Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill

When I first looked at the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill I got it wrong. I thought it was actually a nothing. I thought it was just a sham, a fig leaf, an answer to election slogans that said National was going to have a crusade on literacy, that it had five planks on which to build a new, strong economy that would lift New Zealand up in the OECD league, and that education was one of them—a crusade on literacy and numeracy was going to be one of the tools that did it. I looked at the bill, as tabled by the Minister of Education, Mrs Tolley, and I thought “what a joke”. It contained nothing but things that were already happening and required to happen in our schools. We already have standards for literacy and numeracy—national standards. They are required to be there under the National Education Guidelines. We have talked about that for hours and hours today and yesterday. Of course, National Party members have not listened; neither has Mrs Tolley, but then one would expect no less. I thought “what’s the purpose of this bill, this nothing bill, this fig leaf, this sham?” Actually, the more I read it the more alarmed I became. It is not a sham or a fig leaf; it is an insidious Trojan horse—in the words of my new colleague, Iain Lees-Galloway, from Palmerston North. He called it a Trojan horse and I thought it was a very good analogy, because the bill introduces, for the first time, the concept into New Zealand schools that primary school-age children will sit exams and those exams will be compared with exams of other children within their school and other schools.

We know that that right-wing agenda, as articulated by Heather Roy when she was in the Chamber late last night and talked about choice, competition in education, and a vision of education, is very different from that of the Labour Party and the Labour Government that has just spent 9 years administering—I would say very successfully—our education system. Labour members talked about the $5.5 billion extra we put into education. We talked about 20 free hours, we talked about $3.4 billion for new school buildings and 6,000 extra teachers above roll growth. We talked about wonderful little initiatives such as laptops for teachers and sabbaticals for principals. We talked about programmes for aspiring principals’ and for first-time principals—all the structures that one puts in to make a real difference to teaching and learning.

What does this bill do? It does not mention anything about resourcing, of course. We heard Mrs Tolley talking about $18 million. I have to tell Mrs Tolley that it costs $10 million to get a 1 percent lift in the operations grant for all 2,600 schools in New Zealand, so the Minister’s $18 million will not give even a 2 percent lift in the operations grant. We gave, this year, a 5 percent lift in the operations grant. I have to say that it was greeted with howls of outrage by the education sector that said it was not enough. Of course, we would have liked to give more; indeed, of course we had already put in $5.5 billion extra into education. I have to tell Mrs Tolley that if she thinks $18 million is going to make even a ripple in the pond of education, or is going to make even the slightest impact on literacy and numeracy outcomes she must be kidding. I tell the Minister that what will happen, of course, is that she will spend most of that money on bureaucrats and consultants. The Minister actually does not like educational experts employed by the Ministry of Education so she will probably consult on this with somebody who will charge her most of that $18 million, or at least the company will, to set up the so-called standards, which are the literacy and numeracy progressions that all New Zealand schools are currently trialling.

We should think about what the title of this bill should be. We could perhaps call it the “Great Leap Backwards Education Bill” because it is going back to those discredited right-wing agendas of the early 1990s when we had people like Nick Smith, Lockwood Smith, and others who were education Ministers, and when we had bulk funding, neglect of school infrastructure, and a shift of resourcing to private education. Or we could call it, of course, the “Roger Douglas has Returned to Parliament Bill”. That would be a rather good title for it, would it not? Seeing Roger sitting over there, I thought a ghost from the past had come back; a horrible nightmare, an agenda that New Zealanders thought was well past, had suddenly reappeared like the ghost in Macbeth. Of course, he brings with him not just himself but that agenda of privatisation—that somehow the market works best, which is a policy that is totally discredited. That policy has not worked in a whole range of areas, but I will talk about education.

