the Minister pretty much confirmed that that is exactly what this Government has planned. Members opposite know it—listen; you can hear a pin drop. They know it. They know that their Government has gone about closing down State-funded schools in order to slip taxpayer money across to charter schools run by their mates, without any accountability.

And let me say, while I am on that issue, that John Banks tried to pretend—and so did the last speaker, Colin King—that somehow these are going to be community-run facilities, facilities run by the community for the community. Well, they are not required to have a board of trustees; not like State-run schools. They are not required to actually give any information to the public about how the public’s own money is being used in running these schools. There is only one reason why the Government would want to hide that information—no, actually, I can think of two: one is it does not want the public to know how their money is being misused, and, secondly, it does not want the public to discover how those charter schools are failing.

The Government makes a lot of the contracts that are going to be made between the Crown and these charter school operators, whoever they may be—and they could be anybody, quite frankly, because there are no rules, there are no regulations, and there are no standards when it comes to who can run a charter school. Is that not right, Mr Banks? There are no standards at all as to who can run a charter school. There are no standards. The Government is dropping the standards. It will not let anyone understand what is going on, because it has deliberately kept charter schools out of the purview of the Official Information Act. And it expects us to believe that this bill is about improving the education system.

Well, if it were an ounce about improving the education system, the Government would be proud of it; it would not be hiding it. While I am on the subject of who would be proud and not hiding, can I say “Shame on the Māori Party.” Shame on Māori Party members for not being involved in this debate and for putting their votes to something they are not prepared to even come and speak to in the House. They have not made a contribution to this debate. They are instrumental in forcing this upon our wonderful education system, yet where are they when the rubber hits the road? Where are they to stand up and be counted on why they are putting their votes—

Alfred Ngaro: What are you doing?

SUE MORONEY: —beside these schools? I can tell that member what we did. The Labour Government funded te kotahitanga. We did not cut the funding, like his Government is doing. He does not care at all for Māori achievement if he can be a member of a Government that will cut the funding to one of the most successful programmes for Māori students—te kotahitanga. That member need not take that attitude, because if he really meant what he said, he would not be doing that.

Third Reading

I am astounded at what I have heard from the previous speaker, Sue Moroney—actually, at what I have heard from everyone on the Labour side and from their coalition partners, their mixed-ownership model partners, the Greens. It seems that it is OK for them to have choice but they do not want New Zealand parents to have choice. They do not want to see parties like the Māori Party actually trying to do something about the one in five students who is failing. They say partnership schools will fail, but they do not want us to do anything about it. What are they doing, and what did they do, about the one in five who is failing? Their argument holds no water, much like many other of their policies.

I want to focus on just one aspect of the Education Amendment Bill, which deals with the surrender and retention components.

Sue Moroney: Oh, search and surveillance, here we go.

MIKE SABIN: Well, if that member actually took a little bit of time to talk to some people out there in the school community—parents, principals, and boards of trustees—instead of swanning around this place, she would find that it is a challenge out there. This bill actually provides them with the meaningful tools that they need to keep students safe and the learning environment conducive to learning. That is what this is about—that is what this is about.

I think I have pretty much nailed my point on this, but can I just say, over the din and the ranting I am hearing from the other side, that the search and surrender components of the Education Amendment Bill are about providing the tools that these schools need to keep their environments safe and protect the learning environments of those students who are there to learn. The guidelines are something I encourage the Ministry of Education and the school community to get on with and to get sorted, and let us make our schools function and work well.

Third Reading

A split call. Louisa Wall—5 minutes.

Third Reading

Kia ora. Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk about what is titled the Education Amendment Bill but for me is actually the “Anti - Public Education Amendment Bill”. This bill is gutting community involvement in education. It is gutting parents’ involvement in their children’s learning. I want to say, from living in a community like Manurewa, that my principals and my teachers are incredibly dedicated and hard-working people, as Cam Calder knows. They are dedicated and hard-working people. So what is the biggest challenge in communities like Manurewa? As Cam will know, it is not that our principals and our schools do not have the best interests of our children at heart. The reality is that we have two cohorts of children living in Manurewa—and my colleague Sue Moroney touched on this. We have children who come from stable families. They are able to go to school day in and day out. They may not have an early childhood education experience, but what we know from Jane Milner and Redoubt North Primary School is that if they can have our kids, who are, on average, 18 months to 2 years behind as 5-year-olds, for up to 3 to 4 years, those kids can catch up. Our children are clever. They just live in circumstances beyond their control that mean that it is hard for them to go to school.

So we have a cohort of children who are stable kids and who come from families living in homes as part of the community. They can go to school and they can succeed. The other cohort of children is called unstable children. They come from homes from which some are enrolled in nine schools in 1 year. So what does the Government want to say? The Government’s solution, in terms of charter schools, does not address the underlying issues. The underlying issues are that families do not have access to affordable housing. That is the primary issue. Transience is a huge issue in communities like mine. The solution that this bill proposes is actually incredibly flawed, and it is also scientifically corrupt. It is an incredibly dishonest piece of legislation. But at the heart of this legislation you are actually eroding parents’ rights to be on boards of trustees and to be part of solutions to ensure that their children are getting the best education.

I am proud to say that of my 29 schools, eight have had Education Review Office reports that say that they do not have to be visited for 5 years. Why is that relevant to this debate? It is relevant to this debate because what it says is that my schools—the schools that Cam Calder visits—are run by principals and boards of trustees who are doing a fantastic job for our children. I want to acknowledge the work that our teachers are doing and that whānau who work in Manurewa are doing to better our children and their education. But the reality is that they cannot control the social determinants of those children. They cannot control the fact that the children do not have a home. They cannot control the fact that some of the parents in my community are in low-paid work.

Mike Sabin: What on earth has that got to do with this bill?

LOUISA WALL: This bill is about charter schools and partnership schools being incredibly flawed and corrupt. Did you not hear me earlier? The solution that this Government is proposing is pathetic, and it is not going to achieve anything for communities in my electorate.

I want to conclude by agreeing with my colleague Sue Moroney about the Māori Party. It is only because of the Māori Party that this bill will be passed. It has tools within the current Education Act—sections 155 and 156—for kura kaupapa Māori to be designated as special character schools. We do not need charter schools and partnership schools in New Zealand, and we will repeal this legislation as a priority. Thank you.

Third Reading

I am very pleased to be able to take a call in the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill on behalf of my colleague Catherine Delahunty. I am pleased to report for the benefit of the Hon John Banks that I am not wearing any lipstick tonight, so, unfortunately, he will have to put his sexism aside and listen to the content of my speech.

