Thursday, 11 May 2017
Volume 722
Sitting date: 11 May 2017
THURSDAY, 11 MAY 2017
THURSDAY, 11 MAY 2017
Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Prayers.
Business Statement
Business Statement
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the House): When the House resumes on Tuesday, 23 May the Government will look to make progress on the Land Transport Amendment Bill and a number of other bills on the Order Paper. Budget 2017 will be delivered on Thursday, 25 May.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I wonder whether the Leader of the House can give us any indication as to whether he envisages there being any urgency during the next sitting session.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the House): Well, I do not want to interfere with the member’s busy social calendar, but I would suggest he think about packing a toothbrush just in case.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Working for Families—Spending and Budget Changes
1. JACINDA ARDERN (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Has total spending on Working for Families decreased while his Government has been in office; if so, by how much?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): Spending across the various tax credits that make up Working for Families was $2.568 billion in 2008, and the half-year update released last December forecast it to be $2.392 billion for 2017. This equates to a difference of $176 million, or a reduction of 6.86 percent. Of course, this Government does not measure success by how much we pay people through Working for Families or the welfare system. The ultimate measure of success is how increasing wages and jobs from a strong economy can support people to no longer require such assistance.
Jacinda Ardern: Can he confirm that in the 2011 Budget, his Government cut $448 million from Working for Families by reducing entitlements?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No, I cannot provide that exact number for the member. What I can confirm for the member is that in the March year of 2011 the number of families that were supported by Working for Families was 421,000 families, and that has reduced since then to around 329,000 families—which is good news, because they are no longer dependent on the Working for Families programme.
Jacinda Ardern: Does he stand by the Minister of Finance’s statement in 2011 that Working for Families was cut by $448 million so that the money could be used on “reducing borrowing”, borrowing that has in fact increased by billions of dollars since that time?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member may not be aware that when we came into office we were greeted with the news from Treasury that the rather large spending programmes of the previous Government were going to provide a decade of deficits to the New Zealand economy. Of course, we made a number of changes to the Government’s expenditure profile in order to cope with that. We also paid for the support of the vulnerable people through the global financial crisis. We paid, also, for the rebuild of Christchurch. This may all be unfamiliar territory for the member, but the Government has done a good job of supporting New Zealanders and, also, getting back into surplus.
Jacinda Ardern: Can he confirm that the increase in Budget 2015 to beneficiary families of $25 per week also included an increase in the Working for Families abatement rate, leaving 18,000 families worse off and reducing the amount that beneficiary families actually received?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No. What I can confirm for the member is that the point she made about the Budget is correct, and that is that we made the first increase in benefits in real terms by any Government for a very, very long time, including, as far as I can remember, a number of Labour Governments that did not get round to increasing benefits in real terms for anybody. In terms of the indexation, the Government does have a programme to target Working for Families to lower-income families that need it, and we are pleased to provide that support.
Jacinda Ardern: Will this be another Budget where his Government gives with one hand what it has already taken away from families with the other?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No, this Budget will be about supporting an economy that provides more and more jobs for New Zealanders. We now have over 2.5 million New Zealanders employed in this country, for the first time—in fact, 2.5 million and another 30,000 on top of that. That is the definition of success, not how many people we can make dependent on the State, which is the Labour Party’s definition of success.
Economy—Growth, Official Cash Rate, Inflation, and Risks
2. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the New Zealand economy?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): This morning the Reserve Bank released its official cash rate (OCR) decision and its latest Monetary Policy Statement. In leaving the rate unchanged at 1.75 percent, the bank noted that global economic growth has improved recently and has become more broad-based. It has helped to boost commodity prices, as we saw recently with Fonterra’s last Global Dairy Trade auction, where prices have risen now for the fourth time in a row. The overall strengthening nature of the world economy is good news for New Zealand. The Reserve Bank’s growth outlook for our country remains positive, and it says it is further supported by high levels of household spending and construction activity.
Chris Bishop: How will this ongoing growth affect the inflation outlook?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Reserve Bank noted today that the factors behind the rise in consumer price inflation last quarter looked to be temporary, with food and petrol prices expected to ease in the near term. The bank expects inflation will drop to 1.1 percent over the next 12-month period, which is lower than in the previous Monetary Policy Statement. Looking further out, inflation is not expected to return to the 2 percent mark until June 2019, which is the middle point, of course, of the bank’s target band. As a result, New Zealanders can expect wages to continue to grow faster than inflation, which is an established trend under this Government.
Chris Bishop: How is the low inflationary environment likely to feed into interest rates?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The good news for households and mortgage-holders is that the Reserve Bank expects to keep the OCR unchanged until inflation picks up in 2019. Even then, it currently expects the OCR to reach only 2 percent by mid-2020. Of course, these are projections and cannot take unexpected events into account. The Government has long encouraged households to prepare for an eventual rise in interest rates. They should make financial decisions based on what could be afforded at a slightly higher interest rate, not on what they can afford today.
Chris Bishop: What risks to the economy did the Reserve Bank identify?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The main risks identified by the bank were international ones. While the bank has shifted to a more upbeat view of the global economy, it notes ongoing risks around surplus capacity and, of course, extensive political uncertainty. Those international political uncertainties are one of the reasons why the Government is committed to reducing net public debt to between 10 and 15 percent of GDP by 2025. At that level, New Zealand will have the capacity to absorb not just external shocks but also any internal shocks, like natural disasters, without extra taxes and without slashing entitlements.
Government Financial Position—Surplus’ Impact on Government Services
3. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: What conditions would need to be met for him to declare that the operating surplus in the Budget is sustainable?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): I am not sure that a ministerial declaration would make anything more or less sustainable. That said, I would say to the member that a sustainable surplus is one that looks to be sustained over a period of time.
Grant Robertson: Is it a condition of a sustainable surplus that there would be a reduction in the 41,000 New Zealanders who are homeless?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I do not think the member’s numbers are correct. I think he has just gone to the Labour Party research unit and gone with whatever numbers he has. My definitions of “sustained” and “sustainable” are approximately the same; it is when something occurs over a period of time. So, for example, if you were going to have a decade of deficits, then that would probably be a sustained period of deficits.
Grant Robertson: Would it be a sustainable surplus if 40,000 New Zealand children continued to be hospitalised with preventable diseases?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In terms of the member’s numbers, I always have to be a bit careful with those, because he comes up with them and puts the most negative view of life on them that he can. This Government invests very significantly in public services. It has reduced, for example, the impact of diseases like rheumatism in young children. We constantly work to improve the indicators of health, education, and other indicators of family well-being.
Grant Robertson: Is it a sustainable surplus if there is no contribution made to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In terms of the priority of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, can I say this to the member: actually, there are all sorts of different priorities that New Zealanders have at a period of time. We were pleased with the decision we made to postpone contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund so that we could pay for the rebuild of Christchurch and so that we could pay for supporting vulnerable people through the global financial crisis. We are in surplus now, but we do want to get debt down further. We have committed to resuming contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund once debt is below 20 percent of GDP, which I notice would be much earlier under this Government than under any other Government that is possible in this House.
Grant Robertson: Is it not true that the kind of surplus that he is going to generate is an accountant’s surplus, built on massive social deficits and infrastructure deficit, and all he is going to be able to do on Budget day is claim credit for putting back what he has already taken away from New Zealand families?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not sure how familiar the member is with the accountancy profession, going by all the questions he asks me in the House, but this Government is absolutely focused on making sure that New Zealand is in a sustainable position, and that includes getting debt down so that we have net debt below 20 percent of GDP by 2020. I note the member does not think that is necessary. I think the member thinks he could put that off and spray money around. Well, the evidence of events like the Christchurch earthquakes and also, in fact, the Kaikōura earthquakes is that that is a fool’s position to take.
Broadband, Ultra-fast—Announcements and Connection Numbers
4. MAUREEN PUGH (National) to the Minister for Communications: What recent announcements has he made on the Ultra-Fast Broadband programme?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister for Communications): This morning I announced the start of phase two of the ultra-fast broadband (UFB) programme, with Hikurangi and Hokitika being the first towns to commence the build, under the extension of the UFB programme. In January the Government announced a $300 million investment to extend UFB to another 423,000 New Zealanders, across a further 151 towns. Having access to fast and reliable broadband is critical for regional towns like Hikurangi and Hokitika, and through the Government’s investment both Northland and the West Coast will have the same world-class broadband as Kiwis living in other centres.
Maureen Pugh: How is the UFB programme tracking against initial expectations?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I am very pleased to report to the House that more than a third of New Zealanders with access to UFB are now connected faster than we had thought. The March 2017 quarterly broadband report released today shows the number of households, businesses, schools, and hospitals connected to UFB has increased 12 percent in the past 3 months, to over 367,000. We are investing more than $2 billion in world-class UFB and Rural Broadband Initiative programmes, which will allow 85 percent of New Zealanders to access UFB by the end of 2024 and provide vastly improved broadband in New Zealand’s rural communities.
Housing—Affordability and Availability
5. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Building and Construction: How can the Government’s housing policy be a success, as the Prime Minister said, when four out of five renters cannot buy a house in their area without going into financial hardship?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): Firstly, because we have been successful in trebling new home construction from the all-time low of late 2008 to a level of investment of over $12 billion a year—an all-time high. Secondly, it is because of the successful ramping-up of assistance to first-home buyers. In 2008 the Government provided only $10 million worth of assistance. The KiwiSaver HomeStart scheme is now providing $700 million worth of assistance per year. Thirdly, I would note that the housing affordability measure yesterday, mentioned by the member, showing four out of five people in that category is actually a lower number in housing affordability stress than when National became Government.
Phil Twyford: Does he accept that with such low numbers of Aucklanders getting help from HomeStart, the scheme has failed in the place where first-home buyers most need help, and the fact that he is now looking at bumping up the price limits for the third time in 4 years simply means that his scheme cannot keep up with house prices under his policies?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I note that the KiwiSaver HomeStart scheme in its first year helped 12,000 New Zealanders into their first home. In the last year it has helped 15,000 New Zealanders into their own home. This is the most generous support that a Government has provided in more than a generation to get people into HomeStart, into homeownership.
Phil Twyford: It’s not working, Nick.
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I simply say to the member opposite that, yes, it is working and it is very popular.
Sarah Dowie: Does the report released yesterday by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have information that highlights successful initiatives in improving housing affordability?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, the report does highlight the dramatic improvement for both first-home buyers and renters in Canterbury, to the point where housing is way more affordable today than it has been—long before that city was hit with earthquakes. The strategy adopted in Canterbury was to radically free up land supply and create genuine competition in the provision of sections. I note that the price of an average section in Christchurch is now $190,000, as compared with $530,000 in Auckland. It paves the way for what we need to do in other areas, and that is why things like the Resource Management Act reform and the National Policy Statement on Urban Development show the way forward on improving affordability.
Phil Twyford: When he said “It appeared Auckland house-hunters were holding back until prices stabilised and supply increased”, did he know that the average Auckland house price has gone up by more than $100,000 in the last year and that the supply shortage is getting worse by 6,000 houses a year, on top of the 40,000 home deficit that has built up on his watch?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would invite the member to have a look in the mirror, because during the last Labour Government house prices more than doubled, and it did nothing. Secondly, I would note that with the huge ramp-up in housing construction in Auckland as part of the supply, the last 6 months has seen house prices in Auckland flat. I think members of the House should welcome that.
Phil Twyford: Does he agree with the Salvation Army, the country’s most respected social agency, which today endorsed Labour’s KiwiBuild plan, and said: “Rather than messing around with the transfer of State houses, the Government needs to be a whole lot more ambitious about the number of affordable houses it can build.”?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The current Government is building more houses directly than any in more than 25 years. In respect of KiwiBuild, I would just love the Labour Party to explain how it can possibly recycle the money every 3 months to be able to achieve its targets. It is a pipedream, it is a sound bite, it is anything but a credible policy.
Phil Twyford: Did he keep his HAM, or Housing Affordability Measure, hidden from the public for so long because it quantified the national housing crisis, showing that 86 percent of renters in Auckland cannot buy a house without going into financial hardship; or was it because it was so politically damaging, as his officials suggested?
Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Unlike members of the Opposition, this Government respects the independence of Statistics New Zealand. In fact, I know members opposite repeatedly attack it, but I would draw to their attention that the Housing Affordability Measure shows that the worst deterioration in housing affordability occurred between 2003 and 2008, during which period the Labour Government did absolutely nothing.
Earthquake, Kaikōura—State Highway 1 Clearance
6. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Transport: Of the slips that have to be cleared to re-open State Highway 1 north and south of Kaikōura, how many had machinery and workers on the job clearing them yesterday, and how many didn’t?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport): The North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery alliance had workers and machinery on six of the 10 major slip sites still to be cleared on State Highway 1 north and south of Kaikōura yesterday. Four major slip sites did not have workers or machinery on them yesterday, for various reasons, such as some slips nearing completion, geotechnical investigations continuing to determine the safest method to remove remaining loose or dangerous material, and priority being on the most complex and time-consuming slips.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: With all these slips right now having no machinery or workers clearing them, why is the work schedule designed to suit the contractors and not the local quake-affected people?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I entirely disagree with the member. Strong progress has been made. It is not as a result of the contractors; it is as a result of things like Cyclone Debbie and Cyclone Donna and other work going on. But actually I have seen many times—I appreciate that the member has gone there for the first time yesterday—the strong progress that is being made on those roads. It is on time, on budget, and we will have access at the end of this year.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, I was cleaning up in Cheviot just about a month ago.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I have the question, please.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given the work rate of one shift per day per week, and not weekends—and not weekends—[Interruption] No, he has got the picture right. You are upside down, but that is the right way up. Given the work rate of one shift per week and not weekends, does he think that work schedule remotely addresses the urgency required to clear State Highway 1 at Kaikōura, 6 months on from the earthquake?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, it is good to see that the member thinks that these workers have a work rate comparable to his, but can I tell the member, quite clearly, that actually I have seen them. They are working from dawn to dusk—and in some cases getting up very early—going very hard, and good progress is being made. [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just need a little less interjection from my right.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the locals down there are saying that the rate of progress is slow and not as the Minister says, and that there are far too few resources being devoted to the re-opening of the State highway 6 months on, why have he and his colleagues and the local member of Parliament not given it the priority it deserves?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: The member is wrong. I have been there many times to check on the progress. I think the member knows full well, actually, that this House passed a law to, effectively, suspend aspects of the Resource Management Act. We have committed $812 million to this, the workers are out there, as weather and safety permits, every single day, and I note when the member says that the Government is not prioritising, it was only at the end of last year when he was complaining about how much we were prioritising it over his local electorate.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister was asked to answer questions on Kaikōura. The last answer was, first of all, not relevant to the question he is being asked, and, second, it fails because it is false—demonstrably false.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order. If the member wants us to carry on with a further supplementary question, we will have it. [Interruption] Order! I will have the supplementary question.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yes, you will get it. Is it a fact that the locals are right when they say that it is Monday to Friday, never on the weekend, and that the Government is letting contractors stretch this work out to milk more money out of the taxpayer rather than treating the disaster recovery 6 months on with the urgency it deserves?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: No, it is not. In fact, if you look at what has happened here, the work, in spite of the weather and the dangers involved, is proceeding well. The costs actually have gone down from what we thought, at about $1.4 billion to $2 billion, to more like $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion to do both the road and the rail. There is real confidence about the work that is being done that there will be full access by the end of the year. I think that if you think about that and the progress that has been made, it is faster than any significant project like this that we have seen in recent history.