Chile went down the path of Roger Douglas and his mates in education. That country thought it would introduce choice into its education system. It would give parents the choice to choose where to send their children. What it did was provide an absolute bonanza for individuals setting up private schools. Chilean education, which was considered one of the best in Latin America, completely collapsed. Hekia Parata’s sister, Apryll Parata, came with me on an education delegation to Santiago in Chile earlier this year. We had a seminar on the New Zealand education experience and Chilean teachers, educators, and the Minister of Education were all there, because they said New Zealand had got it right. Our learning outcomes for our students, as evidenced in the Programme for International Student Assessment scores and the fantastic educational programmes that were operating in our country, were the envy of Chilean educators, because they said that they had stuffed their education system. Something like 70 percent of Chilean students were now in private schools—these were businesses. The State sector was wrecked by under-investment, teachers were on strike, and students were getting really low-quality education. Tertiary providers were saying that Chilean students coming into education were of declining quality in their literacy and numeracy, and in their ability to study in higher education. All of this was the result of choice and competition. It completely gutted Chile’s education system.

We have not gone down that path, but this bill starts us on that journey. It states—and it all so sounds so innocent, in fact, so attractive—“national standards in literacy and numeracy.” Labour members have said already endless times today and yesterday that we have already got those, so what is this about? I will tell members what the legislation is about. It is about setting up league tables between primary schools. It is about saying that the children in that decile 1 school over there are sitting right at the bottom of a comparison in the greater area. In my own electorate of Te Atatū each of those primary schools—21 of them—will be ranked against each other and the parents will want to compare how children do at Tirimoana Primary School, Edmonton Primary School, Flanshaw Road School, or Peninsula Primary School. They are going to say: “We can drive across the electorate in 12 minutes.” It is the most compact electorate in the country, it is just a concentration of working-class suburbs.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Small but perfectly formed!

Parents can easily access all the primary schools in my electorate very quickly so they are going to choose to send their child to what they perceive is the highest-scoring school. The National - ACT - Māori Party coalition has already said it is going to give more parental choice and weaken the legislation that Labour put in around enrolment zones, which will all change. We are back to the Roger Douglas days again.

How are we going to make a real change in literacy and numeracy? We are not going to do that with the “Roger Douglas has Returned to Parliament Bill”, or the “Great Leap Backwards Education Bill”, or with Anne Tolley’s vision of education. We have to invest in early childhood education. We have to ensure that is done; in areas such as Judith Collins’ electorate, where I was recently visiting schools in my role as Minister of Education, only 23 percent of new entrants were receiving early childhood education. The Labour-led Government invested over $1 billion extra in early childhood education, from the 20 free hours to the huge building grant and capacity process that we set in place to get more kids into early childhood education, because that is where we start—right at the beginning. Before the children get to primary school we have them learning to read and already socialised to a school environment or learning environment. That is the only way we can make a difference. We are also going to make a difference only when we focus on areas of low-decile schools where there are real challenges in literacy and numeracy.

We are not going to make a difference in those kids by slogans. We are not going to make a difference in them by saying their primary school sits right at the bottom of the league. Mrs Tolley claimed that an Education Review Office report stated that 56 percent of schools were not doing literacy and numeracy assessments. They were breaking the National Administration Guidelines if they were not doing those assessments. I, personally, think the report—which I have read—said that they were not doing it as adequately as they could. How is the national standard going to make a difference to that? Only resourcing and effective teaching will make a difference to that.

I am happy to take a call on this part, and I will address a comment the Minister of Education made when she got to her feet during the debate on Part 2. She said that the Opposition was confused because we say that the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill does nothing but that we are voting against it because of the content. I would like the Minister to listen very carefully, because I think that she is the one who is confused. We are opposing this bill not because it does nothing, but because it achieves nothing, and there is a very, very big difference.

This bill does do something. It absolutely replicates what schools are already doing. It adds to the compliance costs and the load on our teachers, and it makes them do what they are already doing. Why does it do that? It does that because the Minister needs to save face. She went out on the campaign trail and promised national standardised testing, and she was beaten down by a howl of opposition from anyone who knows anything about education. So the policy was watered down, watered down, and watered down to the point where it is now simply replicating what is already happening in our schools.