I am glad to be having my say because, I have to say, this is one of the most appalling bills to pass through the House in my time in Parliament so far. Basically, at its heart, this bill is a $19 million cup of tea. It is the result of the deal between John Banks and John Key, which allows for a single member in this House to insist on an unpopular, undemocratic, non-transparent law change, which no one publicly campaigned for before the election. That is the $19 million cup of tea that we are getting tonight in the form of this bill. It is yet another example, I think, of this Government governing for the benefit of its mates, and, in this case, for its mate John Banks.

What is so abhorrent about this bill? Well, I have got five things, and I hope I have time to talk about them all. The first is that there is no requirement for partnership schools—yes, I will use the terminology—to have registered teachers in their schools. A university degree is apparently enough, perhaps not even that, to teach children—

Hon Member: No, they don’t even have to have that.

HOLLY WALKER: —yes, not even that—in the vital stage of their education. Teaching is a highly complex job, it is vitally important, and it is a job that we should value very highly. It is informed by theory, pedagogy, culturally appropriate knowledge, and having the right skills to work with vulnerable learners, none of which are going to be available to people who have not trained as teachers and who are not registered teachers. So this bill is undermining the teaching profession and with unregistered teachers it is an experiment, essentially, on our kids.

The second reason that this bill is abhorrent is that it is not subject to the Official Information Act. So we have got $19 million of public money being spent on these schools with absolutely no level of public oversight on how that money is spent. There is no transparency, there is no ability for the Ombudsman to investigate complaints about the schools, of which I am sure there will be many, and it is basically an inexcusable lack of accountability for the use of public money in our school system.

The third reason that the bill is abhorrent is the use of public money for private profit-making businesses, and it is straight-out corporate welfare. It is handing taxpayer money to private profit-driven companies to allow them to run schools for profit and to pocket public taxpayer money for profit. They can receive special funding for certain elements of that, including for students with disabilities, but they do not have to provide any level of accountability that that money is actually spent on what they say it is going to be spent on. They can pocket it as profit if they want to, and that is taxpayer-funded public money.

The fourth reason that the bill is abhorrent is what we heard today, that it is rubbing salt in the wounds of schools that have been closed. Today we heard in question time that, first of all, the Minister of Education could not even remember signing her own Cabinet paper that suggested closed schools would be the logical first locations for the new charter or partnership schools. She did not remember signing that advice, but that was her advice to Cabinet. Then, when she was questioned about it, she could not rule out that she might use closed school sites in Christchurch to open charter schools. After everything else that she has put the school community in Christchurch through—trying to tell them that their schools are irreparably damaged or that they do not have enough students to stay open, and then closing their schools—she is now telling them that she might allow private for-profit charter schools to open up on the sites of the schools that she is about to close. Talk about adding insult to injury.

The fifth and final reason why this bill is so abhorrent is that it is an ideological solution in search of a problem. We have a great public education system in this country, and it delivers some of the best results in the developed world, in terms of public education. There is absolutely no evidence, including from the United States, from where this model was imported, that charter schools will actually deliver any better results for those most vulnerable learners whom those on the Government benches like to trumpet in this debate, as though they are going to be solving the problem of inequality and education through the mechanism of charter schools. There is no evidence that that is required and that charter schools actually achieve that. It is already possible to establish special character schools to meet particular community needs under the Education Act. There is no need for this legislation. It is abhorrent and I am very proud to speak in opposition to it.

Third Reading

Thank you for the chance to speak on this third reading of the Education Amendment Bill. We have heard a lot of talk, particularly coming from the Opposition, using the word “ideology”—that this is all about ideology. There are two general elements that you can kick into here. The first is that this side of the House has not used the word “ideology”. In fact, it has been straw man or “straw person” politics—we have to be gender-neutral tonight. It has been straw person politics, arguing what supposedly the Opposition has said. That is not what it is about. You see, the key with ideology is that you can flush it out pretty quickly. I suppose I want to suggest charging that this has been more about the Opposition.

Firstly, the thing that you see when ideology comes from the Opposition is that you know it is ideology because it is highly emotional, it is yelling and it is screaming, and it is that belief from the ideological left that if you yell louder, somehow it makes your point more valid. The second side—and we have been hearing again about ideology, and I am reversing this back on to the Opposition—is around consistency. We have heard the Opposition talk about special character schools and State schools. We have heard about integrated schools.

David Bennett: How about Catholic schools?

SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes, very good Catholic schools as well. Of course, the thing is that if you want to be consistent, then a further option really is not a problem. I suggested during the Committee stage that actually these parties—the Labour Party and the Greens—would have been fighting against integrated schools in the 1970s because they are different. What they want, and they have talked about it themselves, is to have their hands on a singular control. I also get the sense that they just want to keep on talking.

The third element where you know the Opposition is coming from an ideological side is proportionality. When you look at any argument, it is all about proportionality. We have heard tonight the “Chicken Little” approach to politics from the—

Hon John Banks: Chicken liver.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Chicken liver, even, possibly. It is sort of a pâté, maybe. But the Opposition has said the sky is going to fall in. This is going to be the end of education. This is going to be the end of childhood. Somehow this is going to destroy New Zealand, this approach here that attempts another addition to help one out of five children.

The final side—the fourth side—you realise, is not about ideology from the Government’s side but from the Opposition’s side, and that is threats. You hear threats: “We are going to change this legislation come hell or high water.” It is the same with the whole casino thing: “We do not like it, so we are going to make threats.” So you can see that ideology is being spoken about and accused of the Government, but, actually, it is coming from the other side—lack of consistency, lack of proportionality, lots of threats, and emotionalism.

This Government—and, I think, all sides of this Government—supports teachers. It has a respect for the teaching profession. A number of the people on this side have been teachers. A number of us have friends who are teachers. We have respect for the teaching profession and what teachers engage with. This bill is not about replacing schools; this is about an addition. This is not removing the current system; this is adding on to it in the same way that our special character schools work. Tracey Martin was talking about how we have got a number of people who have special needs who are well catered for, but there are still options. So this is not about replacing, it is not even about replicating; it is about an addition.

I think there are other elements we need to consider. There has been a lot of talk, a lot of mix-up, particularly from the Opposition, around the whole registered versus qualified side. The language from the Opposition has been very imprecise. This bill says that being a registered teacher is not an absolute condition; being qualified is. I want to challenge one of the last speakers who was suggesting that somehow the only way you can teach is to have gone through teachers college—the only way you can teach is through teachers college. That cannot make sense—that cannot make sense.

