CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : I pick up from where I left off last night. I was talking about the importance of the democratic process and of the importance of the Minister Anne Tolley answering the questions that have been put to her by my colleague Grant Robertson and other members of the Labour Party. We should bear in mind that this bill has not been through the select committee process. The public has not had a chance to have a say on it. Teachers, parents, and boards of trustees also never had that chance. So the Minister should write down the questions we have put to her. She should pay attention to what we have to say, and she should stand up and answer our questions.

We all agree that truancy is a bad thing. We all want the kids to be in the classroom and learning, but we have yet to be convinced about the way this bill will make a difference. For the Minister’s benefit, I will run through some of the questions we raised last night. One of the most important questions asked what consideration had been given to whether increasing the fines would make any difference. The explanatory note of the bill states that there is a low rate of prosecutions under the current law and under the current level of fines, so we need to consider both the reason for this and the resources that are given to boards of trustees to take these prosecutions in the first place. Is it that schools are not prosecuting parents because they do not have any support to do so? I suspect that that is a good part of the problem. How will this bill increase resources to school boards of trustees? The explanatory note states that boards are unaware of their ability to prosecute under the Act. What steps are going to be taken to remedy that? What information will the Minister be giving school boards of trustees about the current provisions and the new changes? What resources are schools going to get?

The second issue is that this bill increases the powers of the Secretary for Education, but we have no information about how that will be implemented. I draw the Committee’s attention to some of the things said about that in the explanatory note. One of them is: “The Secretary for Education’s ability to take prosecutions will enable the Ministry of Education to intervene when schools are not taking action to deal with chronic parent-condoned truanting. These changes will not incur significant costs for schools.” But presumably someone is going to have to pay for them. They will have to be paid for somehow. At a time when the Government has put a sinking lid on expenditure by Government departments, we are going to load a few more responsibilities on them. So much for cutting red tape!

Furthermore, the explanatory note states: “Increased prosecution activity may impose new costs on the Court system.” What satisfaction can the House take that the court system will be given the resources needed in order to be able to do that? The explanatory note also states: “There is some risk that prosecutions for non-attendance may be pursued inappropriately, with parents being unnecessarily exposed to the threat of serious financial sanctions.”

Hon Member: Good parents.

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right. These are good parents who could be exposed to serious financial sanctions. The bill itself says that. What protections are going to be put in place? What guarantee are parents going to have that their kids have not been at school before they find themselves standing in the dock? In order for that to happen, schools need the resources to be able to tell parents that their kids are not attending school. What is the Minister going to do to make sure that the schools actually get the resources they will need?

This bill takes a very punitive approach to student attendance. It does nothing—absolutely nothing—to turn schools into places where students want to go; it simply threatens to punish them and their parents if they do not actually arrive at school. I want to know how this fits within the Government’s wider agenda for education.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) : We are here on Saturday, under urgency, because the Māori Party, the ACT Party, and the National Party have agreed to push through legislation that fundamentally affects many New Zealanders across our country, and those New Zealanders have not had a say on any of it. This Government expects that it can rush through legislation that affects ordinary New Zealanders, without letting parents or schools have a say on it and without even bothering about what they think.

So in rising to speak to Part 1 of this Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions as well. I think the point was well made by Grant Robertson when he asked why there has been no ability for parents to have a say on how a punitive step will actually affect their ability to support their children in education. After all, we all want our kids to do well in the school system. We all want them to achieve. We all support schools lifting their game to support our children. But it is about quality teaching and creating a learning environment, and that is not what this bill does. This measure takes a punitive step against parents.

I absolutely agree with Chris Carter: good parents should not be punished by imposing punitive actions such as a fine system. Why? Let us think about common examples in our communities—real examples. For example, a woman with three children whose husband has left her may be on the domestic purposes benefit. Will a punitive step actually help her to support her children in their education? She is putting kai on the table and has it in the cupboard. She supports education. Is she totally responsible for what her child does because there are issues of dysfunction in her family that perhaps are not being addressed? What does the Minister say? She says “Let’s fine her. Let’s fine that solo mum whose child does not turn up to school because his father has not been in his life and has not taken an interest in his education. Let’s just fine her.” There are already exacerbating pressures on a family like that.