So this bill does do something. This bill makes it harder for our teachers to teach, because they will be forced to implement a national standards system and a system of assessment that they are already doing. That is why this Opposition is opposing the bill. The title of the bill could be the “Increased Compliance Costs and Less Time for Teaching for Our Teachers Bill”, because that is exactly what it does.

The Minister would do well to listen to the education sector. The problem with being an education expert is that everyone thinks he or she is an education expert because everyone went to school. The fact is that there are people in this country who are actually professionals in this area, including teachers and principals, who oppose this legislation.

I ask the Minister how she will avoid having league tables. She says that this is not the purpose of the bill and that she is the only one who will be able to see the comparison. My colleague Kelvin Davis, who knows an awful lot more about education than the Minister does, who has been in the sector for a long time, and who has been the principal of a school that greatly increased its performance under the current system, pointed out that parents will vote with their feet. The community will know which of these schools are the ones that are not doing well.

💬 Allan Peachey: Shouldn’t they?

Allan Peachey said that people should be able to see the league tables. Well, he might want to talk to his Minister, because she is saying the public will not be able to see those comparisons.

💬 Allan Peachey: Why shouldn’t parents know?

I tell Mr Peachey to ask the Minister. The Minister said that they will not be able to see those comparisons. The reason the community will know is that it will be harder to recruit teachers into those schools, the students will leave, and the resources will leave. If there will be no league tables, then I ask the Minister whether, when more resources are going into the schools that the league tables show are not doing well, she will guarantee that no local MP will get up and trumpet the extra resources for this school in their electorate; resources it is getting because the league table shows that school failing. If she cannot guarantee that, then her promise that this bill will not lead to league tables is vacuous—absolutely vacuous.

A teacher from the Minister’s own electorate emailed me last night to say that this measure will mean we will lose the collaboration that occurs between schools now. Teachers and schools work together at the moment. If they are forced into competition with each other through league tables, then that collaboration will disappear, so I ask the Minister whether she has considered that.

If we were to rename this bill, it could be called the “Listen to Your Own Constituents Bill”. I will read from a blog by the principal of Ōpōtiki College, which is a school in the Minister’s own electorate. He stated: “NZ schools already regularly assess student progress to inform further strategies. There is no need to have a centrally imposed and driven programme which has the intention (according to their policy) of comparing students in one school with another. This crock of”—and then there is a word I cannot use in this House—“is a populist strategy for which there is no credible research to support it.” He goes on to state: “The NZ education system is in good health. Young people are more literate and numerate as a group than any before.” He also states, and I think this is important: “If National are elected and push this policy through I will struggle to remain involved in education to my current level in New Zealand.” That is from a principal in the Minister’s own electorate.

I ask the Minister whether she takes the comments of principal Maurie Abraham from Ōpōtiki College seriously. This college is in an area that has many of the issues the Minister reports that this bill is trying to assist with. Here we have a principal, a very good principal, who is working very hard in a very poor community to do well by his school, who is saying not only that this bill will not work but also that it will be damaging.

I am not at all surprised that the National Government has not allowed the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill to be referred to a select committee, because of course there is an agenda behind the face of the legislation, and that is around the privatisation of education. It is pretty clear that privatisation is certainly ACT’s policy. Some members may have been on the hustings with ACT candidates who talked about how schools should be part of the marketplace like any other company, and who said schools should be run as companies, with all of the corporate culture that is involved with that idea. This is clearly the ACT Party policy. Even Heather Roy, when I mentioned the No Child Left Behind policy in the US, was quite happy to discuss her party’s policy of vouchers and charters. Of course, ACT is part of the Government now. It has Ministers in Government, and no doubt the National Government is following that philosophy and ideology in this legislation.