People all through this House teach their children in all sorts of different ways. Each and every one of us teaches and imparts knowledge in different ways and not all of us needed to go to teachers college to do this. We did not need to do that. In fact, even when you look at something like tradition, if you would even use that word “tradition”—dare I use that in the House—there is an element of teaching, as tradition comes from the root word, the etymology, “to pass on”. That is something that each and every one of us—

Hon Simon Bridges: My mother was a teacher.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes, yes. His mother is a teacher.

Hon Simon Bridges: My brother.

SIMON O’CONNOR: His brother is a teacher.

Hon Simon Bridges: Sister went to teachers college.

SIMON O’CONNOR: His sister has gone to teachers college, on this side of the House. But, see, teaching is about passing on. It is about tradition—handing on—and that is the core of the teaching profession. So this is not about not having qualified teachers; this is about registered teachers. Just a couple of final points—

Kris Faafoi: Thank goodness!

SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh, we go “thank goodness”. I come back to the ideology and contradiction—contradiction. This side—

Dr Cam Calder: Tautology.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Tautology, even—repetitious tautology. They have been yelling and crying, that side of the House, that someone will not take a call. And then when someone dares to stand up, it is “Oh no, we do not want to hear that now.” This is all about control.

I want to come back to what I was saying in the Committee of the whole House. This is taxpayers’ money. Individual taxpayers contribute to the education system. If those individual taxpayers want to come together to form a school with their money, well, all power to them. They are taxpayers. They are individuals. They are families. They want this education system. Let us pass this bill. Let us put it into law. I welcome 2014.

It is a great opportunity for me to talk about the great way that the health budget this year is dealing with the changing needs of our population, thanks to the stronger financial management that the National Government has brought to the public health service. Health is, again, the biggest recipient of increased funding in the Budget. The total health budget this next year will be $14.65 billion, including capital. When you contrast that with only 5 years ago, it was $11.8 billion. So this Government has continued to invest in protecting and growing the public health service in the last 5 years. In tight world financial times, when so many countries are reducing their public health spending or freezing it, we are continuing to protect and grow our public health budget. In fact, the OECD found that New Zealand had the third-biggest increase in public health investment of any country in the OECD in the latest available figures that it has produced. Vote Health in this Budget gets an average of around $400 million available for each year over the next 4 years to meet pressures and initiatives. That includes $350 million in new money and around $50 million in savings. It gets a lot better, because we are able to use that money to invest in the changing needs of our population.

Let us just have a look at some of those changing needs. We have been able to take money that we had set aside for district health board deficits and risks, and, because of our strong financial management, we have been able to take that money—about $35 million—and put it into a heart disease and diabetes initiative. This heart disease and diabetes initiative is a very, very significant boost in funding that we have announced in this year’s Budget. Why is it important? It is important because heart disease remains a leading killer of New Zealanders, and, similarly, so many of the risk factors associated with heart disease are also associated with diabetes. We know that diabetes is a major challenge for New Zealand, but what is an even more important challenge is the prevalence of pre-diabetes and what we can do as a country to deal with pre-diabetes. So in our $35.5 million funding boost for diabetes and heart disease in this Budget, we are including $16 million to further increase the number of New Zealanders getting heart and diabetes checks. These heart and diabetes checks are an important preventive health target. They are important because they tell people of an age that they have got risk factors that may lead to them having heart disease or a heart attack, or maybe having diabetes or being pre-diabetes. Once people know that they have got these risk factors, once they know that they may be pre-diabetes, they can then make the lifestyle changes that they need to make in order to better control their disease risk factors. So we are doing that.

Secondly, we are going to double the number of Green Prescriptions that doctors and nurses can give their patients. Green Prescriptions are a reference for a patient to go to a provider who can help them with more physical exercise or better nutrition. We know there are very, very significant health benefits if people are more active, so that is why we are going to double the number of Green Prescriptions over the next 4 years. It is a really significant investment of over $7 million. For those who have got diabetes—remember, this is very much about preventing people getting diabetes; a very strong focus on pre-diabetes and prevention—we have got a number of local diabetes care improvement programmes. We are going to significantly increase that funding by about a third over the next few years in order to expand those local diabetes care programmes to provide more diabetes nursing and more podiatry services. That is dealing with heart disease and diabetes, but so many of these people who have got heart disease and diabetes also have other diseases—they call them co-morbidities in health. We want to support those people to get better care from their general practitioners, so we are putting $13 million into expanding the Care Plus programme, which is a general practice - based programme that provides additional support to patients with long-term conditions. So you can see, this is a Budget about the changing needs of our population.

Similarly, with aged care, we know that we are ageing, and we know that our country is getting a greater prevalence of dementia. The prevalence of dementia is growing at 4 to 5 percent a year. It is going to be a very, very major challenge for New Zealand, so in this year’s Budget we have got a very, very significant investment of $70 million extra over 4 years for aged care and diabetes and a $20 million boost for home support because we think we should be supporting our older folks to stay longer in their homes, if they want to, and that is a $20 million boost to help those people do that. Similarly, there is going to be a $12 million boost to dementia bed subsidies. What we know is that we are going to need a lot more residential facilities for people who are demented. As I said, it is growing at a rate of 4 to 5 percent a year, so what this will do is say to rest home providers: “We need more dementia beds. Switch on the investment signal.” This is the third year we have had a pretty significant increase in dementia bed subsidies, and we are getting more of those beds.

We are also going to put $2 million into dementia awareness, because over the next 10 years dementia is going to affect everybody in terms of their friends, families, or someone whom they know who will be suffering from dementia. It is not a disease that people should be frightened of. They should be aware of the supports that are out there, so we are investing $2 million to provide more dementia awareness programmes and to assist our general practitioners and our general practice teams with how they can identify dementia, particularly with early detection, because that can better help manage those people’s positions. Over $1 billion extra is going into training for our health care workers, and there is also a $33 million increase for rest home bed subsidies across the board. We increase those subsidies every year, and this is a very significant increase of $33.2 million. So that is focused on our ageing population but also on this increasing prevalence of dementia—150,000 New Zealanders are projected to have dementia by 2045-50. So that is a very, very, very significant investment there.

At the same time this Government continues to invest very strongly in preventive health, and we are almost doubling our rheumatic fever programme. Members will recall that rheumatic fever became a national priority in 2001, and then that Government did nothing. It made it a priority, and then it did nothing, other than more people got rheumatic fever. So our Government came into power, and we have invested in two Budgets in a rheumatic fever programme aimed at reducing rheumatic fever in our most at-risk communities. What we know is—and even the Green Party, which did not really want to admit this, but in its leader’s speech on Sunday it actually talked about the fact—that where we have run this throat-swabbing in parts of the Hutt Valley, we have not had one case of rheumatic fever while we have been running that programme. So we are running this programme right across the high-prevalence areas—Porirua, the Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, the East Coast, South Auckland, west Auckland—and it is making a very, very big difference.