Mental Health Services—Demand, Funding, and Primary Health Organisations
7. Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) to the Minister of Health: How many more New Zealanders are accessing district heath boards’ mental health and addiction services nationally now than in 2007/08, expressed as a percentage increase; and what is the corresponding percentage growth in funding for mental health and addiction services over the same time period?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): District health boards (DHBs) fund a wide range of mental health and addiction services, from services in the community provided by NGOs in primary care through to hospital-based services. Given this complex mix, it is not possible to specifically quantify the percentage increase in patients accessing DHB-funded mental health and addiction services. However, we all know demand has increased, but so has funding, from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion a year.
Dr David Clark: Does he agree with Dr Cullen, owner of Khandallah Medical Centre in Wellington, who said of Dr Coleman’s recently announced mental health quality initiative—a review that is not a review—that “It can’t take five years. Things will go wildly wrong.”?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, that Dr Cullen is not the Dr Cullen I am familiar with, but what I would say to that Dr Cullen is that I would urge him to read the speech that I gave last Thursday entitled “Social investment in mental health”, which lays out the Government’s approach to these very complex and difficult areas in general.
Dr David Clark: Is he now denying that his officials last month told a primary health organisation (PHO) that a proposal for primary mental health teams had to wait to be considered under the ministry’s strategic plan next year?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, I think the member may be referring to the M4 plan, which is a mental health plan for primary care access that has been developed by four PHOs, and which Labour has announced today as its own plan. Of course, this plan is already in train, in terms of being considered by the Ministry of Health, and, of course, we have got a Budget coming up and an election campaign in which details around funding and whether or not it may progress would be released and considered.
Dr David Clark: Given that answer, will he finally accept that he has dropped the ball on mental health and adopt Labour’s policy to introduce primary mental health coordinators whose job it is to ensure that people in our communities with mild to moderate mental health needs no longer fall through the chasms that have emerged under his watch?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: What I would point out is that this policy Labour has announced today is actually the idea of a group of PHOs, and it has already been referred to the Ministry of Health. But the member has gone on extensively about so-called health underfunding in mental health, yet all the Labour Party has come up with today is a policy that would increase mental health spending by only 1.4 percent, which is actually less than the rate of inflation. So I will leave it for members to decide whether, after all the hype and all the rhetoric, that is an adequate response.
Dr David Clark: So is he now denying that his officials last month told a primary health organisation about primary mental health teams that “it is not in a position to support a proposal of such a scale”?
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: So, look, I do not go to every forum that the 1,400 health officials run around the country, but I think what they have said is actually pretty fair—that they are not in a position to announce Government policy. They are the officials. They are considering this proposal from the PHOs, and that is exactly as it should be.
Dr David Clark: I seek leave to table a paywalled report about the Ministry of Health’s lukewarm response to primary mental health teams from the New Zealand Doctor magazine last month.
Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular article. Is there any objection? There is objection.
Earthquake, Kaikōura—Recovery Progress and Local Infrastructure
8. STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura) to the Minister of Civil Defence: What reports has he received outlining recovery progress 6 months after the Kaikōura earthquake?
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister of Civil Defence): Yesterday I was in Kaikōura with local MP Stuart Smith, who is doing a great job of supporting his community through this event, and I can report to the House that activity in terms of the response and the recovery is progressing well. Over the last 6 months there has been a massive whole-of-Government approach to supporting the communities through, particularly with the recovery, and new funding of around $860 million has been invested so far. A few examples—and I apologise if this answer is a bit longer than normal, but there is a long list: more than $17.5 million from the earthquake support subsidy has been provided to 862 businesses in Kaikōura, Wellington, Marlborough, and also the Hurunui districts; an additional $1 million grant is now available for businesses in the local region to apply for; $5.7 million has been invested to restore the Kaikōura marina to its full functionality; and the list goes on and on. We are doing a huge amount to support the people in this area as the 6-month mark approaches on Sunday.
Stuart Smith: How did the earthquake impact local infrastructure and how are repairs progressing?
Hon NATHAN GUY: That is a very good question. Scientists report that land movements and shaking were amongst the strongest ever in New Zealand’s history, causing widespread damage to infrastructure. Progress reinstating the coastal route, which I saw firsthand yesterday—both the road and the rail is progressing very well, and costs could be, like the Minister of Transport has estimated, well over $1 billion. The quake has also caused significant damage to farmland and to fisheries—a major uplift in the coastline and about over 100,000 slips on a lot of the local farms. The Government is doing what it can to support the primary sector and other communities through this event.
Stuart Smith: What recent Government announcements will help the recovery for quake-struck farmers and growers?
Hon NATHAN GUY: It was pleasing to see yesterday that the Minister for Primary Industries made a significant announcement of $5 million of new funding to support quake-affected farmers and growers. This fund will support projects to investigate long-term land use options and, also, provide professional advisory services for their future land options. It will be administered by the Ministry for Primary Industries, and it will make a difference to that community.
Earthquake, Kaikōura—Business Assistance Package
9. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he think that his Government’s assistance package for quake-affected businesses, some who have lost 60 percent and more of their trade and clientele, is remotely adequate and fair?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister for Economic Development): Yes, I do, because we have been supporting Kaikōura as a Government since the start of these earthquakes and will continue to do so strongly. Indeed, to date, the Government has provided over $17 million in payments to support quake-affected businesses. This has helped businesses hang on to staff, and it has provided breathing space so that they can enact their own recovery plans. Because of Kaikōura’s isolation, we provided the subsidy to Kaikōura businesses for longer than we have before—for a full 24 weeks after the earthquake, compared with 14 for businesses following the 2011 Canterbury quakes. The recently announced business recovery grants programme will continue the Government’s support by delivering more targeted support to help businesses through the winter until State Highway 1 reopens.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: When local businessmen and businesswomen tell me that they have never even talked to “Steven” Smith MP—[Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member—[Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. Is there a point of order?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that he does not know his own members’ names, but it is a duty in this House to get other members’ names right.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to invite the member to start his supplementary question again.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: When local businessmen and businesswomen tell me that they have never ever spoken to “Steven” Smith MP and I have to tell them he is not called “Steven”—[Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! We will let the member have his question and he can try to make a scene if he wants by misnaming the member; that is his business.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, no. I am asking the question my way—all right?
Mr SPEAKER: Finish the question. [Interruption] Order! I will give one more opportunity for the member to get the supplementary question done and dusted. Otherwise, I am moving on.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. How I phrase the question is how it was put to me, and I am just telling you what I heard yesterday.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. If the member chooses to misname the member for a political point, I am going to allow him to do so. I am going to ask this side of the House to stay quiet so we can get the question out of the way and get the answer out of the way.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: When local businessmen and businesswomen tell me they have never seen the local MP or that he has never talked with them, and if, as he says—or Nathan Guy says—that they are standing “shoulder to shoulder” with Kaikōura locals 6 months on, why has some Government team not gone from one end of Kaikōura to the other to speak with business owners and staff about the financial assistance they so desperately need?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: With respect to the member, this is a silly, silly point that he is making. Stuart Smith has been indefatigable in relation to the earthquakes. He has been at every end of that. He has been relentless. In fact, the paper trail will show his dedication and questioning of Ministers on these issues. Ministers also have been there many, many times. I appreciate that the member was only there for the first time yesterday, but if he had been there earlier, what he would have seen is $17.5 million—the longest, biggest support package for businesses New Zealand has seen in recent times—and more targeted support continuing to happen, because we stand behind those people following what has happened there.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why call local business owners liars when so many businesses are on their knees, having lost 60 percent or more of their profits; and what in the Government’s assistance package will keep them going over the next 18 months until their customers are back?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: No one is doing what the member suggests. Having been there many times and having talked with a number of businesses, what I think I can say is that the experience is variable. Indeed, there are a number of businesses in food, which, with the workers going in and fixing the roads, are doing well out of what has happened and are getting back on their feet. There are others that are still finding it difficult, and that is why the support has moved to targeted assistance, to help and to get these businesses back on their feet, because we have supported the people of Kaikōura from day one, and we continue to do so.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: If his Government can give $1.6 million to South Canterbury Finance, over $200 million to Hollywood, $42 million per year to Skycity Casino, and hundreds of millions to Rio Tinto, why can it not give an adequate wage support package to the quake-affected businesses and workers in Kaikōura?
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I appreciate the member has got his funny little conspiracies and grievances that go back a millennium or more, but the truth is that over a billion dollars is going into repairing that road there. We are working with Pace to do that. There are many other—
Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is about the business and wage support package, not the roads—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. If he asks a political question like the last one, then he had better stand by for the answer that has been given by the Minister.
Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Very shortly, over a billion dollars is going into that corridor and many more millions into supporting the people of Kaikōura through tourism, the harbour, business support, and other areas as well. I think the member’s claim is pretty lame, actually.
Pay Equity—Proposed Legislation
10. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: Does he believe the draft Pay Equity Bill will make it easier for women to be fairly paid for their work?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): When it is passed into law, yes.
Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing that women first need to compare their jobs with men in their own workplace, sector, or industry when the courts have said that comparators must be males whose pay is not also undervalued in female-dominated sectors?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, it is for a number of reasons, but that is not all that the courts said about that. They did say that when a comparison was appropriate, it should be with male employees with the same or substantially similar skills, responsibility, and service, performing the work under the same or substantially similar conditions, and with the same or substantially similar degrees of effort. It then went on to say: “They may be if those enquiries of other employees of the same employer or of other employers in the same or similar enterprise or industry or sector would be an inappropriate comparator group.” My strong inference that I take from the courts’ words is that you start from the industry and the employer and then work out if there is not a comparator available.
Jan Logie: Does the Minister recognise that by saying you need to start in your workplace or your sector, some of those same workplaces and sectors will be undervalued in female-dominated areas?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, then they would not be a valid comparator. What the courts said—and what the draft bill says—is that they have to be a male-dominated industry, or at least one that is not subject to pay inequity because of the dominance of women in that occupation.
Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing to make women meet additional historical and labour-market criteria in order to prove the initial merit of their claim to their employer?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Because we are being guided by the very good recommendations of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles, which I thought made some very good recommendations—we accepted them.
Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing to allow women access to employer information only once they have already proven the merit of their claim?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That very question is being asked of the unions, because this is what we are doing: we are having a conversation over the exposure draft, and I am listening very carefully to that. I would not rule out a change as a consequence of that submission.
Jan Logie: Why is the Government proposing to deny women with a successful court-determined pay equity claim the commercial standard of up to 6 years’ back-pay?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The issue of back-pay is a vexed one when it comes to pay equity, because, unlike an equal-pay claim—which I note, under the old definition, has not actually been successfully made for decades—throughout the process, employment agreements have been agreed. To then relitigate those would be very difficult. So, on balance, what was agreed—and, indeed, it was certainly the agreement of Terranova and the Ministry of Health—was to start from a point where pay inequity was agreed to occur.
Jan Logie: How can this Government say that it cares about women getting paid more when it is attempting to undermine existing human rights law, creating more hoops for women to jump through, not to mention undermining the principles of justice and equality?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I can think of about two billion reasons why that is an absolute nonsense. This Government, led by the Minister of Health, has landed what has been a landmark settlement that will improve the lot of 55,000 women in this country. The bill, when passed, will be world leading. No other jurisdiction will have gone as far as this country has to improve the lot of women in the workplace.
Free-trade Agreements—Remaining Trans-Pacific Partnership Countries
11. BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki—King Country) to the Minister of Trade: What recent announcements has he made on New Zealand’s trade interests?
Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Trade): Today I welcomed the Government’s decision to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It shows leadership with Japan, which has also ratified the agreement, prior to a business delegation visit led by Prime Minister English next week. Ratification sends a clear message that we see value in a common set of high-quality rules across the Asia-Pacific region, and we are keeping all of our options open. The TPP remains valuable, both economically and strategically. It will improve access for New Zealand exporters and lower tariff rates across the Asia-Pacific, including Japan—the world’s third-largest economy.
Barbara Kuriger: What are the benefits to New Zealand of greater trade liberalisation amongst the TPP countries?
Hon TODD McCLAY: New Zealand has high ambitions for better market access for our exporters, and the remaining TPP countries are important. It would be the first free-trade agreement (FTA) with Japan and other countries. If New Zealand is not fighting for better market access for our businesses and our people, nobody will. It will be a common set of rules that will create greater certainty for New Zealand companies. The TPP, among 11 countries, will deliver better access and ensure New Zealand companies remain competitive in these important growing markets.
Barbara Kuriger: What are the next steps for TPP countries?
Hon TODD McCLAY: I have been meeting with trade Ministers over the last several months to chart a way forward to improve market access. TPP Ministers met recently in Chile, where we recognised the value of the TPP and committed to work together to keep markets open. I will be co-chairing a meeting of trade Ministers in Vietnam next week, where the next steps for this agreement will be discussed.
Barbara Kuriger: What other announcements has the Minister made on trade opportunities?
Hon TODD McCLAY: Earlier this week, I met with the Vietnamese Prime Minister. We agreed to set an ambitious target of doubling two-way trade to $2.5 billion over the next 5 years. Vietnam has a population of 94 million consumers, and trade with Vietnam has tripled over the last 7 years since our FTA came into force, so we need to be ambitious for New Zealand and back our exporters to succeed. I have also announced opportunities with the EU, the UK, the Pacific Alliance, Mercosur, an upgrade with China, and possibilities with Sri Lanka. All of these are part of the Government’s ambitious approach, as outlined in Trade Agenda 2030.
Drinking-water Contamination—Havelock North Inquiry
12. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Attorney-General: Does he believe the Hastings District Council bears primary responsibility for the contaminated water they supplied to their Havelock North residents, which caused over 5,000 people to become ill, some very seriously, and has been linked to the death of 3 people?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): My belief is irrelevant. As Minister responsible for the inquiry, I accept the findings of stage one of the Havelock North Drinking Water Inquiry. The inquiry found that several of the parties responsible for the water supply regime for Havelock North failed to adhere to the high levels of care and diligence necessary to protect public health and to avoid outbreaks of serious illness.
Hon David Parker: Was he disturbed by the inquiry’s finding that in recent years the Hastings District Council did not properly deal with “a relatively high number of positive E.coli readings at the bore for Havelock North, both underestimating their significance and ending water treatment before establishing the contamination source.”?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As Minister responsible for the inquiry, I was concerned at all the key findings of the inquiry, helpfully set out in paragraph 10 of the inquiry. I also note that there were a number of serious failings by the regional council.
Hon David Parker: Does he accept that the Hastings District Council and the regional council should both have known that the aquifer from which untreated drinking water was being drawn was not confined but, rather, was open to intrusions of polluted surface water?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As Minister responsible for the inquiry, I accept all the findings of stage one of the inquiry. That includes the failings by the regional council and the district council, and, in particular, the critical lack of collaboration and liaison between the regional council and the district council.
Hon David Parker: Does he accept the finding that although the outbreak could not be pinned to any one fault or omission by the district council, had any of these failures not occurred the outcome may have been prevented?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As the Minister responsible for the inquiry, I accept all the findings of stage one of the inquiry. In particular, I accept that there were failings on the part of many players.
Hon David Parker: Does he think it twists the inquiry’s findings to say that, because no one fault can be proven to be the cause of this calamity, nobody and no entity have responsibility for the event, which is what some of the players are now saying?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As the Minister responsible for the inquiry, I am not seeking to twist or turn over anything. I accept all the findings of the inquiry. My understanding is that the district council issued a press release yesterday in which it said it welcomed the findings. I also understand that the regional council and the district council are now, helpfully, working together—as they should have at all times—to comply with the interim recommendations of the inquiry in relation to this matter.
Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]
Mr SPEAKER: No, I will just deal with the point of order.
Hon David Parker: I think the Minister took it to mean that I was implying that he was twisting the inquiry. I was not. I was asking him whether it was—
Mr SPEAKER: So what is the point of order?