Perhaps we should rename this bill as the “Education (First Step) Amendment Bill” because it lays the groundwork for the opportunity to have increased privatisation of the public schooling sector. We see National’s intention to increase privatisation already in the large funnelling of public money into private schools. It is worthwhile looking again at how the neo-liberal agenda has impacted on schooling policy in the US, particularly with the use of standardised testing. I refer to two further articles on that issue. The first is called “Assessing No Child Left Behind and the Rise of Neoliberal Education Policies”, and the second is called “The Growth of High-Stakes Testing in the USA: Accountability, Markets and the Decline in Educational Equality”.

We are talking about the agenda of neo-liberal deregulation and privatisation of public services, and it leads in some ways to the kind of rhetoric that we have heard from National, particularly around the privatisation of public education and the blaming of public education for our lack of international competitiveness and the increasing gap between rich and poor. We have heard those comments all through the National Party statements on this legislation. We had Allan Peachey blaming education for poverty, and for the long tail of poverty. That is exactly the kind of rhetoric that George W Bush has spouted about the US policy as well. We have heard Nick Smith describe poverty as the politics of envy, completely failing to understand that the long tail of underachievement in this country is a long tail of poverty. What is National doing about that? It is doing absolutely nothing; it is simply punishing the poor for being poor. We have been talking about that all week.

💬 Sandra Goudie: Oh, what a stupid thing to say!

Sandra Goudie is shouting from the benches, because obviously it gets to her that we know what National’s agenda is. We know that National’s policy is about punishing the poor, which the Employment Relations Amendment Bill and tax increases for the poor have done.

We know from research around the No Child Left Behind policy and the way that that policy is sold, particularly to what in the US would be considered underprivileged communities—here they would be low-income communities, such as Māori and Pacific Island communities—that although it is supposed to be an objective assessment and reliable, in fact it is highly politicised and highly unreliable, and the outcomes are very much related to the incomes of the families that are involved. In the discussion on this bill we have also heard a lot of rhetoric around blaming teachers. Somehow the impact of teachers is undermined and degraded. The Government is investing another $30 million in private schools rather than investing in teachers, when we know that teachers are the key to making the changes that lead to success.

The other issue we have to look at here is that quality education is not the issue for the National Government. For National the issue is private access to public services. We have seen that in the early childhood education sector, where National refuses to deal with the burgeoning of low-quality private sector early childhood education services in this country. Australian companies are coming in with expensive, poor-quality teaching and care in the early childhood sector, and National will do nothing about that. Those kinds of processes lock out the community sector from providing early childhood education services. We know from the research in our own country that community-based early childhood education is the best-quality early childhood education in this country, as opposed to the private investment of international corporations such as ABC Learning Centres. But quality is not the issue here for National.

I am very pleased to take a call on these clauses. I think members have already heard me talk about my concern that we have not sent this bill to a select committee, and have not had the opportunity for some focus on the bill’s detail. In particular, I have been focusing on the regulatory impact statement. I want to quote another part of the regulatory impact statement: “Requiring schools to assess students against national standards will help to focus teachers on skills that every child should be mastering in reading, writing and mathematics.” That leads me to believe that perhaps we should be calling this bill the “Patronising Teachers and Parents Bill”. To say that teachers will focus on reading, writing, and mathematics only if they have national standards is patronising. Perhaps that goes to show why this Government is putting through this bill under urgency—they simply do not want to hear about it from teachers and parents.

There are other names that we could give this bill. As I am a fan of the movies, we could call it the “Back to the Future Bill”. What we are doing here is moving back to a time when we sought to put students in boxes, and we are saying to teachers and children that one size fits all in education and that is all that is needed. We are saying that we can have national standards, and that we do not need the flexibility currently in the system, so we are going back to the future with this bill. We are going back to the future by making sure that students have to fit in rather than by looking at their needs, and by working with teachers and encouraging them to develop different kinds of programmes and assessments. Yes, the National Government wants to take us back to the future.