But, of course, what happens when school is not in? That is why we are investing in this Budget $11.25 million in developing sore throat drop-in clinics. One of the key messages is that one of the reasons why mums do not take their kids with a sore throat to some doctors is the time they have got to wait to be seen, because mums are leading busy lives. So what we are going to fund are these sore throat drop-in clinics, particularly in Porirua, South Auckland, and parts of west and central Auckland, where parents will know that if their kid has got a sore throat and they need to be seen, they can turn up at these drop-in clinics. There is no charge, they can be seen straight away, and they can have the throat swab taken and know whether their kid needs to get some antibiotics to deal with streptococcus A. It is a really sensible initiative. It is backed up by the $100 million investment on expanding the home insulation programme. This is a Government that acts across the life course and puts a huge investment into prevention. You know, almost a quarter of a million homes were insulated under the first 4 years of our insulation programme. Another $100 million is going in, particularly targeted at those high-risk homes.

So this is another Budget of another year of record investment in health, targeted at the areas that matter most to patients: making sure we have got a strong investment in prevention, making sure that we are dealing with the changing needs of our population, and making sure that our hospitals continue to provide the quality services that New Zealanders want. That is backed up by our 2,000 extra nurses and our 1,000 extra doctors working on the front line of New Zealand’s health services. This Government came to power with the challenge of repairing the damage of a decade of neglect, wasteful spending, and clinical disengagement. In the last 4½ years this John Key Government has delivered more operations faster, more preventive care across the whole range of services, and a health system that New Zealanders can be proud of.

I am advised that the Greens wish to split their call—two 5-minute calls.

I am pleased to take the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Appropriation (2013/14 Estimates) Bill, and particularly to talk about Vote Corrections—the money we are committing to spend on our prisons over the next 12 months. It is interesting to note that the amount assigned this year is in the order of $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion, which is in line with what we saw last year, but it is worthwhile going back 10 or 11 years, when the budget for the Department of Corrections was to the tune of perhaps $460 million.

Vote Corrections has increased by some 250 percent over 10 or 11 years—two and a half times more money is being spent this year than we spent a little over a decade ago. Increases of that order are not only unsustainable, they are unacceptable given that one would think that the expenditure of all that extra money would be leading to better outcomes from our prison system, but, sadly, that is not the case. We are seeing outcomes that are no better, and, indeed, in many situations are actually worse than they were 10 or 12 years ago. We need to ask some serious questions about why this considerable expenditure of public money is not producing better results.

We saw a very graphic example this weekend just past of a corrections system in turmoil. We saw a major prison, one of our newer prisons, with serious fires burning and with 30-odd prisoners running amok. We saw a number of guards injured and a number of inmates injured. We saw lives put at risk—and I must take this moment to acknowledge the work of the corrections staff, the firefighters, the police, and others who were obliged to go into harm’s way to try to settle that very unfortunate situation.

You might dismiss this event as a one-off event, but the outbreak of violence at Spring Hill Corrections Facility was actually one in a series of events, and these events, these violent outbursts, are becoming much more frequent in our prison system. Going back to the middle of last year, we saw two major incidents at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison of prisoners protesting, breaking out, and setting fires. At Pāremoremo, similarly, about a year ago, prisoners were barricading themselves in a tower, trying to draw attention to the absence of response to their legitimate complaints. At Ngāwhā prison last year we saw several rubbish fires and damage to cells. At Rangipō prison a few months ago, in March this year, prisoners were protesting about poor conditions. In April this year we saw two incidents: one was when prisoners were fighting amongst themselves, and then there was an assault on guards a few days later. Two weeks ago there was a serious stabbing at Pāremoremo, and now we have had a major riot at Spring Hill.

These are not isolated incidents; these are indicative of a system in turmoil. We are spending a great deal of money but we are not getting good outcomes. A lot of the reason for that can be sheeted home to the general culture, the attitude, over the previous two decades. There is more and more of a punitive culture in our prisons. There is much more of this nonsensical political contest to be seen as being tough on crime, which actually means being tough on our communities because, ultimately, inmates in our prisons, with very few exceptions, are returned to the wider society. To the extent that we treat inmates poorly, do not respect their human rights, and do not provide humane conditions in our prisons, inevitably we will see the knock-on effect of that when these people come back into our communities brutalised, dehumanised, paranoid, and wanting to strike back at the system that has struck them.

We need to do a great deal better. The money assigned in this Budget is sufficient to do better. We do not need to spend more money; we need to spend it differently.

There is one obvious place to spend that—there is one safety valve in our prisons, one opportunity for prisoners to attempt to have their rights and their conditions respected, and that is the complaints process. We know the complaints procedure, which is an internal process managed within the corrections department, is failing badly. We are seeing too many complaints going directly to the Ombudsman. The Office of the Ombudsmen is being overwhelmed with quite low level prisoner complaints because there is no confidence within the prisons and within the families. Those who know what is happening in our prisons know that the internal complaints system is failing. The Ombudsman is being over burdened. That would be one very good place to start making a difference, to get a system that works.

I would like to focus my attention in this short call in the Budget debate on the issue of housing, which is indeed an issue that has dominated much of the coverage and debate of this year’s Budget. I guess, to start on a positive note, the Government does deserve to be congratulated—in the sense that it has finally cottoned on to the fact that we do have an affordable housing crisis in New Zealand. I must say it took it long enough. As we know, this affordable housing crisis is absolutely the worst in Auckland, where the average house price last year was $735,000. That is the average price to buy a new home in Auckland and that increased 12 percent in the last calendar year alone. So any time you hear the Minister of Housing crowing about low interest rates and how affordable housing is I would just remind you of that figure. Not only that, but in Auckland it takes a staggering 71 percent of the average take-home pay to service the mortgage on a house that is priced in the first quartile. That is, this house is one of the cheapest quarter of houses in Auckland and it takes 71 percent of the average income to service the mortgage on that house. When we talk about housing affordability, anything over 30 percent of your income spent on housing is considered to put you in housing stress, and for that house to be severely unaffordable. We have a situation in Auckland where it takes 71 percent of the average take-home pay to service the mortgage on one of the cheapest houses in the market. So that is your crisis for you, and it is a pretty severe one.