Hon David Parker: My question was: does it twist the inquiry to say that no one has responsibility for the event?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I suspect the question has been addressed, but I will give the member the benefit of the doubt to repeat the supplementary question.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Supplementary, Mr Speaker?
Mr SPEAKER: No, I am having a repeat of this supplementary question.
Hon David Parker: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does he think it twists the inquiry’s finding to say that, because no one fault can be proven to have caused the calamity, nobody and no entity have responsibility for this event, which is a quote from one of the participants?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I do not think anyone is trying to twist the inquiry in any way, shape, or form. My understanding is that yesterday the district council released a press release in which it said it welcomed the results of the inquiry and it was moving on the failings that were found against it, and that all parties are working together to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: Did the inquiry conclude that the serious incident with Havelock North’s drinking water supply was caused by intensive dairying, as asserted by both the Labour and Green parties in this Parliament last September?
Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The latter part of that question is out of order and incorrect. I am the water spokesman and I have never asserted that.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The latter part of the question is completely unnecessary to the question. The question is: did the inquiry conclude that the contamination was related to intensive dairying, and the Minister can address that.
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I have read through the full report, not just the key findings on paragraph 10, and I can assure the House that dairying had nothing to do with it. So the scurrilous attacks on dairying by the Greens deserve an apology.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! We do not need to go there, either. [Interruption] Order! We now move to—[Interruption] Supplementary question—Catherine Delahunty.
Catherine Delahunty: Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. Given that 40 percent of New Zealanders, including in Hawke’s Bay, rely on clean water from aquifers for their drinking water, what actions will he recommend to ensure that aquifers are managed with better care and consideration?
Mr SPEAKER: In so far as there is ministerial responsibility—the Hon Chris Finlayson.
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I heard that comment, Mr Speaker, but as the humble Attorney-General I am responsible for the inquiry. Those questions are probably—they are very valid questions—better addressed to other of my ministerial colleagues, although I can tell the honourable member that my understanding is that all the parties to this inquiry who have been criticised recognise that there is a need to lift performance to ensure this does not happen again. But I would suggest that it would be better to address those particular questions to the relevant Ministers. As I said, I am responsible for the inquiry; I am not a general know-all.
Catherine Delahunty: As the Minister responsible for the inquiry, will he recommend that the Minister for the Environment use his powers to intervene to ensure that the people are kept safe from awful sickness, including permanent health damage after drinking fresh water?
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: As the Minister responsible for the inquiry, I have suggested to all my colleagues that they read the report. I do know that the Minister of Local Government is intending to write, or has already started to write, to various local authorities saying they had better know the processes. It is not a question of saying that the Minister for the Environment should do this; it is a team effort across a number of agencies.
Catherine Delahunty: Further to the team effort, given the multiple failings detailed in the report, as well as the numerous boil-water notices in other communities, how will his Government ensure that they are doing enough to protect the people of Aotearoa from further outbreaks? It may be outside your scope.
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Yes, the last comment hit the nail on the head. It is outside the scope of the Attorney-General, who, under the Inquiries Act, is responsible for the inquiry. These are very helpful and incisive questions that are better directed at the Ministers responsible.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Too repetitive. He likes the sound of his own voice.
Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I can assure the honourable member—and the grumpy old member for Northland—that the Minister of Local Government, for example, has got on to local authorities to, immediately—not after the inquiry’s stage two report—start to address their processes so that the kinds of problems the honourable member refers to will be addressed sooner rather than later.
Mr SPEAKER: And I thank the humble Minister.
Questions to Members
Petition of Maire Leadbeater—Submissions
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): to the Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee: Is he confident that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has heard from all available witnesses on the petition of Maire Leadbeater urging the New Zealand—
Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not the question that is written before me. I will have the question started again, please.
1. CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee: Has the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee heard from all witnesses who wish to be heard on the petition of Maire Leadbeater urging the New Zealand Government to address the ongoing human rights situation in West Papua?
Todd Muller (Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee): No. The committee has heard evidence from the petitioner, Maire Leadbeater, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Any decision to hear from any further witnesses will be a matter for the committee.
Catherine Delahunty: Why did the committee refuse to hear from the West Papuan human rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Benny Wenda, who was available to speak to them today as a first-hand witness on this petition?
Mr SPEAKER: Order! That question is not in order. That is a matter for the committee, not for the chair of the committee.
Urgent Debates Declined
Drinking-water Contamination—Havelock North Inquiry
Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon David Parker seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the findings of the Government inquiry into the Havelock North drinking water. This is a particular case of recent occurrence, for which there is ministerial responsibility. The House debated the drinking water contamination in Havelock North when it occurred in August 2016. At that time I ruled that New Zealanders expect to have safe drinking water available, that the situation was a serious one, and that a debate was required. While the release of a report may warrant an urgent debate, this must be exceptional, especially where working through a report’s recommendations would take some time. I refer members to Speaker’s Ruling 215/5. I note that the report is on stage one of the inquiry and identifies what caused the water contamination. Stage two will make recommendations to prevent further incidents. Having considered the report, I do not think its findings have such an element of urgency that the business of the House should be set aside to debate it. The application is, therefore, declined.
Offices of Parliament
Address to Governor-General
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Deputy Leader of the House): I move, That a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General commending to Her Excellency the alterations to the appropriations for the 2016/17 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the appropriations and information for the 2017/18 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. These three offices are known as Offices of Parliament, and they serve as independent statutory authorities with specific roles to play.
The Office of the Auditor-General is an office that superintends all public expenditure in New Zealand. I would like to acknowledge the appointment of Martin Matthews as Controller and Auditor-General earlier this year. As the public watchdog, the office acts as a check and balance on the public sector. Its role is to independently assess the appropriateness of Government expenditure, measured against the statements given to this House about how that expenditure will be spent effectively.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment plays an important role in our country. As an independent Officer of Parliament, the commissioner’s role is unique and quite different to the roles of Government agencies. Under Dr Jan Wright, the office has been clear, fact-based, and pragmatic in its approach. I want to thank Dr Wright for her valuable service as she prepares to retire in October this year.
The Office of the Ombudsmen handles complaints and investigates the administrative conduct of State sector agencies, including in relation to Official Information Act requests. In Budget 2016 the office was provided with additional funding over 3 years to clear a backlog of aged investigations that had reached an unacceptably high level. Progress on this work has been considerably faster than expected, and the backlog is now expected to be cleared by 30 June 2018, a year earlier than originally expected. This is an excellent result, and I want to congratulate the office on the rapid progress it has made. I commend the motion to this House.
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I want to align the Labour Party with the comments that have been made by the Minister. I think it is probably worth doing a little bit more of a background for members as to what is actually going on here, because I would bet a reasonable sum of money that the majority of the House has no idea around the processes that are involved with funding the Offices of Parliament.
Dr David Clark: Oh, that’s unfair.
Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, no, I do not think it is unfair at all, Mr Rev. Dr Clark—just to make sure that we get it absolutely right.
Because of the independence of the offices, the Minister of Finance is not the person who proposes to the House, as part of the Budget process, what their budgets should be. The decision is one of a committee, which is a cross-party committee chaired by the Speaker. It is a committee that, first of all, receives requests from the Offices of Parliament. It receives some advice on that and makes some decisions and recommendations as part of this report, and that report is picked up and moved by the Government. That is what is happening now.
I agree with the comments that the Deputy Leader of the House made around the new appointments. Martin Matthews is someone who, in my opinion, has a very high degree of integrity and a long history of public service. He was probably held back from being the Auditor-General by the fact that Helen Clark wanted to keep him as her chief executive, when he possibly could have moved on at the time.
Of course, we look forward to welcoming, in a more formal way, the Rt Hon Simon Upton when he takes up his position.
The last comment I want to make is that I was a Budget Minister. I worked the Budgets with Ministers over a period of 9 years. It was very, very rare for an agency to come offering to give money back because it had been more efficient than had been predicted earlier. I just want to place on my record the thanks of Parliament to the Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier and his team for their attack—their relentless attack—over the past 12 months on the backlog of Official Information Act requests. They are getting a degree of efficiency into that office. They are putting an amount of pressure on to people who have submitted complaints to make sure that they are still current. I have given up on a few complaints after some discussions with them. [Interruption] Some of them were 5 and 6 years old, and even I was having trouble remembering what the hell I was complaining about and what I wanted the information for. The information was well past being relevant, and that was clearly by design on the part of Ministers opposite.
But, having said that, there have been a lot of complaints that have been satisfactorily resolved as well, and information that members of the public have been waiting for, for years, has been freed up as a result of this attack. Because it is going so well, the backlog attack, which had been anticipated to take 3 years, is now estimated to take only 2. What is also interesting is that there are fewer and fewer complaints going into the backlog because Ministers know and departments know that they cannot rely on the Ombudsman waiting a year or so to get on to them. They know that they will get a prompt hurry-up, and that means that the Official Information Act is working in a way that is closer to what was intended.
These are important independent offices, and I support the changes recommended here.
EUGENIE SAGE (Green): The Green Party joins with others in the House in supporting this motion for alterations to the appropriations for Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and for the appropriations for the 2017-18 year.
I congratulate the new Auditor-General, and I would also like to place on record our thanks to the outgoing Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, who finishes her second term at the end of June.
When looking at the report of the Officers of Parliament Committee and the $3.3 million budget for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, that is extraordinary value for money in terms of the range of investigations that the office undertakes, the quality and integrity of the reports, and the evidence that they are based on. I think all of the Officers of Parliament do extraordinary service to this place in terms of the integrity of their work.
But just talking a bit more specifically about the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the office’s budget is going to remain static for the next 3 years. Given the extraordinary environmental challenges that New Zealand faces with our environment, I would commend to the Officers of Parliament Committee that they perhaps look at that next year. Nature is in crisis in New Zealand, and last year the state of the marine environment domain report that came out confirmed that many of our native marine animals are threatened with extinction, including more than a third of our seabird species—albatross, shags, petrels, and penguins. While there has certainly been a reduction in the number of birds that are caught and killed in fishing-nets, from around 5,000 annually to around 3,000, that is still far too many.
At the end of this month the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will be producing a report on the plight of New Zealand’s native birds. When we have got 80 percent of our native bird species staring extinction in the face, I am looking forward to that report because the commissioner always makes a number of sound recommendations about how we can tackle the challenges that the officer’s reports address. I think one of the landmark reports from her office was in 2011, looking at the use of 1080 and concluding, after an independent evaluation, that it should be used over a much wider area. So we hope that there are similarly important recommendations in the upcoming report.
I would like to comment briefly too on the Office of the Ombudsmen. It has got a $16.7 million budget and, as the Hon Trevor Mallard noted, extra funding was made available for the office to tackle the backlog of Official Information Act complaints. There has been remarkable progress, and that backlog is likely to be cleared a year earlier than anticipated. So, yes, the office then offered up, I think, over $900,000 back. That money has, effectively, been reallocated, with additional funding provided so that there is going to be a fully resourced team to inspect prisons and detention centres around New Zealand. That is really valuable work that the Office of the Ombudsmen does. It will also help it retain skilled and experienced staff so that their salaries are competitive, and there is quite a significant capital injection of $1.2 million in the upcoming Budget to enable increased investment in ICT, which, again, should help the office stay on top of all of the complaints that are made, in terms of the way in which Government agencies deal with Official Information Act requests.
I think it was really commendable earlier this year that the State Services Commission and the Office of the Ombudsmen released, for the first time, the first set of official statistics on the implementation of the Official Information Act. That showed that in a year, 2015-16, there were over 40,000 requests for official information, and 23 percent of the complaints to the Office of the Ombudsmen needed a full investigation, and some 10 percent of those were upheld. So that confirms the value of the office and the importance of it doing that work, in terms of investigating complaints into Government agencies delaying the provision of information or not providing full information. Thank you.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): On the subject of the Offices of Parliament, the Public Audit Act 2001 provides for the Auditor-General to give independent assurance to this Parliament and the public over effectiveness and efficiency, waste, probity, and financial prudence. Our question is why has it taken 196 days—some 7 months—for the Audit Office to reply to a letter we sent it in October of last year. We raised serious concerns about Fuji Xerox and the uncomfortably close relationship it has with current and former high-ranking procurement staff in the Minister of Finance’s former ministry—the one “Songs of Bridges” now allegedly presides over.
The Audit Office followed an extensive and exhaustive line of inquiry—well, it met with Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) staff to discuss all-of-Government contracts, it talked to MBIE’s auditor and audit staff, it has spoken to a person we identified in our letter, and it has considered how these relate to MBIE’s future procurements.
But this honesty-box approach sums up this Government’s entire approach to biosecurity. In order to send a clear message that under New Zealand First, any post-border incursion like pea weevil or varroa or myrtle rust would trigger an independent inquiry to be led by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, we make that statement today. We will fund it to do this because the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) cannot be trusted to investigate MPI. That is axiomatic.
Returning to the Audit Office, 7 months of painstaking work yielded just this answer: “The issues outlined in your letter have been referred to the Minister of Education, considered as part of our Audit Office work to date, or are currently being considered as part of our planned future work.”, and that is it. We raised a serious concern about Fuji Xerox promising Northland schools the earth but delivering them dirt instead. Prima facie conflicts of interest—like the former deputy chief executive officer of MBIE responsible for procurement, Peter Thomas, jumping ship to Fuji Xerox just before it won a multimillion-dollar Government contract—attracted, what? Just a Gallic shrug, like: “So what’s of interest here?”.
Within the last few weeks, though, Fujifilm Japan has delayed its annual report because of $285 million worth of accounting irregularities in its New Zealand operations. Sound familiar? Despite that, Fuji—that is, the one here—still won a contract worth tens of millions of dollars from the Ministry of Social Development under yet another of these suspect all-of-Government stitch-ups. Where there is smoke there is fire, as the National Business Review and Fairfax, to their credit, have tried to expose.
This week I was contacted by a major Japanese business journalist, and I will quote you a sentence from one such contact. He said: “We are planning to run a story on Fuji Xerox New Zealand’s fraud in the 15 May issue.” That is really relevant. Way back in Japan, they are concerned; here, no one is. The Japanese media see this for what it is—fraud—yet the Serious Fraud Office, the Audit Office, and this Government see it as a business-as-usual approach. Soon 300,000 of Japan’s business elite will learn the ugly truth about how our once-high standards in this country have been eroded by this Government’s “who you know” approach to deal making.
In 2013 Transparency International found that 3 percent of Kiwis had paid a bribe, with some two-thirds saying that corruption was on the rise, and in 2017, under this National Government, it is much worse. It is not acceptable for this Government to turn a blind eye to corruption at all levels, from appointing retreads like Dame Jenny Shipley to boards, to Immigration New Zealand’s weekly Mumbai fraud reports, fraud in the Artificial Limb Service, and all-of-Government “who you know” stitch-ups.
I could go on, but my message to the Auditor-General is this. As an officer of this Parliament, you must look behind the figures, because your response to us indicates a serious lack of forensic accounting depth. It is going to be out of Japan in a few days’ time. The question is—to that man laughing and giggling over there, because he could not give a rat’s Jerrière about integrity—what did New Zealand do about the scandal in its midst? [Interruption] There he is—there he is. He thinks it is a joke. What is his name again?
Tracey Martin: Nobody knows.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I do not know. But he thinks it is a joke. It is a scandal that the Japanese are about to blow on their own operation in this country because they know that in this country something has gone wrong, and that man over there—what is his name? Just give me his surname—Brett what?
Hon Member: Hudson.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Brett Hudson. Brett Hudson—he thinks it is funny.
I seek leave to table the Office of the Auditor-General’s response, dated 1 May 2017, to my letter sent to the Auditor-General on 17 October 2016 on this matter of extreme concern.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is put for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.
Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Thank you very much.
Motion agreed to, and Address agreed to.