This legislation will do nothing to support those mums who want their children to be educated in our communities, and that is what this Government has not done. It has not really looked at the implications of a punitive system on vulnerable families who will need support not only from the community and the schools but from us as legislators, to ensure that when we apply legislation it will have a positive effect out there in our communities. I do not think that a punitive step really reaches out to the families who will be affected.

Has the Minister asked herself why truancy is happening in our communities? This is a difficult issue, and we are taking it seriously. Truancy is a very serious issue in all our communities, because we all know that if kids are at school for longer they are more likely to achieve. But why does truancy exist? I put that question to the Minister. Dr Pita Sharples spoke in this Chamber about this particular issue, and he knows very well that if we were to compare mainstream schools with kura kaupapa and wharekura we would find there is a higher rate of truancy overall in mainstream schools than in kura kaupapa and wharekura. Why? Every one of those kura kaupapa and wharekura schools will say that it is because teachers make the difference in the learning environment in terms of valuing the students and who they are.

If we talk to parents of children attending mainstream schools about the issues of why truancy exists—if we bother to talk to them—we will often hear them say that it is because their children do not feel valued, especially Māori students and perhaps Pacific students. Dr Pita Sharples raised the issue himself. A number of the truants we are talking about are in alternative education centres. When we talk to those children and ask them why they are in alternative education centres, they will say “The teacher couldn’t even be bothered with me. I was just a number—couldn’t even say my name properly. I didn’t even bother going to school because the teachers don’t value who I am.” That is what students will tell us.

So when the Minister takes an approach like the one that has been taken in respect of this bill—a very punitive approach—she actually fails to recognise the number of other issues around the help that families need in order to be able to support their children’s education. The Minister needs to take a call on this, because it is a very, very important question.

Hon Chris Carter: She won’t take a call.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: No, she will not take a call, but she needs to. She needs to take a call because a punitive measure such as this will punish good parents who want to support their children’s education. Those parents must be supported in doing that.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : The question that has to be asked about this Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill is how it will improve educational outcomes, which surely should be the purpose of the bill. A bill should not come into the House for purely ideological reasons. There should be some reason, one would hope, why the bill will actually improve educational outcomes.

We have quite a lot of information about children who do not go to school or who have very poor outcomes from our education system. One of the things we know most of all is that they live in poverty, and they are more likely to be Māori. We know that children who are missing school are more likely to come from difficult backgrounds.

I am quite interested in the relationship between this bill and the 90-day bill. If a parent is working a couple of part-time jobs in order to pay the bills, and he or she gets a new part-time job and finds out that his or her child is truanting from school, what choice does that parent have at that point? The choices are either to take some time off work to sort out what is happening, because the child is missing school, or stay at work. If that parent stays at work and does not deal with the problem of the child not going to school, the Government will come in and say “We’re going to whack a $3,000 fine on you because your child is missing school.”

Let us say that the parent decides on the alternative of not going to work and asks the boss for the day off to try to sort out the problem of the child missing school. Let us say that the parent is within the 90-day period where he or she can be sacked at will. That parent knows, because of the new legislation that has just been passed, that if he or she takes time off work during those 90 days to do something about the child who is truanting from school, the employer can sack him or her at will. The employer will say: “Oh, that’s one of those useless workers who tries to make sure their child gets an education. I don’t want one of those workers; I will just sack that worker at will.”

How will fining those workers $3,000 help them to deal with the problem in front of them of trying to put food on the table, pay the rent while their child is missing school, and meet the principal and teachers to find out what the problem is? If they do those things, the employer can say “Well, you’re obviously not the kind of employee we want in our workplace, and we can give you the sack, because the National Government has just given us the right to sack people who try to make sure their kids go to school.” Well, thanks to the National Government, people are caught between a rock and a hard place.