Well, the problem is supply and demand, right? We know that in Auckland we need about 13,000 new dwellings to be consented each year. We have been averaging only about 3,000 so it is no surprise that we have a severe housing crisis in Auckland. It is worst in Auckland but it is actually bad everywhere. That equivalent figure for the national average in New Zealand is that it takes 49 percent of the average take-home income to service a mortgage on a lower-quartile house. So, again, remembering that anything over 30 percent is severely unaffordable and puts a household in housing stress, we have got a problem across the whole of the country. In places like the Central Otago lakes, Nelson and Marlborough, Wellington, and Waikato that problem is elevated above the national average, so we have a major problem.

What we have seen from the Government in terms of solutions is the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, which I look forward to beginning to hear the submissions on in the Social Services Committee tomorrow. In recognition of the fact that the housing crisis is worst in Auckland, this bill is effectively giving effect to the Auckland Housing Accord that the Government reached with Auckland Council earlier this year. That might be all right if that was all that it did. Clearly it has spoken with the council in Auckland, it has identified the problem there, it believes it has identified a solution to it, and it has brought some legislation to the House to deal with it. Unfortunately, the legislation does not deal with the issue just in Auckland, it actually applies to the whole country. Not only that but Auckland Council itself, because it was not consulted on the drafting of the legislation, once it saw it actually found that there were inconsistencies between the legislation and the accord that it thought it had signed up to with the Government.

But there are serious problems with the models that are proposed in the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. First of all, it is based on the idea that the development at Hobsonville Point is the answer to affordable housing in Auckland. Given that the so-called affordable houses at Hobsonville Point cost either just over $400,000 or $485,000, which is not affordable for most people, that is not a great model to base it on. There is also no guaranteed percentage of affordable homes in the new special housing areas that are going to be created, and they override local democracy. Those other regions that I mentioned, where housing affordability is also a problem, had better watch out because the Government is coming to create special housing areas in their region whether they like it or not. All the power is with the Minister, and, if they cannot negotiate an accord with the Minister, he can just put a special housing area in place, regardless of whether the local council actually agrees, overriding both the Resource Management Act and the local democracy for that area. And remember, at the end of all of that, there is absolutely no guarantee in that special housing area that a percentage of those houses that will be provided will actually be affordable for the New Zealanders who are in severe housing stress at the moment. So congratulations to the Government on identifying a problem—it is a shame that none of the measures do anything at all to address it.

I am very pleased to stand and speak on this debate on Budget 2013, a Budget that keeps us on course in a consistent and a steady way. I recall the comments of the chief executive of the Tātua dairy company, who said that consistent is good, predictability is even better. I think that we have produced a Budget that certainly the business community, and consequently, I think, families and industry around this country can rely on. I think that has been par for the course under Bill English, our finance Minister, who over this last number of years has enabled this country to be seen as a standout country amongst many economies around the world because of our solid track record and where we are going with this economy. We are right on track. We are delivering what we said we would.

I think that today is a very hard day for the Opposition, which is having to throw up all sorts of objections and criticisms when we know that so many things are going right. It is to do with the leadership, the vision, the stability, and the safe pair of hands that we have in our Minister of Finance, as well as our Cabinet colleagues.

We have the lowest mortgage rates since 1965, after-tax wages have increased 22 percent since September 2008, and we know the cost of living increases have been their lowest since 1999. This is good news for New Zealanders. It is not just statistics and information coming out from the Government benches; this is what Statistics New Zealand says. Just over a month ago it reported that grocery food prices for the year ended April 2013 decreased—that means they went backwards, went down, became more affordable for New Zealanders—in the last year. Fresh milk went down 7.4 percent. I can remember that before the last election in the Commerce Committee there was such a hue and cry for an inquiry on the price of milk because everybody thought it was out of control and that we were paying huge international prices. We know that even just this last week Fonterra has announced a record payout for farmers, and yet we see in the last 12 months that the price of milk has come down. That is, I think, the response of a good economy that is tracking along nicely. We also know that cheese went down 7.8 percent. Butter is down 23 percent. Meat, poultry, and fish are down 6.7 percent. There were a couple of things that went up: avocados went up 48 percent. So when you go to the shop to buy your avocados, sorry. It was such a small production in 2012, compared with a bumper season in 2011.

This is all good news for New Zealanders. This Budget is sensible and it is solid. It is what New Zealanders want right now. We do not want big sweeping and novel ideas like capital gains taxes and wholesale electricity monopolies. We do not want all of that stuff that those people are throwing up there because they are desperate. They are trying everything they can to attract the attention of New Zealanders. It is voodoo politics. They are hoodwinking people when we have got it right for 5 years now, getting it right all the time for New Zealanders.

Labour believes that it can enhance competitive power pricing by becoming the monopolistic buyer of wholesale electricity in the country. Pull the other leg. Come on. We are wide awake to that. The only people who are doing that are people who are moving away from monopolistic purchasing into a market-driven economy. Those members know that, but they will not say it. It is a daft idea, and we do welcome all their daft ideas because they just go to prove how solid and sensible this Budget and this Government are for the sake of all New Zealanders. Colin Espiner—who, as I said in my last speech, is no friend of the Government—says: “This is Third World, funny-money stuff.” The New Zealand Herald referred to it as a 1930s command economy solution. We need to understand that we live in a society where, when we get the balance right around competition, it brings through all the benefits of not only better innovation but better pricing for New Zealanders.

I think that this is what the Government is doing in this Budget. We are responsibly managing the Government’s books. We are building a more competitive and productive economy, and we are delivering better public services.

Andrew Little: What about households?

JONATHAN YOUNG: We are doing a lot in the housing space. It is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. It is steak on the plate, while you wait, and that is so good. We are delivering better public services. We are rebuilding Christchurch. We are building the foundations for future success. We need to understand that this is something that we need to build into the economic DNA of this country. It takes time. It takes time to get things right, because it took 9 whole years to get it wrong—we know that. We know what a stuff-up they made of this economy, and we know the hard work that we have put in place, the hard thinking, and the hard yards, and it is starting to pay off. There was 3 percent economic growth this last year. It is far above the growth of the UK, America, Australia, and the European Union, of course. It is better than all those economies and all those nations that we look up to. They are looking up to us now because we have got it right, and this Budget is doing a great job.

We are increasing education investment. We are not just aiding people, we are enabling people. There is a difference there. There is something there. We are putting tools in the hands of people so that they can have choices. They can be predetermined in their life because we are ensuring that they are getting education where it is really needed. We are pouring more and more money into early childhood education to ensure that those young kids are getting their foot on the first rung of education early on, so that they are not struggling and trying to climb up later on. We are putting more and more money into tertiary education, and more and more emphasis on, and accountability into, tertiary education. This is so that our young people—and not just young people, but all New Zealanders—who go through these educational programmes can have their foot on the ladder of employment in a very successful way. They are coming out of our high schools with National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 in far greater proportions and numbers. We are seeing already that this is shifting. Already we are seeing some great responses. We know all the controversy and criticism that we have narrowed education. But we have not. We have a broad base on our education.