Bills
Education (Update) Amendment Bill
Third Reading
Hon NIKKI KAYE (Minister of Education): I move, That the Education (Update) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill represents the biggest update to education in nearly 30 years and is representative of the incredible vision and hard work of the previous Minister of Education, Hekia Parata. I want to acknowledge her in this House and acknowledge the huge amount of work that she has done. It is my view, and I have said it before, that history will look kindly on her for the huge amount that she has done, particularly in terms of this bill.
I would also like to mention that this is part of a wider programme by this Government to reform our education system to ensure we continue to lift achievement and improve the quality of our teachers. My predecessor led considerable increases in achievement, including investing the most ever in early childhood, primary, and secondary education this year, which shows the budget went to $11 billion. That is a 35 percent increase since our time in Government. Since 2011 the rate of children starting school having previously attended early childhood education has increased several percentage points—that is thousands more children in early childhood education.
We introduced a $359 million Investing in Educational Success initiative, which helps to create career paths for teachers, helps them share best practice across schools, and helps provide expert skills to raise student achievement. There are now more than 190 communities of learning, involving more than 1,500 schools across the country. Also, while in my previous role as Associate Minister, under our Government we have invested about $5 billion upgrading and fixing old, cold schools left as a legacy from the last Labour Government.
I would like to thank the individuals and organisations who took the time to make a submission on this bill. I would also like to thank the Education and Science Committee for its diligent consideration. To all the members from across the House, thank you very much for the hard work and the hours that you put into this legislation.
There are a number of elements in this bill that reflect the policy intent of our Government. Firstly, it is putting the achievement of our children and young people at the heart of our education system. Secondly, it is ensuring stronger accountability throughout the education system. Thirdly, it is modernising our education system to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It is also about enhancing collaboration between education providers and ensuring greater choice for parents. You can see these policy imperatives in the provisions within this bill.
This bill also reflects the fact that the world is changing, and our students and the flexibilities that we need to provide them must continue to improve so that they can meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. The Government has invested more than $700 million to ensure schools can access the digital world and take advantage of the immense opportunities it offers for learning. This investment has funded projects to provide schools with digital infrastructure such as cabling and wireless technology. It also includes more than $200 million towards the Network for Learning, which is providing schools—in fact, I think it is about 98 percent of schools—with Crown-funded, uncapped, high-speed broadband. This means we now have the platform in place to support the range of initiatives currently under way to achieve our vision of New Zealand as a world leader in digital education. We also announced last year that we would be making digital technology part of the curriculum, to enable all young people to become digitally fluent.
In terms of this piece of legislation, it is also important that we are enabling for the first time a clear and visible strategic direction for the education system, through the newly established objectives for education and a new stand-alone document for the Government to specify its priorities for education: the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities, or NELP. The purpose of the NELP is to move the education system from delivering education to raising achievement, with clearer accountabilities for early childhood education centres in schools.
I do want to touch on some provisions in this bill on which I know there has been significant debate: communities of online learning (COOLs). As I have already mentioned, we have invested more per child than many other Governments across the world around a digital platform. One of the provisions in this bill is to modernise online learning through establishing communities of online learning, or COOLs. The widespread availability of digital technologies is changing the way that our students learn. Now more and more of our children and young people are learning anywhere, any time, and from a variety of sources and places. This enables us to reduce disadvantage, because those young people who may have never had access to books may now have access to more quality online learning opportunities.
To reflect the impact of digital technology on the delivery of education, the bill creates a new regulatory framework for online learning. This will enable, potentially, schools, tertiary education providers, or bodies corporate to be accredited as COOLs. I do want to stress that there will be significant consultation around the regulations, but I am disappointed that we have not been able to get some cross-party support on this. Every parent knows more young people are learning online—and I just want to acknowledge, actually, Rachel from the Virtual Learning Network (VLN) in the gallery, which is unusual in a third reading speech. There are many organisations like VLN that do a great job in New Zealand, and this is about recognising them and raising the quality of learning that is occurring online.
I want to mention, as well, in terms of communities of learning, that as they grow they are beginning to take on wider responsibilities that require more formal arrangements between the members. This bill provides for this by creating two new statutory mechanisms designed to support the growing collaboration. The first is that a community of learning can now be approved by the Minister of Education. Once approved, it can enter into an agreement with the Secretary for Education to carry out a particular project. This will provide greater legal certainty and protection for members as their activities expand. The second is that school boards of trustees that are members of communities of learning can now do work for other educational services or social services that benefit the community of learning’s members or students—for example, offering back officers’ services to an early childhood service in its community of learning or engaging a community liaison officer to work across families in the community of learning.
Taking up these new community of learning options is not compulsory. They simply create new opportunities for those communities of learning that want to formalise their arrangements. It is a decision for individual communities of learning to make if they decide they want to enhance the education they provide.
I want to mention the seclusion and physical restraint issues that have come through the select committee, and the legislative amendments in this area. As we all know, student and staff safety and well-being are central to the provisions prohibiting seclusion in schools and early childhood services, and it is important that we have created a legal framework for the appropriate use of physical restraint in schools. Making this legislative change sends a clear signal to educators that in today’s world there is no situation where it is acceptable for children and young people to be secluded. It also makes clear the limited situations where physical restraint can be used on children and young people by teachers and authorised staff members. When a student is exhibiting inappropriate or dangerous behaviour, it is important that other students and teachers are protected from harm and that learning can continue to happen.
We want parents, families, and whānau to be confident that schools and early childhood services are safe places for children, young people, and staff and that they provide inclusive learning environments. We have also recently announced $40 million in the area, with $34 million around additional services for those young people with severe behavioural issues. So it is not just about the legislation; it is investing in these programmes.
In terms of this bill, there has been a bit of discussion around cohort entry. The bill provides flexibility of choice for parents and opportunities for providers by enabling schools to introduce a cohort entry policy, where new entrants can start only at the beginning of each term. While most children start school on their fifth birthday or soon after, some schools are encouraging children to start as part of a cohort on set days during the year. These schools believe cohort entry enables them to support better transitions to schools, simplifies school and classroom planning, and minimises disruption for existing students.
There have been some concerns raised that schools will be starting children too early, but the important part of the enabling legislation is that it ensures parents have the choice about the right time for their child to start school. The youngest a child would be able to start school will be 4 years and 10 months, and that is only a practical consideration to ensure that children with a birthday close to the start of the term do not have to wait a whole term to start. This is pragmatic, good policy to better support the well-being of young people.
In conclusion, the whole purpose of this bill is about creating a platform for achieving educational success. It is about putting the achievement of our children and young people at the heart of the education system and giving us the flexibility to respond to their current and future needs. I think this bill does this admirably. I now commend the bill to the House.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Lest anybody in the House thinks that my lack of volume in this contribution is a reflection of some kind of acquiescence to this bill, it is simply a reflection of the fact that I have a cold. I have several other speeches to get through this afternoon and I am having to ration my vocal chords.
Carmel Sepuloni: I’ll make up for it.
CHRIS HIPKINS: Carmel Sepuloni will, I am sure, fill in the blanks. I would like to thank the Minister for her acknowledgment of the work of the Education and Science Committee. It was, by and large, a collegial process. It was a shame, however, that it was a complete waste of time because the Government, by majority, rejected almost every substantive amendment that was proposed by those who took the time to submit to the select committee. Their voices may have been heard, but they were not listened to, and as a result we have got a bill that does not in any way really reflect the voices of the people who took the time to submit, and I think that is a shame.
This bill is a disappointing bill, and I do not say that just because I am an Opposition member of Parliament. I have followed the genesis of this bill very closely from the beginning, including the consultation hui that were held around the country when the previous Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, announced her intention to review the Education Act 1989, and I know that there were some incredibly useful and positive discussions that came out of that consultation process.
I also know that there was some enthusiasm for some of the initial proposals that were incorporated into this legislation. For example, there was widespread support for the notion that the Education Act should have a purpose clause. It seems rather odd that we have this very substantive piece of legislation that does not actually have a defined purpose. People working in education welcomed the notion that there would be a purpose clause and, I think, engaged with that very closely during the submissions process and made some very practical suggestions for how that purpose clause could be inclusive and all-encompassing and genuinely reflective of the needs of students of today and of tomorrow. Again, they had all of that very constructive feedback that they provided through the select committee process ignored.
I will not hesitate to support Government policy where it is based on sound research and evidence and where it has been thoroughly worked through, and there are examples of that in this legislation. I think, for example, of the changes to the statutory interventions process, which had been called for by schools, which are sensible, and which will provide new levels of intervention that are less Draconian than those currently in the law, and I think that that is a very welcome development. But there are also examples where that is not the case—where the evidence has not been presented, where the details have not been worked through, and where there are significant risks.
Cohort entry has been well canvassed over the past week, and I am certainly open to the debate around cohort entry. I do not have a philosophical opposition to it. I think that any decision that we make around cohort entry must be driven by what is in the best interests of the child, not by what is most administratively efficient or is most financially beneficial to the Crown.
So I asked the Ministry of Education for the literature that it had based its decision on in recommending cohort entry, and the advice the select committee was given back was that allowing children to start in a cohort after their fifth birthday, rather than this 4 years, 10 months situation that we have in the bill—the only advice that it could present to the committee was that it would cost more because it would mean that kids stayed in early childhood education for longer, which is more expensive than primary schooling, and that they would end up staying longer at the other end of primary schooling because of the later start. That was the only argument it could produce against having children start in a cohort after their fifth birthday. It could not produce any evidence that it was better for the child to start at 4 years and 10 months.
But the evidence that we did get was from the Education Review Office, which found that in terms of the way we support the transition from early childhood education into primary schooling, we are among the best in the OECD. We do it very, very well. Schools take a real pride in supporting each individual child in their transition from early childhood to schooling. So what is the mischief that we are trying to fix here if it is not simply an administrative or a financial driver that is behind this?
The communities of online learning (COOLs) puzzle me somewhat, because the details simply are not there about how they will operate. You look at other parts of the Education Act, which prescribe in great detail how every part of the sector will operate, and yet with the communities of online learning, it is pretty much “We’re going to set it up. We’re going to allow for it. Just trust us—we’ll sort the details out later.” And yet we have seen enormous amounts of evidence at the Education and Science Committee of the risks of that approach and the risks of online learning.
The COOLs, as defined in the legislation, seem to be starting from a blank page, and yet there are things happening in our education system at the moment that should be embraced. I think of the Virtual Learning Network, which is well embraced by schools around the country. I think it has got something like 40 schools around the country at the moment that are in the Virtual Learning Network, and yet they may become COOLs, but it seems that the learning and the evidence that has been generated through that process has not been considered when the COOLs were developed.
I am all for modernising Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, or The Correspondence School—I think that is long overdue, in fact. But there was some interesting research put forward by it, including research that shows that its online learning—the online learning that it is already delivering—is not delivering as good results as the traditional correspondence learning that it has been providing. That was Te Kura’s own advice to the committee. So I thought that was interesting. It is the main provider of distance schooling at the moment, and yet it is finding that the online learning that it is delivering is not delivering as good results as the traditional correspondence learning.
Then we have seen evidence from overseas that the people that the Ministry of Education engaged to provide advice produced a summary of international research and highlighted all of the risks. One of the studies that we were alerted to was produced in the United States by a pro - charter school foundation. So these were people who were pro - charter schools and pro - online charter schools, and their evidence found that those students attending those schools lost an average of about 72 days of learning and reading and 180 days of learning and maths during the course of a 180-day school year. In other words, they made about half the progress they were expected to in literacy, and they made no progress in their numeracy. That is the risk of getting this wrong, which is why I think it is reasonable for the House to expect more detail from the Government around how COOLs are going to work, before we rush ahead and put them into legislation.
On the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities, I think that this could be a very welcome development. I think that this could be a very powerful thing for the education community, for students, for parents, for teachers, for principals, for school administrators, and for school trustees. I think having a clear vision statement, which is what, I think, the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities could be, could be a very positive thing. But there is a huge amount of trepidation within the education community about how this might look, because the current Government’s focus is very much on the measurables and not on the broader vision. So the measurables are national standards and NCEA level 2, and yet we know that those are not good measures of the students’ overall progress within the education system. There is so much more to what goes on in schools and early childhood centres than simply literacy and numeracy, which is what the current Government’s targets are all about.
So if we have a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities that is well developed and is broadly embraced by people, it could be very powerful. If we have a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities that reinforces the narrowing down of the focus of the system, it could actually be very powerful but very damaging. And so if it is powerfully positive, that is good. If it is powerfully negative, I think it could be disastrous. So there is a reasonable degree of trepidation about how this is going to pan out.
I do not agree with the Minister of Education’s boasting about the current Government’s track record when it comes to education. Let us look at some realities. On every one of the major Programme for International Student Assessment measures—that is an objective international study—New Zealand has gone backwards during the term of the current Government. The number of people leaving school who then go on to be not in education, training, or employment has increased. The per-child funding in early childhood education and the per-student funding in schools is going backwards. Early childhood education participation is up, but the quality is declining. Parents are paying more than ever before for their kids’ education, and kids are feeling more measured, analysed, poked, and prodded than ever before and they are not being given the chance to be kids and grow at their own rate and to develop their own strengths.
I think we need an education system that is about drawing out the very best in young New Zealanders—and older New Zealanders who are re-engaging with education—rather than trying to stuff things into them. And, unfortunately, that is the process that this current Government seems hell-bent on—stuffing things into young people and making them conform and be standardised as if schools and early childhood centres are factories, rather than a creative, diverse, vibrant school and early childhood system, which is what we really need if we are to ensure that every New Zealander has the opportunity to reach their individual and unique potential.
Dr JIAN YANG (National): This Government has been focusing on the delivery of Better Public Services over the past 8 or 9 years. Education has always been a priority for this Government, and for that reason we have been trying very hard to increase the participation of our young New Zealanders in education, and also to enhance the achievement of our young New Zealanders. We have increased our investment continually over the past 8 or 9 years. At the same time we have been trying to modernise our education system. It is important to note that this bill is just one other effort for us to modernise our education system. Just a couple of days ago the Hon Paul Goldsmith introduced his education bill regarding tertiary education, and this one is focused on early childhood education and secondary education.
The Education Act 1989 focuses largely on the running of schools. This one attempts to focus on the provision of 21st century, flexible education. So that is the difference. We are trying to make the achievement and learning of our young New Zealanders an essential part of our education system. How do we do that? We are, basically, trying to enhance or strengthen the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of our education providers and also to increase or strengthen the collaboration among our education providers. We are also going to establish a future-focused online learning legal framework for our online learning. All these elements are interrelated. To enhance the collaboration among our education providers means that we are able to strengthen the efficiency and the effectiveness and also have more accountability.
This bill will provide for new statutory mechanisms for communities of learning. We all know now that we have 197 communities of learning, involving well over half a million young New Zealanders and, also, over 1,500 schools and 95 early childhood education centres.
Another important part, as I mentioned earlier, is how to establish a future-focused legislative framework for online learning. It is important to understand that online learning has become increasingly important because of the advancement of our technology. More and more traditional face-to-face schools are now trying to use online learning for their teaching. People can learn anywhere, anytime, through a variety of delivery methods, including online learning.
The current Education Act 1989 did not expect such strong growth in online learning and therefore is unable, really, to somehow cope with the growth of online learning today. That is why we need to update the bill to make sure that we are able to deliver better and, also, to regulate online learning better.
One other thing that I will mention is that this bill also attempts to provide more options to parents. It is important to understand that we are trying very hard to give options to parents, schools, and even to teachers, and this bill is another effort to provide more options to our schools and parents. The cohort entry is a good example. So, overall, this bill will be able to enable us to provide better education systems to our young New Zealanders. Thank you.
ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. I stand in opposition to this bill, the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. The Minister has said that children and young people should be at the heart of education, and I agree with that. I totally agree with that. It is, in fact, the manner in which you give effect to that that really counts. I quote the Children’s Commissioner, who told the Education and Science Committee that we had got the process wrong; that the voice of young people was not being considered. I will give you an example. I went through all of the submissions. I found two from Māori—one from a year 9 student who had been diagnosed on the autism spectrum, who told the select committee that he had seen no success in education in New Zealand, and yet he was fluent in Te Reo Māori, which I think is probably at least some success for him.
We heard from Te Mata Rangatira, a young group of Hauraki rangatahi, and I want to mention them because I thought they had a very valuable contribution to make. They were heard but not listened to. That is a shame for this piece of legislation, because to make the claim that children and young people are at the heart of education requires that the voices of rangatahi, of tamariki, need to be heard in that context. So I stand in support of my colleague Chris Hipkins and his contribution to this discussion.
I want to take that a little bit further, because there are particular elements within this legislation that impact on Māori. We also heard a submission from Dr Mere Skerett, who made a suggestion around a new part in this bill, which basically says that when talking about the objectives of the system of education that we “instil in each child and young person an appreciation of the importance of the following:”, and the fourth thing is “the Treaty of Waitangi and te reo Māori.” I think that that just does not go far enough—anywhere near far enough—to instil an appreciation of the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Reo Māori. I ask members opposite, who seem to be consumed with wanting to meet certain standards: is that a high enough standard? That is not a high enough standard for New Zealand in 2017.
I also quote from the Auditor-General, a report called Summary of our Education for Māori reports. In here are statistics that say that by 2030, Māori will make up 30 percent of students at school. We need to be far more future-focused around this particular bill and the impact on the next generation, because that is only 13 years away. I would expect that a bill like this, if it were transformational, would go a lot further than just instilling an appreciation. That is not good enough.
What is more, Professor Skerrett recommended a rephrasing of that to “to promote the learning of and through Te Reo …”. Now, that does not make Te Reo Māori compulsory but it does lift it up a level. I cannot understand why Parliament could not agree to at least make that small step for the next generation. This Education (Update) Amendment Bill is going to impact on those students in the next generation—in the next 13 to 20 years—who are going to need a better level than just to instil an appreciation of Te Reo. I commend and, if I can, briefly recognise my colleague Catherine Delahunty for her proposals on this issue, as well. They were not accepted—and I know the rules; I should not really be talking too much about that, but in the context of what we do have in front of us I just want to acknowledge that attempts were made to address that.
I also want to go on to talk about the communities of online learning. I mentioned the Auditor-General’s report. I thought that it made some really good conclusions. Of course, one of the things it concluded was that it urged the education sector to continue to support the growth of better relationships between schools and whānau. I actually absolutely agree with that. I do not believe that what is in this bill is actually going to help too much in improving and continuing to improve those relationships. But I do send out my acknowledgment to all of those schools, no matter what kinds of schools they are, that actually are making a difference in those relationships. I believe it is not because of this new structure and this new approach; I believe it is actually because of the people involved. It is really important that those people—and perhaps that is where the focus should have been a little bit more, around raising the capacity of those schools to be able to engage with whānau.
I mentioned Te Mata Rangatira earlier. One of its major concerns was around communities of online learning. I thought it made some really good points. These were young people—well versed in using the technology of today. They were all Māori and they actually recognised the real importance of the way in which Māori see the world and the way in which Māori best learn. They could not see the benefit of being stuck in front of a computer screen, pretty much in isolation from the social interaction that good learning requires, from a Māori world view. I really take my hat off to those young people—who by the way expressed it in a way that was very relevant to who they are; they actually sang us a song. At the time I thought that we need more of this kind of interaction to get better legislation.
So my final mihi, in summing up my contribution, is to acknowledge those young people who did take the time and had the ability to make a contribution. Nō reira, taku kupu whakamutunga: e kī ana te kōrero, kia mau ki tō Reo e Te Iwi, ka nui te ngaro haere o tēnei āhuatanga. Nā tō Reo hoki ka mōhiotia ai koe he Māori; ka kūware koe ki tō Reo ka meinga koe nō ngā whenua noa atu. Kia ora.
[So my final statement: the talk says retain your language, people, the gradual loss of this attribute has become huge. Through your language, as well, you will be recognised as a Māori; should you become ignorant of your language, you will be deemed to have come from lands elsewhere. Thank you.]
TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to take a short call to speak in favour of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. There are three areas that I would like to just step through: the National Education and Learning Priorities, the communities of online learning, and the cohort entry changes. I am very supportive of this legislation, as you would expect, and have been as we have run through the process—but I have been struck by the debate on those three issues.
Firstly, there are the National Education and Learning Priorities. For me, I think it is absolutely appropriate that we require our boards of trustees to now take these priorities into account in their teaching and learning programme. I have not been swayed by the view that we heard through the select committee process that somehow having a set of priorities for learning for our children is going to so skew the delivery of the curriculum that the holistic approach that has underpinned our curriculum over the last few years is somehow going to be lost. I fundamentally have a much greater aspiration for our children and expectation of our teachers than that view and outlook and philosophy. I think these things are not mutually exclusive and, indeed, can be quite empowering when applied together.
Secondly, there is the debate that we heard on communities of online learning. It is quite an extraordinary framework, in my opinion, allowing our education system to breathe and evolve as technology changes—which every one of us agrees is changing in an extraordinary, rapid, transformational, and fundamental way. So we need a legislative framework that enables online learning to be able to grow with that.
Of course, as part of that, there is the potential for that to be entirely online, with all the protections that you would expect around pastoral care and quality of delivery. But, again, those protections were never referenced by nearly all of the submitters who had this as a core issue for them. I actually found the resistance quite astounding. It appeared to me that for some, because it cannot be imagined, it needs to be barred for all—because it cannot be imagined by them, in terms of how this could work in an operational sense, it must be barred for all. I think that that is too narrow a view when reflecting on the opportunity that online learning will provide.
Finally, I would like to make a few comments in respect of the views around the change of cohort entry and the fact that this may enable kids who are 4 years and 44 weeks old to start school if the parent agrees, if the board of trustees agrees, and if the school genuinely thinks that that is a sensible way forward. It is not compulsory—we made that point a number of times—but, again, the resistance was driven by the view that because nearly 5 is too young for some, then it must be denied for all. In my opinion, that, again, is too restrictive an interpretation of how this will work. This is not a Government that says that if your child is 4 years and 44 weeks old he or she must go to school. It is providing the flexibility for boards of trustees, for parents, and for those who are so focused on the success of education in this country, in a real community sense, to be accountable for making those decisions. That, in my view, is how it should be—children at the centre of legislation. That is what this legislation does, and that is why I am so proud to support it here this afternoon. Thank you.
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I really do have to take issue with the comments about the rights of the child—of course, rights were not mentioned—about putting children at the heart. There are no rights of the child if this House does not stand up in legislation and make sure that we protect our smallest community members. This bill fails so many tests, and one of them is the rights of the child. We had the most important officers in the land—the Children’s Commissioner, around rights, and the Ombudsman—saying that the bill had failed to consult with children, and now we defend parts of the bill that would make children more vulnerable by saying they should be at school when they are 4 years old, and that it is all about choice.
Well, I tell you what this bill reminds me of: shopping and online shopping. What it has done, this Government, is it has pitched education as a product, as something that education providers—because we do not use the word “teachers”—are providing to the consumer, so the parent, as consumer, can shop for their choice. Now, in this bill, one can shop online as well. It is easy; just buy the product! The whole thing is about a product, it is about the mantra of choice, and the mantra of choice is the politics of distraction, if there is any understanding of what is actually going on in the education system today.
It does not matter how many COOLs and COLs and acronyms you invent. Education is a powerful liberating process that requires face-to-face interaction with human beings, plus digital learning, enhanced by a relationship with a school. That is what the learning providers who are experienced in using digital technology tell us. So if we are speaking about communities of online learning (COOLs)—which is one of the more controversial aspects of the bill—people such as Professor John Hattie, who are controversial for many reasons but are also established educators, are casting doubt on the efficacy of online learning in isolation, in terms of achievement. Many of the submitters from the learning networks—and we had great submitters—made submissions saying that the evidence was very shaky when you separate the school from the online learning provider, yet that is the point of the COOLs provisions.
Pastoral care has not been addressed. We are prepared to abandon our children and our young people in primary and secondary school to the market. It is consistent, because the market is God! However, we have privatised early childhood to the point that it is making a lot of young children participate in vulnerable education. We sacrificed tertiary education to the market a long time ago; the whole thing is an international franchise. But the compulsory sector, which the members of the committee—many of us on the Opposition—have tried to defend, is also under the gun through this legislation.
It is also weird, this legislation, because it is contradictory. It tries to suggest that the communities of learning will actually break down the fiefdoms of Tomorrow’s Schools at the same time as it is increasing the privatisation opportunity under the choice mantra. The Government cannot make up its mind whether we are a community or a shopping opportunity, and it has confused the two. Really, Government members do not know what education is actually about, because they never talk about learning; they talk only about results.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study said that 15-year-olds in Aotearoa New Zealand are highly vulnerable to anxiety now because of the obsession with assessment. This is from a well-being report attached to the PISA study. I do not think PISA is the be-all and end-all, but the well-being of our kids—that made me wake up. Our young people, at 15, are highly anxious because the obsession is with targeting and assessment.
This bill does nothing to enhance the holistic view of learning. If you look at NELPs, the National Education and Learning Priorities, they were not formed from an in-depth conversation with the sector. The sector is bewildered and disappointed, just as are Opposition politicians and many in the community. We did not decide this stuff. It is not that some of the learning priorities are bad; it is just about what is missing that we would have put in.
What about the children in our education system who learn differently? Yes, this bill takes the seclusion room Supplementary Order Paper and makes it law to stop seclusion rooms, but in exchange for what? How are these children and these young people who learn differently going to be protected? We have banned this tool that needed to be banned—it was an outrage and a disgrace, and the Government has to wear the fact that it was not listening or it would have known about it. It was a dirty little secret, and there is no alternative to support teachers unless you give them professional development.
I was in James Cook High School the other day with a wonderful group of teachers, school support staff, and students. The stress levels are through the roof because children and young people are dealing with issues that the school system was never designed to fix, and all the Government can do in response is come up with a whole lot of rhetoric. Honestly, if I hear any more about 21st century, flexible modernisation, learning priorities—it is meaningless, people. You will never meet a group more passionate about innovation than the committed teaching profession. You will never meet a group of people more interested in creative innovation than young people.
I would like to thank Adrian Rurawhe MP for mentioning Te Mata Rangatira. The young people whom I encouraged to come to the Education and Science Committee from my rohe—these people are passionate about their self-determination and learning, and they said: “We don’t want digital learning unless it’s linked to a school and we have real support.” They have tried it, and it is tough. They still want—read my lips, people—to talk to somebody face to face, in the flesh, who understands how their minds work, as well as take the opportunities that the digital world offers our young people.
But we do not need to talk all this rubbish about modern, flexible rubbish. Let us get real about the actual situation that we face in schools. We need a collaborative environment. I do not disagree with that, but, unfortunately, the COOLs are now being limited through this bill—the Minister will decide the priority challenge that they adopt. So we have actually lost ground on communities of learning. We have created a monster, without pastoral care and controls, to privatise online learning. We have failed in this bill—not we; the Government has failed in this bill—to recognise many issues that could have been successfully addressed. So it is extremely disappointing to stand here, after this was supposed to be the bill to end all bills for education, and a real purpose statement was supposed to come out of it, and find that we are no further ahead. In fact, we have gone backwards. It is extremely disappointing.
I would like to tautoko the comments of my colleague from Labour, Adrian Rurawhe, about Te Reo and the Treaty in the National Education and Learning Priorities. Appreciation, instil—language is power. Language has meaning. You do not instil appreciation through tokenism; you actually have to do something to educate and uphold in the education system about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and with Te Reo Māori. Appreciation of a language is not sitting watching it; appreciation of a language is learning it. Appreciating Te Reo—we can all appreciate it, but we do not understand because we have not learnt it, and we are not prepared to teach it to our kids. This bill does not allow that to develop. It still makes it completely voluntary and completely random, and there is enough “voluntary and random” in our education system.
Lastly, I want to just talk again about our kids. Our young people whom I have met, many of whom are cooking for their dad because their mum has passed away, or they are living in three or four different houses, or they are trying to do homework in the back of a car—I talked to these young people, and they said: “We do want to be at school, but we are really stressed.” A forward-looking and passionate Government would try to listen to what teachers are saying, what school support staff are saying, and what young people are saying about the real pressures, and try to embrace a participatory educational model that is brave, courageous, and public. This bill does not do that. It is incredibly disappointing, because our young people are worth it.
We all use the rhetoric of fulfilling potential, but the young people whom I have met—they do not have the same shot as the privileged, and this bill will not help them fulfil their potential. If they are dumped into COOLs because the school system cannot cope with them, we have failed them yet again. We need to embrace our young people. We do not need to isolate them and put them into privatised franchises; we need to teach them face to face, with the modern tools available to us, in a way that works for them. That is what it really means to be an educator. Kia ora koutou katoa.
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. In the last term of Parliament, I sat on the Education and Science Committee for the digital literacy inquiry, and that is where the genus of the communities of online learning came from, really. I sat on there with a member of the National Government by the name of Simon Bridges. He has gone a little bit further than I have at the moment. However, it was interesting, when we were discussing the concept of 100 percent online learning, Mr Bridges, who has some small children, shook his head when we were listening to the evidence and he said—because it was about providing choice. The Khan Academy came to present to us, people from companies like Google came to present to us, and they told us “This is an opportunity you need to give to your young people. This is an amazing opportunity. Yes, our company will get a whole lot of downstream benefits from that, but that is not our interest here. Our interest is 100 percent child-focused.”
Now, Mr Bridges at that time shook his head, on that select committee, and he said “I’m struggling to understand how you say that parents will be able to make a choice or students will be able to make a choice when they don’t know what they don’t know.” What Mr Bridges was trying to say—because, in that moment, he was right. He has been somewhat wrong since, but he was right in that moment. What he was trying to explain or trying to understand—and we were trying to get his peers to understand it as that—is that choice is only truly available to people who are fully informed. Education is a complicated business.
I want to pick up on—Mr Brett Hudson was saying things quietly during Ms Delahunty’s contribution, and one of the things he said was that children are consumers. I think that, in a nutshell, epitomises how the National Government looks at education: that it is a consumer body, that children are consumers, and, therefore, it will place a business lens over the top of it. So what is wrong with charter schools making a profit from the public purse? What is wrong with communities of learning with private providers who can make a profit from our 5-year-olds through to our 18-year-olds? Somewhere in there the Government has convinced itself that our parental body and our student body is so fully informed about the pedagogical way that learning takes place that they have choice.
The other thing that is actually required for choice is, often, income. Let us go back to why the schools—and what the greatest challenge is for the Opposition on the Education and Science Committee in this term of Parliament is the unfortunate ignorance of the members of the Government side of that select committee. And you can hear it in the conversations that they have. Let us take, for example, the contribution by the member who resumed his seat before Ms Delahunty. He talked about this wonderful opportunity, through communities of online learning, for our young people to embrace the digital environment—and so on, and so forth. What that shows is a complete lack of understanding of the decade or more in which our schools have already been working with Virtual Learning Networks, actually doing e-learning and blended learning inside their schools. The reason why the piece of legislation needed to change was that a few years ago this Government removed the funding for the current State schools to be supported to belong to those Virtual Learning Networks. Now they have to use part of their operations grant and part of their teacher time to supplement that ability for their students to Skype out into other courses.