I could carry the movie theme on and perhaps call the bill the “Meet the Feebles Bill”, because National has launched on a feeble crusade today. The bill is a 1½-page crusade on literacy and numeracy. It is a pitiful effort from the member. It replicates what is already done, and done well, inside our schools now by teachers and parents, who should be trusted, listened to, and brought in to talk about these issues and how to improve them. That is what we should be doing, instead of taking the approach of ramming the bill through now.

There are other things we could call this bill. We could call it the “National Plays Politics Bill”. That is what it is. It is about bumper sticker slogans that were put out through the election campaign and that have now come to this House. They represent nothing in the way of really lifting standards in education. We know that across this country—and Mr Peachey knows it—schools have been developing excellent work in this area. We need to be talking to them and working with them, not imposing additional compliance on them. We should be ensuring that teachers who are already stressed out and busy are not now being told to do more reporting in a different way, when in many cases they are already adequately communicating with their parents. We do not need to be putting this legislation in place now. It is simply playing politics so that National can say it is doing something. We have the National Administration Guidelines that allow—in fact, require—schools to do this. So it is quite clear that the Minister does not trust parents and does not want to listen to them. We can therefore call this bill the “Don’t Trust Parents and Teachers Bill”.

We can also look at the bill and say that the compliance costs that have been put on schools have not even been assessed: “The Ministry of Education is unable to calculate the compliance costs of setting national standards at this time,”. That is a result of ramming through this bill under urgency at the end of the year—at a time when schools have not had a chance even to think about what this means.

I have also spoken to schools in my electorate over the last few days. To a person, those who responded to me asked: “Why is this being done in this way? Why is this Government putting this bill through when we have not heard an adequate explanation from the Minister?” A teacher said to me: “Why would we follow George Bush?”. America has just rejected George Bush, so why would we choose at this time to follow George Bush and his No Child Left Behind policy? It is a ridiculous policy. It has failed in America and has led to inequalities, and that is where this process is heading.

National standards will require national testing. That is the real agenda of this National Government. That is what it has come here to pass. The crusade has begun with the Trojan Horse, as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway said. So perhaps we could call the bill the “Education Standards (Trojan Horse) Bill”, because that is what this Minister has brought to this House today. We know, internationally, that this approach does not work; it puts students and children into boxes. It does not allow them to learn in the way that is most appropriate for them, but that should be the vision of education that we have in this country. We have a system we can be proud of, and a system staffed by dedicated professionals. We know, from throughout this debate, that teachers make the difference, not standards.

I move, That the question be now put.

I seek leave to table two documents. The first is a report entitled “No Child Left Behind and the Rise of Neoliberal Education Policies”.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Leave is sought to table that document. Is there anyone opposed? There is.

I seek leave to table a second document entitled “The Growth of High-Stakes Testing in the US: Accountability, Markets, and the Decline in Educational Quality”.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Leave is sought. There is opposition.

I think that the New Zealand public did actually believe the National Party when it said during the election campaign that education was the most important thing. I think that a lot of parents and a lot of teachers thought that National meant it, but already those people know National did not mean it. Let us look at the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, which we have in front of us. Honestly! Does it even make 3 pages? No. It is very, very slim. That shows how much the National members care about education. But the issue is not even about the small number of pages in the bill; it is actually about daring to say this issue does not need proper discussion, and we should not have a proper, democratic process so that teachers, parents, and communities can have a say on what our education system should look like in the future.

One of these two statements must be true: this bill is either meaningless, because it does what is already in the National Administration Guidelines anyway—and why are we here on a Saturday wasting parliamentary time, if it is meaningless—or dangerous. I am starting to subscribe to the second view, now, after listening to this debate. I was particularly interested in what Metiria Turei had to say about a hidden agenda. I was also interested in the discussion my own colleagues have had about a Trojan Horse, and that is starting to ring more and more true. The reason I say that is that I watched very carefully what happened to the very good amendments that were put forward by the Hon Chris Carter in order to ensure there could be debate about, and some public scrutiny of, the national standards the Minister might decide to put in. What did the National members do with regard to those amendments? They shut them down straight away. That tells me that there must be a secret agenda. Why else would the National Party deny the public the opportunity to scrutinise national standards that come from the Minister?