What we are getting right is the fundamentals. We are getting the foundations right so that people can go into tertiary education with really good linguistic skills and abilities, and so that they have really good numeric skills and abilities. These are the foundations for future learning, and we have got to have them right. We cannot keep seeing our polytechs having to do level 1 and level 2 courses. They need to be doing levels 3, 4, 5, and 6. We need to make sure that our secondary schools are getting all the fundamentals right, and they depend on the primary schools to get that right. So we have this complete pathway of learning, and every single step on this pathway has to be strong and fit for purpose, and has to be achieving for our young people. We cannot have one part of this system falling over, because it is like a domino effect.

We are getting it right. We are putting the money where it really counts. We are investing in education. We are investing in innovation. We are investing in all these areas that, in time to come, even as we see it now, progressively we will see more and more. We are seeing New Zealanders succeed. This is incredibly important for this nation. We are just a small nation of 4.4 million, competing in a huge world market of talent. We have got to maximise our talent. We are innovators, we are dreamers, we are thinkers, and we are inventors. And when we have our education strong and robust, when we have fewer people needing Government support and more people bringing resources to Government and to their communities, what we are going to see is a nation with its head up. We are going to see a nation that forges ahead, and we are going to see a nation that internationally, economically, and educationally will continue to forge ahead. We are going to take those high places of achievement and we are going to earn them. This Budget is very much a part of that long-term future for the future success of all New Zealanders. Thank you.

As we discuss the Budget that this Government has handed down I think it is important to consider the Government’s progress through its agenda to exploit all of New Zealand’s natural resources. In that context, it is necessary to look at the importance that the Government places on its environment budget. I have taken a look at Vote Environment and I find it absolutely remarkable that there has not been one single policy initiative in the environment budget—not one new idea, not one new programme, not one new policy initiative to protect, maintain, and enhance our environment.

The Minister for the Environment has done things, but they are not reflected in this Budget. Let me give the House some examples. The budget for Vote Environment is to be set against our claims—our diminishing claims, and our claims that are consistently under criticism—of being 100 percent pure. We have poor and declining water quality. We have erosion of our protections for our environment, proposed in the Minister’s second tranche of Resource Management Act amendments, and we have some self-interest reflected in the water recommendations and proposals that the Minister put out earlier this year. I would really like to know whether the Minister even put in a bid for her environment vote, because it is not apparent from this Budget.

I will just list some of the things that are contained in the Vote Environment part of the Budget—let us have a look at them. Environmental management obligations and programmes—there is no change, absolutely no change. Improving resource management—there is a drop of $2.4 million from the previous year, so improving resource management, as a Budget line, gets a cut. This needs to be explained. If the members opposite wish to give the Minister a heads-up, that will be asked in the estimates questions when she appears before the select committee.

I will tell the House where one area of increase has happened, and it is in the funding to service the Minister. Funding to service the Minister has gone up by $313,000, and the note attached to that in the vote is that the ministry expects that there will be an increase in ministerials as a result of the Resource Management Act and water management reforms. Clearly, the Minister is aware that the Resource Management Act reforms and the water management reforms are going to be controversial, so in order to bolster her own ability to answer the questions that are going to flood in and the challenges that are going to be taken against her, she has increased the funding to service her office by $313,000. That does not enhance the environment one iota.

Advice on environmental hazards and waste—there is no change; no change there. The waste levy administration and assessment of projects for funding by the levy—there is a drop of $600,000; $610,000, actually. But it is a $600,000 drop in the waste levy administration and assessments of projects that are funded by that levy to see how various industries can minimise their waste production. So there is not any vision about next year or the year after, and whether or not our waste production and our minimisation of that is going to improve. There are no new targets. There are no new ideas. In fact, there is a cut of $600,000 in that area. The Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund—there is no change there. There is no change in the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund. How is the Minister intending to deal with new contaminated sites as they emerge?

She has only to look in her backyard at the Ōwaka Pit in her electorate, which has had medium-density fibreboard combusting spontaneously and releasing toxins into the air. This has been happening for months. The fire has gone out only just in the last 2 or 3 weeks. The Minister clearly does not bother about that, even though it is in her electorate, because the prevailing wind makes those toxic fumes blow over the people who live in the electorate of my colleague Megan Woods. The Minister is not so concerned about the people in that electorate that she thinks there is anything that needs to be done about the burning of formaldehyde and the release of those toxins into the atmosphere, creating an unpleasant smell and an irritating set of toxins that have caused some discomfort. So even for the Minister’s own backyard she has not appropriated or, it would seem, even asked for additional funds to address contaminated sites. The Ōwaka Pit is now in a state that needs remediation. The fire is out; now the ground has to be recovered.

The Contestable Waste Minimisation Fund—no change. This fund has a certain allocation per year. Sometimes the funds are not spent in 1 year and they are moved into future years, but there is no change. Where there has been an increase—and here we go again—is to the Environmental Protection Authority, which gets an increase of $1.9 million. Why? It is so that the Environmental Protection Authority can implement its functions under our exclusive economic zone legislation and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012, so that when challenges are brought about the illegality of the law that this Parliament has passed in respect of controlling shipping above the continental shelf—which, I am still of the opinion, is not legal—then there will be sufficient resources in the authority for it to address those things.

There is no change to the Fresh Start for Fresh Water Clean-up Fund for New Zealand water bodies—no change to that. For the Rotorua Lakes Protection and Restoration Programme there is a slight re-phasing of funds between the years but no overall change. Lake Ōkareka in Rotorua is suffocating from hornwort. It is a hugely invasive aquatic plant, and there has been nothing in the way of additional funding put aside to restore Lake Ōkareka, which is one of the Rotorua lakes. I have been to the lake. I have seen it myself. The people there work hard at trying to deliver quality. The fund for the Waikato River clean-up—no change. There is an amount of funding over 30 years, but the real value of the funding will reduce over time. There is no change to the Waikato River co-governance, no change to the Waikato River co-management, and no change to the waste disposal levy disbursement to local authorities.

The environment budget is a disgrace. The environment budget is lacking in any vision, any foresight, and any protective measures, and simply plays into the hands of this Government’s agenda to mine and drill everything it can get its hands on in terms of our natural resources. It does not matter whether we have the legal right to do it or not, this Government will proceed to exploit our environment in order to produce dollars, and usually for its friends. So Skycity was sold the gambling laws, Warner Bros was sold the employment laws, and now we have Shell being sold the Crown mineral laws. Thank you.