The Opposition at no time opposed the concept of Virtual Learning Networks. At no time—at no time—did we actually oppose communities of online learning. What we opposed was expanding it into the private sector. That is what we opposed. What we opposed was taking Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu—and having been under this Government in the last decade, this Government has allowed Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu to expand to the point where it now has 24,000 students. It has more students than any other school in this country. It is the largest education provider in the compulsory sector. Let us just make a point of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu. Last year, it put NCEA level 1 100 percent online. It has had a significant drop in achievement from placing NCEA level 1 100 percent online. That has been reported in the press and in other statements, but has this Government taken it into account before it decided to open this industry up to the private sector? No, it has not, because it has been blinded by the opportunity of money.
I say that, Mr Hudson, and you scoff, not knowing what you are talking about—but you scoff. One of the other pieces of this bill is to allow boards of trustees—
Brett Hudson: Providers don’t pay the Government.
TRACEY MARTIN: —no, listen, Mr Hudson, you might learn something. This other part in this bill allows boards of trustees to sell their services—
Brett Hudson: They can vote for the Opposition because they’re getting too much funding.
TRACEY MARTIN: Mr Hudson. Mr Hudson—over here. Why would boards of trustees need to sell their services, Mr Hudson? Is it because they are underfunded and this is another way to take pressure off the Government, which says it is, with its $11 billion, supporting education more than before? Most of that is being spent on leaky buildings, which I think was actually created—I think one needs to go and talk with Mr Maurice Williamson about how we ended up in the leaky building situation. But let us be clear: it is not being spent on students—these dollars.
Let us just touch on cohorts, because that is also about money. Cohort entry, which schools have been able to do since Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced—boards of trustees have always had the capacity to do it. It has been identified in the regulatory impact statement that cohort entry will save the Government a predicted $11.3 million in early childhood education funding. Please do not tell me that that is not important to this Government, because it seems to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
The other thing that is really interesting is that cohort entry, which we are talking about, now aligns to the quarterly funding returns that schools have to put in. I am not sure whether the National Government members are aware that their Government put in quarterly funding returns, but this is the driver: cohort entry is connected to quarterly funding returns for the schools, so it is actually about money and administration. If it was not, why did this Government not allow the Supplementary Order Paper to go through that said you can go into school in the cohort, because the Opposition has not opposed cohorts. The Opposition put in a Supplementary Order Paper, and all it said was that we are going to change the word to say you can go into a cohort entry—the closest one—after you turn 5. So why did the Government decide—and this is the difference between this Education and Science Committee and the last Education and Science Committee.
When Nikki Kaye was actually the chair of the last Education and Science Committee, she would invite us into her office to say “What are the sticking points? Where can we collegially organise and come to a place for the benefit of the country?”. Cam Calder did the same thing. Cam Calder would reach out to members of the Opposition. We would meet, we would discuss it, and we would say “Sorry Cam, we can’t go on that.”, and he would say “That’s fine, but I think we can work out some stuff here.” We created legislation in that Education and Science Committee that has stood the test of time. None of us has tried to overturn it.
Brett Hudson: You’ve been in Opposition.
TRACEY MARTIN: That is not—Mr Hudson, please stop interrupting. You know nothing about what you are talking about.
That is—and has been—the strength of the select committee process in this Parliament that other people around the world come to see. Unfortunately, it is being destroyed by the arrogance of the National Government. Just because it has the majority numbers its members think they do not have to listen to the submitters. Some of them think they do not even have to be polite to the submitters. They do not even have to look up from their iPad or their phone to engage with the submitters. That is unfortunate, because we should be proud of the select committee process. It is because these backbenchers have decided that they will just follow the party line, and even Ms Parata—finally—at the Committee stage of this bill finally stood up and said “At the end of the day we just disagree.” That is OK. It is the respectful way one interacts. National members heard but they did not listen to the people of New Zealand.
This is not a start; this is the end of a piece of puzzle for that Government. But the start of a complete rework—the Opposition, when it is sitting on the Government benches after 23 September, will reach back out to the sector. We will fix it. We will make it so that we do actually put our children first, and we take this whole financial concept that the National Government has placed into education out of it.
Hon JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata): I rise to speak on this debate of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I do so—and I am going to stray off what I had planned to say, because I need to lay on the record how disappointed I am in the previous speaker, Tracey Martin, how disappointed I am to be subjected to a lecture. As a member of the Education and Science Committee, I take offence at the assertions that this is blind ideology. No, we leave that to the Opposition. We leave that to the Opposition, which is not interested in future-proofing the education system and which is not interested in efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the education system. I also wish to strongly disagree that this Government does not listen to the parents whose children are in the education system.
It was interesting, also, during this diatribe about everyone being against this bill, to read, while I was waiting for my turn, the regular newsletter Principal Matters, written by Whetu Cormick, who writes this afternoon that he feels certain there will be engagement with the new Minister, having met her, on any issues of concern. Interestingly, nowhere on that page did I see anything about this bill. Maybe it has been in previous newsletters.
However, what I do want to say is that the Education Act needed modernising, and this Government had the guts to get on and do it. There is still more to be done, but putting children at the centre, instead of administration at the centre, is surely pretty relevant right now. That is where the Government is.
I want to add that the members on this side of the House have regular visits to schools too, Ms Martin. We listen to principals, and we listen to teachers. So do not think, in your holier-than-thou way, that you are the only person who ever talks to principals and teachers. I am deeply disappointed in that. And so I bring to a close my thoughts on this bill. [Interruption]
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The next call is a split call. Gareth Hughes—5 minutes.
GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I cannot believe what I just heard from that member, Jo Goodhew. She is someone who has just hopped on the Education and Science Committee only a couple of months ago, and all of a sudden she is an expert in how this committee has operated for—as Catherine Delahunty tells me—8 years. She has the audacity to come down to this House, not talk about the Education (Update) Amendment Bill whatsoever, but pass all these judgments on other members and call other members “holier-than-thou”. What we did not hear, though, was a contribution about this bill.
What we know from the educational experts and what we know from the parents is that they are worried it is just another experiment with New Zealand children. We have seen the first experiment, with charter schools, and now we are seeing, through the so-called online charter schools, a second experiment. As any member of this House knows, I am a big supporter of technology. I am a big supporter of the potentials of IT in the educational sector. I remember sitting on a more than year-long select committee inquiry into how we can improve it—basic things, such as making sure our trainee teachers are given the expertise to use technology. What we never heard once on that committee, from all the international and domestic experts, was that just putting a kid in front of technology was the answer. What it was all about was the potential for technology to change and support existing teaching methods. What we did not hear was that just chucking kids in front of a screen was the answer, and that is the fear with this bill establishing these so-called online charter schools.
The third great experiment with New Zealand’s children that we have seen under this Government is the idea that somehow the market is going to solve everything—as if everything in the world, including our children, can be quantified, put in a basket, given a number, given a price, and then the competitive market is going to fix what ails us. It is just not on. What we know is that it is going to be an experiment with our children. I do not think we should be experimenting with our children. I think we should have more robust evidence put before us. In fact, we should be listening to the experts before we race off with these decisions.
I guess, just to keep the experiment theme going, the second part of this bill, which is passing today, is looking at careers advice—moving it from Careers New Zealand to the Tertiary Education Commission. We have heard both sides of the debate. I think it is a reasonable debate. Again, it is going to be an experiment. We are going to be following how it goes and how it actually rolls out. The fear, of course, is that it is simply another bureaucratic change-around, which is not going to fundamentally change the systemic problem we have in New Zealand, which is that kids—or young adults, as I should probably say—are not getting adequate modern advice from professional sources of expertise in school so that they can go on and have prosperous, productive careers. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
But because of the three big experiments we are seeing with our children—charter schools, online charter schools, and a market approach—we cannot support this bill, despite some of the good and reasoned points in it. I am proud to be opposing the bill in its third reading.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Aupito William Sio—5 minutes.
Aupito WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): From a Pacific perspective, when we look at education we look at it as being the key to success. That terminology is truer today, if not more so, than at any other time. When we say it in that way, we also mean that we have got to invest in our young people and look at our young people, not for their childish behaviours but for the potential that they have to be the people that they must become if they are to replace us in the years to come.
Most working people want the best for their children, and that is why they value education. It is also why people allow that we pay our fair taxation, so that every child in our communities is able to go to school, as well as the children in our neighbourhoods.
I just want to say, in terms of the context to this bill, that working communities such as Māngere have put in so much effort to make sure that participation in early childhood education has increased, to make sure that our high school kids achieve level 1 and level 2 NCEA. They have done that despite the challenges that this Government has put up in their faces, despite poverty, despite the housing crisis, despite low incomes, and despite unemployment.
I want to reflect on a few things that have been presented by submitters to the Education and Science Committee. I note that “The Government has ignored children, parents, teachers and other education experts by only making minor and technical changes to the … Bill. This is not a good way to create legislation, and is a lost opportunity to take proactive steps to improve schools and education for New Zealand’s young people … ‘Parents don’t want their children treated like products to be sold to the highest bidder. Every child is an individual with their own hopes and dreams, and you need skilled teaching professionals who care about the welfare of each child to bring out their unique strengths.’ ”
Another submitter made this comment: “That’s never going to happen by plonking children in front of a computer screen or by turning our kids’ education into a money-making scheme for business.” Another submitter made this comment: “For the minister of education not to seek the advice of the education sector in the first place and to then ignore the evidence of hundreds of submitters is a cavalier approach to making law, to say the least.” Another submitter said that we should be legislating the right for every child or young person to an inclusive education: “Legislating for an enforceable right to inclusive education is the very least the Government should be doing if they are going to start taking our obligations to the well-being and rights of children and young people with disabilities seriously. The current situation is a shamble and a disgrace.” Another: “The government is failing to invest in inclusive education and support the rights of disabled New Zealanders to education. The result is teachers locking vulnerable children in rooms, early childhood centres and schools refusing to enrol local children with disabilities, families paying to provide or top up support staff for their children, and children missing out on school camps, sporting …”.
The final submitter I want to quote is Judge Andrew Becroft, the Children’s Commissioner, who told MPs at the Education and Science Committee that “children should be consulted about major changes proposed in the Bill that might deny them their fundamental rights. He called for the Bill to be stopped while proper consultation on the Bill occurred, adding the Bill may be in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
I quote these submitters because these are not only parents and the teaching fraternity but experts in the field of education whose views, I would have thought, would be valuable in ensuring that the change in the 1989 legislation would achieve what we all want: the best out of our children. But, alas, that is not what this bill is about.
Finally, the comment I want to end with is the proposal for children starting school at 4 years old. This is what my community has had to say: our children are not cogs in a machine in a factory. They are not factors of production. Our children are human beings with potential, whom we want to be leaders. Sending them off to school smacks of the idea that it is as if that is all they are good for. Young people should not be forced into education at such an early age. They are simply children who need to be nurtured, who need to be supported by their parents.
JONO NAYLOR (National): It is a great pleasure to rise and take a short call on the third reading of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. Firstly, can I acknowledge the work of the outgoing Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata. I think she has done an outstanding job over her time in this portfolio and will probably go down in history as a forward-thinking person who actually had the educational needs of our young people at heart. While there are some people on the other side of the House who may disagree with this, I have got a feeling that they are going to be proved wrong in the time to come.
I also want to acknowledge Nikki Kaye, who has done outstanding work in the Associate Minister role over the last little while. I am sure she is going to continue this forward-thinking, innovative-thinking approach to actually delivering better educational outcomes for the children and young people of New Zealand.
A fair amount of conversation has already happened throughout this debate and throughout the whole process, but I just want to focus very quickly on one particular part of this legislation, which was picked up on briefly by the previous speaker, Aupito William Sio. The previous speaker said that we were going to be forcing 4-year-olds off to school. That is not what is occurring. What is happening is allowing for cohort entry for children at the beginning of a term, at the time closest to their fifth birthday. Some of them will be 5, some of them will be 4, and some of them may be closer to 6. It is going to be a choice that parents will have as to exactly when they want to do it. But what I can say is that we are going to see some benefits using this cohort system. New entrants’ teachers are incredible people, and if we can make their lives a little bit simpler by having new entrants coming in in cohorts, then I think that is going to deliver a better outcome for all.
This is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I am not on the select committee that considered this bill, the Education and Science Committee, but, like many of the people in the House, I have been kept abreast of what has been happening by our spokesperson and by our members who are on the select committee. I do want to acknowledge the select committee. I particularly want to acknowledge my colleagues Chris Hipkins and Adrian Rurawhe, who made really valuable contributions to this debate in the third reading and the whole way through. It is really disappointing to hear from Adrian—we were just chatting about this—that very little advice was taken on by the National members of the select committee, and very little room for negotiation existed around this particular bill with the Government members. When we are talking about something as serious as the education of our children, then you would think there would be some compromise, negotiation, and listening to advice, but, unfortunately, that is not the way the National Government operates.
We heard every member stand up in the House and talk about the contribution that the Minister Hekia Parata has made. Actually, I am going to disagree with the National members who have pushed that as their No. 1 key line in the delivery of their speeches. I think she will be remembered for being the Minister who had the absolute worst relationship with the education sector ever, the Minister who refused to listen to the educational experts at every turn, and the Minister who was responsible for seeing our international ratings in things like maths, science, reading, and writing plummet. Those are the things that that Minister will be remembered for. So I just need to put that on the record.
We are opposing this bill, and mostly that is because the case has not been made for many of the changes that have been proposed. The majority of feedback that was given by the 216 submissions received on the bill was largely ignored by the National Government. Whilst many submitters welcomed the bill’s intention, as we did, to modernise the education legislation and provide a more coherent framework for the delivery of education, they also expressed concern that a bill purporting to place the child at the centre of the education system was being progressed through a process in which the voices of those children have barely been heard.
We shared that concern. “The Education (Update) Amendment Bill refines an education system that was well suited for the 20th century, and does little to bring the system into the 21st. The overwhelming focus continues to be on standardisation and accountability, rather than diversity and creativity. We believe that the Government should be focused on ensuring that every school in New Zealand is a great school, and that every student has access to a broad education that allows them to fulfil their individual potential and even discover potential they did not know they had. We are concerned that the Government is narrowing the focus of the education system, focusing on a small set of measurable targets to the exclusion of a broad and balanced curriculum.”
I want to give a local example of where I found the Government really difficult to work with on a local issue to do with the education system. It really is an issue that affects whether or not we do and can and whether or not families believe they have great schools in their local area. That is the issue that we face in parts of Auckland, and I am going to refer specifically to west Auckland where we have 4,500 children every day leaving west Auckland to attend schools elsewhere. I, at one point, wrote a letter to the Minister Hekia Parata and also to the Associate Minister Nikki Kaye on behalf of the principals association in west Auckland asking the Minister to contemplate the idea or to consider the idea of surveying parents to find out why they were sending their kids elsewhere. It is really important that we do not make assumptions about why they are doing that but actually that we research that properly, because we want our local kids to be staying in our local schools.
We see in many of our west Auckland schools where there is a decline in the role the impact that that has on property maintenance, let alone development. We see the impact that that has on perception within the community and it becomes a downward spiral. So we do need our local parents to have faith in their local schools. Actually, when you talk about the downward spiral—and the National Government members like to talk about choice—as a parent in west Auckland, I was disappointed when looking at my local school that because of the fact that it has had a decline in roll, the options available to my child were going to be fewer than they would be in a central Auckland school because of the fact that the roll had declined so much and, therefore, the teachers on staff were fewer. So you can see the impact and the flow-on effect that that has.