This Minister has said during the course of this debate that we will not end up with national testing. I ask the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, whether that is right. Oh, she is not confirming that now. Already she will not confirm it, but I thought I heard her say this legislation is not about national testing. There is no reaction—so it is about national testing. Is it about national testing or not? Suddenly I am unsure again, and that concerns me even more, because I thought I heard the Minister say the bill is not about national testing. She is not prepared to confirm that now, but I thought I heard her say that before.

We have also seen that Minister on video, saying teachers would be exempt from the provisions of the 90-day probationary employment period bill. How did that end up? It ended up with that Minister voting against the very amendment that would have ensured teachers were excluded from the 90-day bill. So can we trust this Minister? Can we trust this Minister to have the ability to gazette national standards? Those may or may not be national testing; she will not confirm or deny that now. She seems to be taking the American stance yet again—neither confirm nor deny. We have heard that before from the Americans. Maybe the Government is completely going towards the American stance.

Anne Tolley is neither confirming nor denying national testing at this stage, but I am just looking at a Hansard here from earlier on in the debate. My colleague Brendon Burns said in his speech that the bill introduces standardised testing, and the Hon Anne Tolley said it does not. That is in Hansard. So which is the true statement there? The issue is really very clear.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: She does change her mind quite a lot.

She does. It is very, very difficult to work out, because now the Minister seems to have taken the American stance of neither confirming nor denying that, so we are none the wiser. We have had a debate in the Committee stage; we obviously need to flush that issue out quite some more. We are certainly coming towards the final debate in the Committee stage of this bill, and we have absolutely no clarity on whether or not the bill proposes national testing.

💬 Sandra Goudie: Too simple for her to understand.

Well, Sandra Goudie seems to know the answer. But there does seem to be quite a lot of confusion on the Government benches, because I also thought I heard the Minister say this legislation would not result in league tables being published. I thought I heard the Minister say that. I am not sure whether she still believes that, but I thought she said that during the course of the debate. Allan Peachey said league tables should be published.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: Did he?

Yes, he said that very clearly before, so which is the true story?

I move that this question now be put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Clayton Cosgrove.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I was just going to remind you that National moved the wrong motion.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is one of the reasons it was overruled.

I am indebted to Mr Robertson, as always. Mr Robertson is always on point.

I suppose, in looking at the title of this bill, I am mindful of the fact that Gerry Brownlee was a teacher at the school I went to—and, thankfully, he never taught me. But I wonder why Mr Brownlee, being a teacher of long standing, has not taken a call on this bill. I inquired of Mr Power as to why that was the case—and I express sympathy for Mr Brownlee—and Mr Power informed me that Mr Brownlee has an ailment. He has sore knees, to quote Mr Power. I assume that is because he has been down on them for most of the last 48 hours, begging for forgiveness from the Deputy Prime Minister Mr English for the shambolic way this House has been managed.

Never, I am told by learned members of long standing behind me, has a Leader of the House lost the confidence of the Opposition so quickly—within 4½ to 5 days. I invite Mr Brownlee—and Dr Cullen could inform me whether there is a precedent we could set—to take a call from the sitting position, so that he does not have to exercise his cartilage too badly, and so that he can make what would be a valuable contribution as a former woodwork teacher from St Bede’s, who, I am told, used to make a very good cutting board.

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: He is now the cross they bear.

Yes; I am sure he has the angles right on it.

I think the title of this bill could be, as some teachers in my patch have said, the “School Cert for Under-sixes Bill”. The sad thing about this bill is that the National Party is in total denial. I will not re-rehearse what Mr Carter and Mr Mallard have said, but we know that under National Administration Guidelines 1 and 2 there is assessment. There are standards; they have been in place for a very long time.