Budget 2013 is Bill English’s fifth Budget and it is, indeed, building momentum. It confirms that New Zealand is back on track, with more economic growth, more jobs, rising wages, and a return to surplus by 2014-15. That is all great news for New Zealand, and very bad news for the Opposition, which is bereft, as we have heard this afternoon, of any fresh ideas or policies. Both Labour and the Greens are, of course—and have proven it time and again—anti-growth parties. They are opposed to any and all initiatives that would create jobs and boost the economy. The Opposition’s policies of borrowing more and spending more would take our economy backwards at a great rate. And when no one would lend us any more money, what is its solution? It is to print more, of course. That is the sort of madness that the unholy alliance of no ideas would deliver. It is the tired old tried and failed policies of Labour and the “Watermelon Greens”—those individuals who are green on the outside and socialist red at heart, and who think they are doing so well.

This Budget 2013 is a defining document from a Government that is spending prudently, not spending up large, which is all Opposition members can come up with. So I am not going to waste any more time this afternoon on them. Instead, I intend to focus on the very positive measures that were introduced in the Budget in the vitally important areas of health, housing, and welfare. As our very competent and successful health Minister, Tony Ryall, outlined at the start of today’s Budget debate, this John Key - led Government is investing more in health than ever before. The Minister outlined the number of green prescriptions and the strong focus on investing in preventative care. To recap, we are making a $1.6 billion investment available over 4 years. That has boosted the total health spending to a record level of $14.7 billion.

Let us look specifically at where that is being targeted. As our population is healthier and we are living longer, it is projected, as the Minister indicated, that by 2045 or 2050 there are going to be 150,000 New Zealanders with dementia. As I and many New Zealand families know only too well, the painful reality of living with dementia is a terrible struggle for the sufferers and for their families, who have to watch as the people they love gradually decline and need more and more high-level support. My late mother’s 10-year decline with multi-infarct dementia was not untypical. It was very sad to see a once independent, successful businesswoman and vibrant personality struggling to do the simple things like making tea and toast, and desperately wanting to stay independent and in her own home for as long as possible. To help people in these difficult situations, we are investing an extra $70 million in aged care and dementia services. That money is being very carefully targeted into the areas where it will help most.

As my mother, Agnes, lost her ability to recognise people and places, it became even more important to her to stay in her own home, because it was a safe place and it was a place where she was familiar with all her surroundings and her garden. She was a happier and calmer person there. But, as that eventually took its toll on her, Mum needed more and more support to stay at home. Although I was able to pay privately for much of the assistance that she needed, it is a very difficult thing to manage long term. I know that the $20 million that has been allocated in this year’s Budget targeted specifically to be invested in home support services will be invaluable. Some things are priceless. It will provide practical help so that people can stay in the familiar environment of their own home for as long as possible. With an ageing population, we need to ensure the best possible quality of life for dementia sufferers and for their families. It is very clear to me that it is important to detect dementia as early as possible. I know of many families who were in denial for a long time, and who were just not aware of the onset of dementia and its early signs. So they experienced, I am afraid to say, heart-breaking misunderstandings and family rifts, actually, until they understood what was happening.

Overall, as a society, we need to have a much better and earlier awareness of dementia and its inevitable pathway. When the time does come for more expert intervention and residential care options, we need a workforce that is equipped with the right level of training. There is no question in my mind that caregivers need to be compassionate, and they need that quality in abundance. I believe it is basically a vocational guidance—it is a calling, really, to look after people who are losing their minds to dementia. There is also the need for better training and more specifically skilled people to meet that growing demand. To meet that, we have allowed $3.2 million towards training for health professionals and towards awareness programmes, and also for early detection assistance for the clinical teams. These kinds of conditions require that high level of skill as well as that high level of compassion. Believe me, I and people who have experienced it think that is money well spent. It will make a huge difference to the quality of life for the person suffering from dementia and for their families. With the best will in the world it is very difficult, once the condition has reached a certain stage, for most New Zealand families to look after dementia sufferers at home. That is why the $12 million increase in funding for bed subsidies and the vital encouragement for further investment in dementia beds are essential. So over the next 4 years we are also funding, through the district health boards, an additional $33.2 million on aged residential care subsidies.

In the vital area of housing, the Minister Dr Nick Smith is as determined through his portfolio as the health Minister, Tony Ryall, is with health, to help the vulnerable in our society. We know that crowded, cold, and damp conditions contribute to dismal health outcomes. So making homes warmer, drier, and healthier is one of his priorities. It is the right thing to do. And, unlike the waffle and the weasel words of the Opposition, Dr Smith is not leaving that to chance. An extra $100 million investment in the highly successful home insulation programme is going to boost the number of homes insulated to 230,000 by September this year. That is a clear and measurable thing. So all State houses that are capable of being insulated will be. It is a measure of the standard of our State housing stock. He is developing and trialling a Housing Warrant of Fitness to apply to all 69,000 Housing New Zealand Corporation properties, so that over the next 3 years this Government is making a record investment of $2.9 billion in State housing. It is also making very bold changes to the way that we deliver housing assistance, and it is targeting it to the people who really need it.

The shift from State dominated housing to community housing has been very successful in Europe, in North America, and in Australia. So in Budget 2013 our Government has announced that we are also going to extend income-related rent subsidies to community housing providers. Churches, charities, and other NGOs often integrate housing with other wraparound services to people with disabilities, to people with mental health issues, and to people with drug and alcohol problems. These sorts of wraparound services can often do, let us face it, a better job of meeting their clients’ complex needs. This Government is determined to create the right environment to grow the community housing sector.

Quality affordable housing is good for the economy and it is also very good for communities. High housing costs ultimately raise debt and increases demand for social assistance. Under this Government, the Kiwi dream of owning your own home will again become a reality and within reach of low and middle income New Zealanders. We have announced a raft of measures to make housing more affordable. We are looking at increasing land supply, we are streamlining consent and compliance costs, we are looking at better delivery of core infrastructure to support that new housing, and we are also getting on top of the costs around building materials and construction. We are not just sitting back and leaving it to chance; we are doing something about it. We have concrete, measurable things.

As my colleague Jonathan Young said in his earlier call, we are not just aiding people, we are enabling people. That is why I come to our welfare reforms. They are increasing, and under Budget 2013 low-income families will be receiving greater support. It is really a combination of what we have been doing—extending proven programmes and also introducing new initiatives, targeting resources and targeting support. This is complemented by the Government’s $139.3 million investment through the Social Housing Fund, which others have detailed. Helping people to help themselves is what is at the heart of this Government’s Budget. This is a Government and this is a Budget with real heart and measurable outcomes that will really help people because it is targeted, it is precise, it is measurable, and it is going to work.