So it is disappointing, when you raise serious issues like that and you suggest very rational and reasonable suggestions to Minsters like Hekia Parata and Nikki Kaye, that they are ignored and you get a response back saying “No, we will not do that, because it’s about choice.” Well, it is about choice, yes, I understand that, but what choice do you have as a parent when you do not have the means to send your child elsewhere and all you want, really, is to have the commitment from any Government that your local school will be the best school? National has not done that at all. It has been about competition and it is absolutely supportive of the idea that those who have money can move their children where they like. So that is a local issue that was ignored, and I just wanted to use that as an example of where the Government has not been about creating great schools in every local community, and it has been very disappointing to see that that has been the case.
We cannot support this bill for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. It does not do what the Government purports it does and we are disappointed with not only the outcome in terms of the bill that we have in front of us now, but the process in which the Government members have engaged when considering this bill and developing it, as well as just their overall approach to the education system and to our children.
MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is the last call of this debate from the Government speakers, and it is up to me to acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata for all the work that she has done in the educational space, and also the Hon Nikki Kaye, who has taken up the mantle now as our education Minister. I also would like to acknowledge Jian Yang, a person who has done well in the role of Education and Science Committee chair. I know he has facilitated this bill going through the select committee process very well, and that that is why we have ended up with the bill in this state. To all those who submitted during the legislative process, I would like to thank them for their time as well. I would also like to thank all the speakers today in this debate, and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education (Update) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 62
New Zealand National 58; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.
Noes 56
New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.
Bill read a third time.
Bills
Statutes Repeal Bill
Second Reading
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries) on behalf of the Minister for Regulatory Reform: I move, That the Statutes Repeal Bill be now read a second time. This bill repeals or partially repeals 137 Acts that are no longer needed because they no longer have any actual effect or have very limited effect or are designed to achieve regulatory outcomes that are no longer relevant. By helping clear the statute book of some unnecessary legislation, this bill forms part of the commitment made by this Government to improve the regulatory environment in New Zealand, as outlined in the Government’s response to the Productivity Commission report on regulatory institutions and practices. While this bill is only one part of that commitment, it is a part that should be of particular interest to this Parliament because of our role as makers of legislation.
Statutes repeal has not been an area of great focus for New Zealand in the recent past. Indeed, it has been over a century since the last statutes repeal bill was passed back in 1907. However, that does not make this type of bill inconsequential. To quote the United Kingdom Law Commission, which has advanced 19 statute repeal bills since 1965, repealing more than 3,000 Acts: “The purpose of our statute law repeals work is to modernise and simplify the statute book, reduce its size, and save the time of lawyers and others who use it. This in turn helps to avoid unnecessary costs. It also stops people being misled by obsolete laws that masquerade as live law. If an Act still features in the statute book and is referred to in text books, people reasonably enough assume that it must mean something.”
The Acts repealed by this bill vary substantially in their original purpose and span many major events in New Zealand’s history. The oldest Act in the bill is section 4 of the Wellington City Reserves Act of 1871, which is one of five 19th century Acts contained in this bill. The bill also repeals legislation responding to the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake, several pieces of legislation that reconstructed the public sector in the 1980s, and, more recently, legislation that enabled the very successful hosting of the 2011 Rugby World Cup here.
The bill also repeals latent legislation. The term “latent” is used to describe Acts that have been passed but have not yet been brought into force—in other words, laws that are in legal limbo. Since the Government has no intention of bringing those enactments into force, it is desirable to repeal them. This enables administrators, business, and other users to plan and act with certainty as to what is and will be the law, reducing the costs of compliance and doing business in New Zealand.
This bill has been through substantial consultation, which has been useful in both finding additional Acts to repeal and ensuring that no repeals in the bill have unintended consequences. An exposure draft of the bill was released publicly in October 2015, and responses from the public helped the Government more thoroughly consider the bill before its introduction.
The Government Administration Committee, chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson, finished its review of the bill in March. I thank the committee for its good work. It received only four submissions, but this was not unexpected in view of the earlier public consultation on the exposure draft, when 16 submissions were received. The committee has unanimously recommended that five additional Acts be repealed in the bill. These Acts were identified by submitters to the select committee, which shows the value of public participation in this process.
In particular, I am pleased to see that this bill is of use to Wellington City Council, which had been seeking to repeal the Wellington City Reserves Act of 1872 and one section in the Wellington City Reserves Act of 1871, but was unable to do so through the Wellington Town Belt Act of 2016.
Grant Robertson: What a brilliant piece of legislation that was, too.
Hon NATHAN GUY: I remember that one, because it was a local Act. Having local government as well as central government in keeping the body of legislation up to date and fit for purpose reinforces the usefulness of this exercise.
One submitter expressed concern about the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act of 2007 through a statutes repeal bill, suggesting that it was a serious constitutional matter. However, the select committee received advice that the Sentencing Council Act has no actual effect because the Government has not created the sentencing council, and it decided some time ago that it would repeal this legislation when the appropriate legislative vehicle arose. Whilst a separate repeal bill for the Sentencing Council Act would allow more parliamentary time to be devoted to scrutinising that particular aspect of the bill, it would result in substantially more use of parliamentary resources. It would also further delay its repeal and create more uncertainty for the legal community, and I am sure no one in this House wants to do that. That is why the Government continues to support the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act through this bill.
Some of the members of the select committee raised concerns about the repeal of the latent provisions, as I have already mentioned, of the Medicines Amendment Act 2013 because those provisions have a default commencement date of 1 July 2017. Following Government decisions in respect of the regulation of therapeutic products in New Zealand, it is neither necessary nor desirable to bring the latent provisions of the Medicines Amendment Act 2013 into force. Repealing those provisions in the bill rather than in a stand-alone bill represents a substantial saving of parliamentary resources. The Government will address these issues more thoroughly through a therapeutic products bill that will be released for consultation later this year.
This will not be the last statutes repeal bill. While 137 full or partial repeals represent a substantial achievement, there are over 1,900 Acts in force in New Zealand, including local and private Acts, and more of these will be redundant. We know that over time more Acts will outlive their original purpose and become redundant. My colleague the Attorney-General also regularly reviews latent legislation to see whether it can brought into force or, indeed, repealed. Repealing redundant laws is just one part of the wider work we are doing to improve the quality of law that governs New Zealanders. Regulation is not the highest-profile topic in Government, but it affects all New Zealanders, because otherwise things that are not well done through the House can cause a problem.
I am confident that this bill, along with initiatives like the regulatory reform task force and the recently released regulatory reform strategy, will help improve our overall environment and reduce red tape and compliance costs for Kiwis and New Zealand businesses. For the first time, New Zealand has ranked first in the world for doing business, in the World Bank 2017 report, following two second-placings in preceding years, which is well done. The report highlights the good work that Government agencies continue to do through the Business Growth Agenda to reduce the cost of doing business.
Once again, I thank the committee for its careful and thorough work on this bill. The committee’s recommendations have helped increase the total number of repeals in this bill. This has been a valuable exercise in improving and trimming down New Zealand’s body of legislation, making it more up to date, and, overall, more fit for purpose. I commend this bill to the House.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It is always a tremendous privilege to follow one of the great legal and constitutional minds of the National Party when speaking in this House, although I do, on behalf of the Opposition, want to thank the Minister who has just resumed his seat, Nathan Guy. He is the Opposition’s secret weapon in his ability to take 10 minutes to deliver a 5-minute contribution in the debate.
I do think, however, that National has missed an opportunity here. This bill repeals 137 Acts. I think National missed the opportunity there. There are 137 possible members’ bills there, in keeping with its tradition of stuffing the members’ ballot with bills that are irrelevant and relatively inconsequential. There are plenty of other bills that we can recommend for the next statutes repeal bill, and I would start with most of the bills in the ballot in the name of National members of Parliament. I do want to commend the handful of National members of Parliament who have taken the time to draft genuine members’ bills that are actually designed to encourage proper debate.
I think a statutes repeal bill is a very useful exercise, and one that this House should perhaps do a little more often. It is interesting, though, to look at some of the titles of the bills that are repealed here, and I think it is particularly interesting to note that the last time the New Zealand Parliament passed a statutes repeal bill was in 1907 and that that bill itself is being repealed by the current Statutes Repeal Bill that we are passing through the House today.
It is interesting to look at the number of Acts that are being repealed that were themselves repeal Acts. So we have got the Post Office Act Repeal Act of 1987, which is being repealed, the Infants Act Repeal Act of 1989, the National Development Act Repeal Act—all of these Acts repealed other Acts, and yet they remain on the law books. So I think it is well past time that that was tidied up.
I also want to speak in favour of Supplementary Order Paper 315, which I have tabled on this bill and which will be debated in the Committee. It removes blasphemy from our statute book—something that has been well canvassed in the media in recent days. I do want to acknowledge the constitutional purists who have argued that adding such an amendment to the bill after the select committee process is not good practice, but I would like to point out that during the course of the hearings on this bill by the Government Administration Committee there were, indeed, only four submissions, and as a result of those submissions, five additional Acts were added to this bill. Those five additional Acts that were added were themselves not necessarily the subject of the full select committee scrutiny process, so it is not unusual for additional Acts to be added to a repeal bill as it progresses through the House.
I think repealing the laws around blasphemy is certainly well and truly justified. They violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which New Zealand is a part of, they violate our human right to freedom of expression, and repealing them brings us into line with many other countries around the world, including Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, and France, that have done the same thing. In an open society that reflects diversity and difference, it is well past time that we remove from the books the idea that one can be prosecuted for blasphemy. Tolerance cannot be fostered through prohibition, and yet I think New Zealand is a tolerant society and we have no need for that.
I was somewhat staggered to learn that one can be imprisoned for a year for blasphemy in New Zealand, and I welcome the support of the churches up and down the country for the notion that blasphemy should be removed from our statute book. I think it is very important in terms of our international standing that New Zealand removes this, because we have been very outspoken about the misuse of blasphemy laws in other countries around the world, and I think it somewhat undermines our position when we condemn the actions of other countries for their imposition of such laws when we ourselves have them on our statute book. So I think it is time for us to remove laws around blasphemy.
I want to commend the Government for a good process around the Statutes Repeal Bill. I want to commend my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson, who chaired the select committee that heard the submissions on this. I have no doubt that the committee applied rigorous scrutiny to this exercise, and as a result, we can be sure that the repeals that we are progressing through the House are justified.
There are two types of bills in this House that do this kind of thing. One is a statutes repeal bill—and this is the first one in over a hundred years—and the other is a statutes amendment bill. The statutes amendment bill has, if you like, a fast-track process through the House and works on the basis of unanimity. I think one of the things that we should consider in the House, if we want to keep our law books up to date, is adding a similar provision to allow statutes repeal bills to follow a similar process to that of statutes amendment bills so that they can be done more frequently, without unduly sucking up parliamentary time. In that spirit, I am going to end my contribution early so that this legislation can be progressed.
DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to make a short contribution to this debate. The Greens support this legislation. It is a useful exercise, as others have commented. I recall that Sir Geoffrey Palmer, speaking to a select committee recently, identified the fact that we have something like 65,000 pages of statute in New Zealand, which is a great deal of law for a relatively small country and a small population.
I am sure we have all taken some amusement from looking at some of the legislation that is being repealed in this Act and considering what was sufficiently important to generations past to pass law about. It begs the question whether, in the future, future generations may look back and wonder at some of the things we have seen fit to pass laws about, and perhaps that is something we might consider as we progress bills through this House.
We support this bill, but with one major reservation, and Minister Nathan Guy did touch on that. It is the repeal of the sentencing council legislation, and we regret that this Government has seen fit to do that, particularly at this time in the electoral cycle. The Sentencing Council Act was passed by a Labour-led Government. We will be returning to that situation after September, at which point the legislation could actually be implemented.
I think that would be important and useful to establish a council. We know that the purpose of the council—according to the legislation, which has never been given effect to—is to promote consistency in sentencing practice, to ensure transparency in sentencing practice, to promote consistency and transparency in Parole Board practice, and, overall, to reinforce and increase public confidence in the justice system. In all of those provisions and all of those elements of the Act’s purpose I think we have seen a weakening. We have seen public concern expressed in recent times about inconsistency in sentences. Overall, I think we have seen a reduced confidence in the justice system.
Towards the end of last year I went to the UK, and one or two other countries, looking at aspects of its justice system and, actually, I had a meeting with the head of the office of the UK sentencing council and got a feel for the value of that operation, that agency, in the UK setting. The UK council has somewhat more authority to direct, rather than guide, than is proposed in our New Zealand legislation, but it has had some considerable success in all of the purposes, which are shared with our Sentencing Council Act, to endeavour to maintain public confidence, not least of all about consistency in our courts. With all due respect to the judiciary, it is, on a day-to-day basis, no doubt difficult to assure that sort of consistency.
It is interesting to see some of the parties that are supporting the repeal of this bill, or speaking in support of it—and I am thinking, particularly, of the Māori Party. When the original Sentencing Council legislation was passed, Sir Pita Sharples, the then leader of the Māori Party, spoke very strongly in support of it, particularly in the sense that he was observing young Māori who were getting very different sentences depending on the geographical location of the courts they were in. The present Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson, at the time the sentencing council legislation passed, said that he had no objection in principle to the idea of having a sentencing council, albeit he believed the Labour Government had somewhat the wrong model at that time. So it is very unfortunate that this Government is seeing fit to repeal this legislation, rather than to interrogate it and potentially bring it back to the House for amendment, and put in place a model that it could see value in.
We will no doubt return to this point in the Committee stage of the bill. For the moment I will flag that the Greens continue to support the legislation, but we will be looking very hard at the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act when we come to the Committee stage. Thank you.
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): Parliament, understandably, concentrates on making laws. It is what we are here for, and we make a lot of law—more and more law every month, every year, every term of Parliament. I suspect that New Zealand might have more law per head than any other country in the world—I would not be surprised.
There is a need, sometimes, to have a look at the statute book and just say “Well, do we really need all of that?”. That is what the process is that we have before us now. There is a need to repeal redundant laws simply because they get outdated, and it is just bad practice to leave that law on the statute book. Of course, other law, as we know, never actually gets used and never gets activated or implemented, and we call those latent laws.
I notice that of those that are listed, the Forests Amendment Act, when I read about it—I am not going into the detail, but it is obviously thoroughly outdated. That is the Forests Amendment Act 1996. I am talking about a thoroughly outdated piece of legislation. It needs to be expunged from the statute book.
Another one I noticed was—and this has already been referred to—the Sentencing Council Act 2007, which did come into force on 1 November 2007 but was never implemented. I am very glad that it was not, because it would have set up a sentencing council, and I do not think that having a sentencing council to establish guidelines for sentences is a very good idea at all. That is the job of the courts, and the establishment of a sentencing council would inevitably have led to political interference in the sentencing system. That is not good for the legal system, and it is not good for New Zealand. So I will be very glad to see that latent piece of legislation expunged from the statute book as well.
Having said all that, we do need to take care when reviewing the statute book and deciding to remove some of those latent or redundant pieces of legislation that that is being done properly and that that legislation is no longer needed or is indeed latent. In this case, this bill has been right through the select committee process, so we at New Zealand First are satisfied with the recommendation of the Government Administration Committee that those enactments and the parts of them that have been identified to be repealed should be repealed.
Finally, I do think that Parliament needs to have the discipline of not just making law but also going back and removing and, of course, repealing laws where necessary, and, in another process, consolidating and updating statutes as well. That is another process that this Parliament has put into place, and I think that is very valuable too. As a result of all of these processes, I am pretty confident that New Zealand is going to end up with a cleaner—if I can put it that way—statute book, and one that retains only legislation that is relevant and not redundant, and legislation that is up to date. I hope that will be the result. This will be one good step towards that, so New Zealand First will have no hesitation in supporting the bill.
Bill read a second time.
Bills
Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Debate resumed from 9 May.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): When this debate was interrupted, Tracey Martin had the call. She had 9 minutes and 55 seconds, but because our clocks do not work that way, we will give her 10 minutes.