This bill seems to suggest that teachers are silly, and they are not. It suggests, apparently, that they do not assess, when they do. It suggests that parents are silly, and they are not. But the National Party seems to think they are. National says that parents do not engage with teachers and that teachers will not engage with parents and report to them, even though that is specified in the National Administration Guidelines.

National says there is no engagement between parents and teachers in terms of the progress and reporting of their children’s performance. That is the National Party’s thinking, and it is Mrs Tolley’s thinking, as she has been dragged out of the lock-up—and maybe Mr Brownlee is in charge of that. Maybe he is in charge of keeping Mrs Tolley away from the Chamber as much as possible, so as not to cause that crew over there embarrassment. I wonder whether Mrs Tolley and Ms Wilkinson have conversed by carrier pigeon, semaphore, text message, or verbally—I do not know—to clarify a position on the 90-day bill. [Interruption] Dr Cullen makes a good point.

Mrs Tolley has been in the Chamber, and during my time in the Chamber, both last night and this morning, I do not think she has answered a question. The sad thing is that the provisions for assessment and standards, as we know, have been in place for a long time. Teachers do report to parents, and parents do engage with schools on the progress of their children. But now we will have a Trojan Horse. I cannot recall which colleague used the term “Trojan Horse”, but this is indeed a Trojan Horse, I think, so that monetary contributions to schools will follow performance.

I think a term that the National Party used during the election campaign was that funding would follow performance. If that is combined with the dropping of zoning, some schools will be ghettoised, as certain schools were in the 1990s, and—

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Gerry would be on starvation rations.

No, that would be impossible.

If zoning is dropped, and if funding then follows performance, the next logical step is to go back to the bulk funding regime National put in place when it was in Government in the 1990s. I think that that is actually the hidden agenda, so maybe we should call this the “Hidden Agenda Education Bill”, or “Anne Tolley’s Last Stand Education Bill”.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: We don’t want them to change her.

Oh, no—we do not want to change her, although I think that Mr Peachey would have been a better education Minister out of the two of them. But there are more salacious opportunities with Mrs Tolley holding the ministerial portfolio.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: We look forward to question time.

Indeed we look forward to question time, because we will be able to ask questions about the definition of a vice-chancellor, or about whether Mrs Tolley knows what her name and title are. We will be able to ask some of those very basic questions, such as: “What did she say to teachers?”, and “Is Ms Wilkinson right or is she right?”, or whatever. We can sort of tease these things out. It is a bit like Chinese water torture, you know—we will just tease them out and rotisserie Mrs Tolley slowly.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: There’s less to rotisserie now, of course.

Indeed.

💬 Hon Member: But we don’t want John Key to replace her—leave her alone.

Indeed—do not replace her.

I move, That the question be now put.

I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Education (School Enrolment and Attendance) Amendment Bill and the Education (Literacy and Numeracy Standards) Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 3.

The Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill is set down for third reading forthwith. Just before I call the honourable Minister, I would like to make a comment, because I expect this debate will be robust as the issues are matters that are deeply held.

I have been listening to the debate with a lot of interest this morning, and I think it is timely, since we are debating national standards in education, to remind members of the House of the way the Standing Orders require us to address each other in this House. When a member is speaking, he or she is the first person, and is perfectly entitled to use “I” and “we”. The second person in this Chamber is the Speaker, so when members use the word “you” in the second person, they are referring to the Speaker. Members cannot say: “Minister, you said something”, because that would be referring to the Speaker. The other side of the House is the third person—“he” or “they”. I just remind all members of that, for the benefit of new members and front-bench members as well, because the debate will become much more personal when someone says: “Joe Bloggs, you did this.” That is out of order, because that is in the second person, and the member would be referring to the Speaker. So with that said, honourable members, I call the Minister, the Hon Anne Tolley.

Third Reading