This Government has put another $1.5 million to support budgeting services, as well, for people who have not ever really been taught how to grasp the reality of budgeting, and making sure their cheque books work and making sure they are not overspending. Those are lessons that perhaps the Labour colleagues across the way could well benefit from.

To end, I will say that the people in my North Shore electorate have given me very positive feedback on this Budget 2013 and all its measures. Measures relating to ACC were some of the things that they have been looking for. They wanted to have some better provisions there, and what we are doing there with the reduction in the levies has been outstanding. They have told me that they love the significant levy reductions of around $300 million, which will extend to $1 billion the following year. Thank you.

I listened very carefully to the Budget speech from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, where he said that anyone standing for the Christchurch City Council should look at the finances. He said—and I want to quote him—“do not be deceived by what you are being told by the people who are presenting those figures.” That is an extraordinary statement coming from a senior Minister in the lead-up to a council election. I placed the Minister’s speech on my Facebook page, and the response was immediate: what does the Minister know that we do not know? There was a considerable amount of fear expressed that the Minister knows things about the council’s finances but is not telling the people of Christchurch exactly what those concerns are, even though the council is at the moment going through its 3-year plan process. Christchurch City Council is not going through the 10-year plan process that other councils are going through. It has had its planning process reduced to 3 years, but, more significant, the Government has decided not to make the council subject to the usual Auditor-General oversight.

So, on one hand, the Minister says that we should be concerned about Christchurch City Council’s finances, and look at them very carefully and not be deceived by those presenting the figures—he is referring to the mayor and the chief executive, who have signed the 3-year plan; he cannot be referring to anyone else, because it is their signatures that actually appear on that document—and yet the Government has decided in its wisdom not to make it subject to usual Auditor-General oversight. The Labour Opposition members asked that that Auditor-General oversight be included in the Order in Council when we were asked to comment on it, but we were not listened to. Why did the Government allow this process to proceed with no proper scrutiny, clearly knowing things that the people of Christchurch do not know, and with an election looming?

Add on top of that the extraordinary pressure that the Government is placing on the council to pay for the Government’s blueprint, even though the people of Christchurch had absolutely no say whatsoever with regard to the major anchor projects that it announced. I do not think that the people of Christchurch need a Cabinet Minister—the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery—to stand here in this debating chamber firing shots at the council down in Christchurch, but also in the same breath can I say that we do not need a council that shows that it is incapable of being the kind of partner that a Government needs in a recovery situation.

The Minister warned us about these people who are presenting these figures, and I think that deception is a pretty strong allegation. But how does the Government have confidence in the council when the front page of the paper has been dominated by a chief executive who is blatantly double-dipping, both as the chief executive receiving his extraordinarily high salary—which received huge feedback, in a negative sense, from the public—and also as a director receiving director’s fees for sitting on the Civic Assurance company? He is now having to appear in front of the council to explain why Civic Assurance is taking so long to pay the council’s insurance bill. He is double-dipping. In any situation like that, a chief executive of an organisation would pay their director’s fees directly to the organisation that they were representing on that body. Only three or four councillors have actually consistently stood up for transparency in Christchurch, but they are accused by the mayor and the chief executive of being the problem.

I have to say that this has got to stop. It absolutely has got to stop. The people of Christchurch need their leaders to really step up at this time. We are going into our third winter—our third winter—and people are still living in unacceptable situations that we would not ordinarily tolerate in a First World country. The pressure that is being brought to bear on ordinary Christchurch residents living in areas where the land is the most challenging is unbelievable. They do not need to read in the paper about what can only be described as sheer greed, and then, at the same time, hear that the Minister is making these allegations in Parliament without giving the substance to the people of Christchurch. I think it is absolutely vital that the people of Christchurch are told the truth about what is going on at Christchurch City Council.

The Government’s blueprint is part of the problem. It is a big part of the problem. The people think that they have been forgotten—put to one side while we talk about what buildings are going to be built in the centre of the city. We see a campaign bid for City First or Christchurch First, but really it should be the people first. If the people are dealt with first, then surely the rest will follow.

In the last couple of weeks the Prime Minister has said that “big-ticket Christchurch recovery projects could be scaled back to help bridge the funding gap between local and central government.” But whose funding gap is that? Who created the funding gap? The Government manufactured the funding gap when it decided that it would completely rewrite the city’s draft Christchurch Central Recovery Plan and would then hand the bill to the people of Christchurch. That is what has happened in Christchurch. John Key says that major projects like the new convention centre and the roofed sports stadium could be downsized to save money. But whose money would that save? They were not our decisions. Christchurch City has never had the opportunity to have a say about these major anchor projects that the Government has foisted upon us.

John Key said the council had only three ways of paying its share of recovery projects: borrowing the money, significantly raising rates, and “it changes its asset mix”. Well, what does “it changes its asset mix” mean? It means selling Christchurch’s strategic assets that we have held on to because those assets have actually been a part of ensuring that we had revenue-generating opportunities but also the strategic ability to govern our ports, both the airport, which is the gateway to the South Island, and our seaport, similarly, in terms of goods coming in and out of the country, and also, obviously, Orion, which was the standout performer after the series of earthquakes that we had. I have never seen an organisation operating the way it did, but the work that it did in advance, the resilience that it built into its network ahead of the disaster occurring, was what saved Christchurch and, indeed, saved New Zealand a considerable amount of additional cost that would have otherwise applied.

So when the Prime Minister says “it changes its asset mix”, the Prime Minister is saying: “People of Christchurch, you must sell your revenue-generating strategic assets and fund loss-making facilities, where the council cannot even tell the people of Christchurch how much they are budgeted to lose, because the Government has not even prepared a business case for any of these so-called anchor projects.” This is a National Government and there is no business case prepared for any of these assets. How can the council pay its share when we do not know as a city what our share is? And why should we pay for any share that was not part of what we, as a city, determined was in our best interests?

John Key then said it was up to the council to ask whether residents wanted the “nice-to-haves” in the city’s rebuild. What are these “nice-to-haves”? No one in Christchurch has been told that any of the anchor projects are negotiable. Many people feel that John Key has relegated the repair and rebuild of homes on the most challenging land in Christchurch to being a “nice-to-have”. We in Christchurch say it is not a “nice-to-have”; it is a “need-to-have”. That need is very, very real. We need the Government to be working alongside the council in partnership with the community. Take the community with us as we rebuild our city. I am extremely optimistic about what we can achieve in Christchurch, but we need central government, local government, and community all working together on the rebuild and repair of our city.

I move, That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Education Amendment Bill

Third Reading