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): I am sure there is many a member of this House who is grateful for that extra 5 seconds for me!
Iain Lees-Galloway: She’s just used it.
TRACEY MARTIN: Ha, ha! I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to talk about the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will not be supporting the bill. It should not be a surprise to anybody—I am sure it is not a surprise. There are reasons why. Look, there are pros and cons inside this bill. It is, I suppose, like every piece of legislation that the Government puts forward—there are some real pluses inside here. I think, for example, the strengthening of accountability and monitoring of tertiary education organisations—I mean, that is a good one; who can argue with that? What we have seen with the several instances of tertiary education providers that have had to pay back money or have had investigations into them is that we need to tighten up in these areas. But we probably need to tighten up on the front end.
I think that is where New Zealand First would like to see some more effort from the Government, particularly around what we receive in our offices—I suppose you would call them whistleblower complaints. It is when people inside the institutions actually call us to say “This is what is going on.”, and “This is not right.” But in two instances where those people have contacted my offices, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) has been contacted and it has made some inquiry into the organisation—usually by phone, which is interesting.
NZQA usually calls the private training establishment (PTE) and says: “Hey, this has been complained about. Is it true?”. I have got the records showing that one particular PTE said: “Well, yes. But we have changed our practice now, so we promise not to do it again.” The NZQA went back to the complainant and said: “Look, they have said they won’t do it again. So, look, it’s fine. We’re just going to leave it alone.” The complainant has then been threatened with legal action by the PTE for taking the complaint through the appropriate channels. So there are some issues there around not only the strengthening of accountability and monitoring but—and we hope that part of that monitoring is responding to complaints that are legitimately put through the system. Everything should be investigated.
I want to add to that that we are pleased to also see this one here about complaints being received in regard to international students. That goes to what we are hoping we are going to see, which is some more accountability from those labour inspectors and others who are supposed to be protecting those educational visitors to our country from the exploitation that is taking place. And we know it is taking place—we have got case after case after case. What we are hearing from the PTEs is that they are ringing up to, again, inform the appropriate Government body that this exploitation is taking place, but nobody shows up. Nobody follows up. So, if this bill goes through, what we are hoping to see and what we would love to see from this Government is actually recognition that there are holes in the accountability problem, and that we need to front-end them. This Government has done a good job—and you can see that I am trying to be conciliatory—on increasing the penalties once we catch individuals at the other end, but we are not, as a nation, following up at the front end. We need to be responding to these complaints, both for our international education reputation beyond these shores, so that these young people are not exploited, but also because there is money involved here and it is New Zealand taxpayers’ money.
What we cannot support is the extension, basically, to charter schools that is inside this piece of legislation. That is where tertiary providers can then become a charter school sponsor. There are some interesting bits and pieces about separating these people out and so on and so forth, and the way that they would report downstream and what would be public and what would be private information because they would be a going concern, etc., etc. We just cannot support it—the concept of charter schools does not work. Public money should not be provided to private assets of a private business. This bill takes public institutions, which are our universities, and gives them the capacity to create a private arm and become a sponsor of a charter school. We cannot support the widening of that concept.
It is worth mentioning, too, that there is no conversation in here—even if those tertiary providers were able to start charter schools—of any of the network mapping around provision. That is what we are seeing, and this Government is having to deal with the downstream effects such as that on, say, Ara Institute of Canterbury, and so on, where private providers have opened up businesses to directly compete with the public provision—and it is all with taxpayers’ dollars. That is the worst part of this concept—70 percent of the course costs that are being paid into both the public provision and the PTE sector are from the taxpayer. So taxpayers are competing with themselves across a network over which there is no oversight. Do we need any more provision in that network? And if tertiary providers were there, we would now even have public provision competing with public provision. It does not make sense to us. We would not be supporting that.
There are a couple of other things here. There is the allowance for integrated schools and charter schools to bring international students under the discipline process out of school hours. Now, again, with Mahurangi College we have dealt with that before through the contracts that we have had with agents and with the students themselves. But, obviously, there has been a hole, because the courts have ruled on this. Now, you cannot argue with that.
I do have a problem, and I am asking: why are charter schools looking at international students? If we listen to the rhetoric of why charter schools were originally set up, how is it that charter schools need this protection for international students when, according to the Government and the whole of its logic and the whole of its rhetoric, charter schools were set up for New Zealand students who were underachieving? So are we going to now ask for international students who are underachieving to come into charter schools? Is this a worldwide hunt for indigenous peoples who are underachieving? Originally, charter schools were for Māori and Pasifika students who were underachieving here. So we do not understand why a charter school would need this provision for international students. We get it around integrated schools, but we do not get it around charter schools.
There are several other little bits and pieces that concern us, but I am not going to take the whole of my call, because I am really looking forward to hearing from the National members, whom I hope we will work with constructively in the Education and Science Committee, with a respectful interaction and an open-minded environment, as we move forward towards the 2017 election.
Hon JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata): I am going to rise and take a quick call on this Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and I am going to do so knowing that in the debate that happened on Tuesday the purpose of the bill was discussed extensively. I just want to summarise again that this is about funding flexibility, and also, as the previous member, Tracey Martin, has indicated, this is about identifying and closing the gaps where there have been issues reaching the courts. It is about strengthening the accountability and monitoring of tertiary education organisations.
On consistency of treatment, I am going to say that my notes tell me that when it comes to making sure that the management of misconduct is tightened up so that it does not go before the courts, my understanding is that it is State and State-integrated schools. Clearly, your notes, Ms Martin, are indicating charter schools as well. No doubt, in the course of our collegial working relationship in the select committee, we will work through that one, but I think we both agree that this needs to be dealt with. In respect of the export education levy, however, those reimbursement provisions are to cover private and partnership schools kura hourua, and that, in fact, is something that does cover right across.
I am going to stop now because I think the important thing is that we have talked about the purposes of the bill. We are going to work together to make sure that we modernise the environment and make sure that it is keeping up, and that, in fact, is what this bill is all about. Thank you.
MATT DOOCEY (Third Whip—National): Could I seek leave for the House to adjourn at the conclusion of this debate or at 6 o’clock, whichever is earlier?
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): You certainly can. Is there any objection to that? No one is foolish enough. There appears to be no objection.
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I have no objection to this proposal from the Government, for a change, for the House to rise early. However, I cannot support the bill. I saw a flicker of excitement ripple through the green leather chairs, in the moment a gasp of excitement rippled through the consciousness of the National Party members that perhaps they were not going to have to listen to me attack the privatisation of education—that I was, in the spirit of enjoyment and pleasure, going to support their bill, but no.
Consistency is very important in education, and after 8½ years on the Education and Science Committee, this speech will be a continuation of the one I made earlier, because what is happening in the tertiary sector is reminiscent of early childhood, and is also reminiscent of what is being proposed for the compulsory sector, and we do not like it. Although there are some really good, solid measures in this bill that we agree with, in terms of creating some clarity around some of the ongoing issues, there is a fundamental problem, and it has been identified not only by my colleague Gareth Hughes in his first speech on this bill, but also by the Tertiary Education Union. Fundamentally, if we start talking about flexibility in funding, meaning that the private institutions will be funded similarly, at the same rate and in the same way as the public, we are going to change the game, and the game is already very fragile.
When I say “fragile”, I would just like to quote from the stress dossier, which you may have heard of, that the Tertiary Education Union, in calling for a review, outlined because it received 500 anonymous comments about stress, in relation to this bill. This is not just stress—the human condition—which I am sure we know about; this is stress related to being in a tertiary education occupation. Where staff have been put under greater pressure, the union wanted to shine a light on what it is like to work in the tertiary education sector under the current regime, because it was very worried about this bill. It was worried that changes are being enshrined in law without it having a proper opportunity to have a thorough sector-wide review.
I just want to quote one aspect of the funding issue that was in the dossier: “Ever since funding was linked to retention and success there has been pressure from management to pass more students while at the same time wanting more full-time students.” These are very concerning comments. Another quote: “We have been required to remove all internal compulsory items from our course. Now all assessment items are no longer compulsory. This was done with the rationale that more passes means more funding”.
So flexibility in the tertiary sector can have “enormous” effects, particularly in the regions, and particularly when the education sector has become, at the tertiary level, highly competitive. As Sandra Grey said, we don’t want to see National “enshrine into law its guiding principle of putting profit before students without first reviewing the impact … on the quality of tertiary education.” I think that quote is very fair, as is the other quote I will read: “The review needs to hear directly from staff about what it’s like to work in the sector”, rather than staff having to “set aside their commitment to quality education and change marks to fit National’s funding priorities.”
What the dossier does is reveal unintended consequences that the tertiary funding model has created. It is not saying that this is a machiavellian plot to create a distortion in education. We do not even need Machiavelli around here; things just happen around here because of people’s possibly genuine belief that the market will fix everything, in the face of complete evidence to the contrary. But this bill will go to the Education and Science Committee, and we will look through it thoroughly. I hope that we will listen to the voices of the dossier, not the voices of people who are convinced that funding needs to be modernised to be more flexible, at the expense of the quality of our education system. Because, read my lips—market and quality ain’t the same thing. Kia ora.
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): We will not be supporting this bill. The reason, really, is that we are disappointed with the fact that this bill just serves to exacerbate the problem that we have in regard to the eroding of our public education system, in terms of our polytechnics and our universities, and the options, the spread, and the relevance that we have across our country. Basically, that is our concern in regard to what this bill will do. We do acknowledge that there are some provisions in this bill that we support, but we cannot support it when it continues to promote a privatised model of competition in tertiary education, because that model does not serve us well.
The amendments insert a principle of consistent funding treatment into the Act. This will mean that tertiary education providers that offer programmes of study that result in similar qualifications will be funded at the same rate. This is clearly another step in the privatisation agenda that has seen polytechnics being gutted in favour of private providers. The recent contestable funding process has seen a significant transfer of funding from public institutions to private institutions—regional polytechnics and institutes of technology are, basically, struggling for survival. Public institutions should continue to receive a differential level of funding, because, among other things, their capital investments remain in public ownership. Private establishments are under no obligation to continue to use their accumulated or publicly funded capital for education purposes.
I am not on the select committee but we have been kept informed about what this bill entails, so we will not be supporting this bill for those reasons, amongst others that some of the other speakers have mentioned this evening in the House.
TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): It is always an extraordinary slot this, is it not—just before 6 o’clock on Thursday—
Hon Member: Drivetime.
TODD MULLER: —drivetime. The sort of wave of collegiality that flows over this place is quite something. From Tracey Martin’s warm wish that we can hold hands together, figuratively, as parties as we reflect on the various submissions that this fine piece of legislation is going to receive, to the extraordinary observation of Catherine Delahunty as she stood up and felt almost a frisson of excitement at the opportunity to be able to support something that the National Government has put forward as solid legislation, and, of course that very kind offer from Kris Faafoi to hand me his notes on font size 26 so there would be no problem with me reading it—very good.
I am actually just going to talk about one particular part—it has been very well canvassed, all the various components of this, and, as we have already said, significant debate will ensue when we move to the select committee presently—and that is the section on international education and the proposals within the legislation in respect of managing international student misconduct. I have a particular interest in this because the school that had experience in this recently, Tauranga Boys’ College, is obviously in a part of the area that I am from—indeed, I used to go to that school many years ago. I felt at the time that the fact that the current model constrained it, in my view, from effectively disciplining international students in this case, in respect of behaviour that occurred outside the school hours, seemed to be somewhat nonsensical. So this particular component for me is common sense, and I am sure it will assist in providing clarity for those secondary schools that provide very good education for international students.
I do hope, as we go through the process, that we do not necessarily instantly run to our corners and labels. We have a tendency to do that, and even, at times, it has come through this debate. I do hope that between us we will actually have a real, solid debate, because, as we heard yesterday on the select committee when we had the Productivity Commission report, there are some profound questions that need to be reflected on with due consideration. This select committee process that we are going to follow is going to assist that. I very much look forward to that process, and I support this bill at its first reading.
ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. As my colleagues have said, Labour will not be supporting the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I have been in this Parliament for over 2½ years, and in that time I think I have spoken on five education bills—this is my fifth one. I thought I would reflect on some of the commonalities between them, because there are some, and I want to do that to highlight one particular fact in my assessment of this piece of legislation. That is that this bill—and it is only a small bill; not as big as some of the others, but there are parts of this, like the other bills that I have spoken on in this House, that reinforce the privatisation model that the Government is hell-bent on pursuing, without actually coming out and being honest and saying it. I look forward to the submissions on this, because some of the submissions—I think they were on the Education (Update) Amendment Bill—actually highlighted that fact; they explicitly said it. That was from the New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Council. So I look forward to its submission on this, along with others.
On one bill, the previous speaker said that children should be “fit for purpose”.
Carmel Sepuloni: Who said that?
ADRIAN RURAWHE: That was Todd Muller, in his contribution to the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I think it was a slip of the tongue, because surely—surely—that could not be the position of the National Government; surely it could not be, although if it was it would give us some insight into its thinking about constructing these types of bills.
Coming to that very fact, in this bill, as my colleagues have mentioned, there are some things that are good and there are some things that are not so good. I want to address the ability for wānanga to be able to use the title, in a descriptive way, that they are an indigenous university. I think, as my colleagues on this side—we are open to that discussion. I am very familiar with the arguments around that. Having spoken to a number of the wānanga, there are challenges that they face in being recognised for the level of education that they deliver, so I think that is a good discussion to have.
I look forward to those submissions and, as I have mentioned in the Education (Update) Amendment Bill debate today, I want to hear the voice of young people—the young people who need to have their voice heard on this. At the Education and Science Committee only yesterday, we were discussing and looking at reports around Māori and Pasifika educational achievement. I want to hear that. I think it is critically important not only that the select committee hears those voices but that we listen to them as well.
So I add my voice to that process. One thing I do agree with Todd Muller on is that we need to work collectively and collaboratively to make sure that this is the best piece of legislation that it can be, and I look forward to that process. Kia ora.
ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is an absolute pleasure to be talking on the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I know other speakers have come in and traversed a lot of the topics on this bill. I just thought I might home in on just one little area. The main thing I want to start out by saying is that it is appropriate that the Government has focused on making sure that our tertiary education providers are doing the right thing and providing courses that are meaningful, especially for overseas students, and that students, when they come out of those courses, have a meaningful educational qualification. It is great that there have been a number of investigations recently to address that issue.
This bill, obviously, covers other areas around tertiary institutes, particularly around how they are funded, and, I think, also around improving accountability. I do note that the bill specifically allows the Tertiary Education Commission to set conditions on tertiary education organisation (TEO) funding, which will enable the commission to more effectively monitor TEOs and the wider tertiary system. Secondly, it will require tertiary education institutions to maintain accurate records of Government funding and how those moneys have been spent.
But the bit I like is how this bill actually specifically provides for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to pursue action against tertiary educational organisations for falsely awarding credits to students who have not been appropriately assessed for those credits. This comes back to the integrity of our tertiary organisations, and I think it is fundamental that we do enhance and improve and make sure that our tertiary organisations are regarded as world best practice, as most of them are. This particular change in the bill I think should be welcomed, and on that basis—and I know there are a number of other great amendments in this bill—I do support the bill.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.
Ayes 62
New Zealand National 58; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.
Noes 56
New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 12.
Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Education and Science Committee.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Just as a matter for noting in the House, when this bill was first debated, the Minister at that time, on behalf of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, indicated intent to move a further motion, which caused some discussion and a ruling from me, as I happened to be in the Chair at the time. Since then there has been further discussion, and no motion of that type will be moved.
The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 23 May 2017, pursuant to the very good leave promulgated by Mr Doocey.
The House adjourned at 5.36 p.m.