How does this bill help people who are in those kinds of difficult, real-life situations—not pretend ideological situations, because, let us face it, this measure is just an ideological burp—deal with the problem of trying to get their kids to go to school when they are in a 90-day period in a new job? Has the Government thought about how these two pieces of law, which it has been ramming through the House—and we are sitting on a Saturday now—might interact when it comes to real people living in the real world who are not sitting on Ministers’ salaries but are actually doing their best by their kids and paying their way? Has the Government thought about how these laws might work together?

What about the parent who works two jobs because the minimum wage is so low, and has kids who are truanting? The fact that the minimum wage is so low puts enormous pressure on parents. These are the real issues faced by parents whose kids are not going to school. They have to have more than one job in order to pay the bills, instead of having the time they need to pay attention to their kids.

If this was a family-friendly Government, surely its first priority would be to make sure that parents have enough time to spend with their kids in order to make sure they are not truanting from school. What about the fund to insulate housing that National has now said it is not going ahead with—the $1 billion to help insulate cold, damp houses? We know kids get out of the habit of going to school when they get sick. They get sick when they live in cold, damp houses. They get glue ear, they have poor educational outcomes because they cannot hear what the teacher is saying, they get isolated and alienated from their school, they do not want to be there, and they get sick. What do we do? We could insulate the houses so kids do not get sick so often, but instead we say “Oh no, that would be bad—we wouldn’t want to do that. Let’s get rid of that billion-dollar fund that was going to insulate houses so kids could actually get to school more often. That might help reduce truancy, but we do not want to do that; we’ll get rid of that, as well.”

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) : I will make a couple of points in relation to some of the comments that have been made so far. I firstly refer to the rather eloquent speech made last night by the previous Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Carter. He talked about what his Labour Government had done and talked about the many measures it took to address truancy. He asked why there was not more in this Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill to address truancy. Well, in a way he is right, because all the measures he was talking about are other ways of addressing truancy, and we have indicated in our policy that we support many of those initiatives. We intend to bring in more initiatives and we have made some more funding available. However, none of those initiatives require legislation, which is why they are not in this bill before the Committee.

But it is interesting that for all the previous Minister said about what his Government had done for truancy, he was unable, at any time, to tell us exactly how many truancy officers are out there on the ground in New Zealand. He clearly did not want to know. Under his watch truancy grew in this country by 41 percent—a 41 percent increase occurred under all those initiatives he was talking about last night, and that was with all those dollars that had been put in. At any one time under that previous Minister’s watch 30,000 children could be missing from school. That is the record of the previous Minister.

The question has been asked as to whether prosecutions work and whether there has been any research. Well, there has been some research here in New Zealand. Back in 2004, under the previous Labour Government, the ministry ran a streamlined truancy prosecution trial. The results of that trial showed that the threat of prosecution, where it was used appropriately, had amazing effects. In fact, out of 30 families who were threatened with prosecution for persistent and wilful recidivist truancy, only one family was prosecuted—only one out of 30. The threat of prosecution has an effect on those parents who are wilfully supporting recidivist truancy, and they are the people whom we are targeting with this measure.

The last point I will make is this. If raising the fines and making the penalties for wilful truancy more serious in this country is such a bad thing, then why have two former Labour education Ministers talked about raising the fines over the last 4 years? All Labour did was to talk about it; it never did it. Well, this Government is doing it.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : Is this not interesting? Here we are on a Saturday, in this maniac burst of pseudo-urgency, considering poorly thought-through bills. We are setting aside the proper processes of Parliament and conveying the impression of urgency and the impression of action—the impression of government. We fiddle while the world burns. Is this a serious response, in anybody’s book, to the international economic crisis? Kiwi mums and dads at home or at work this morning are feeling apprehensive about the future of their jobs, and more apprehensive after the passing of the 90-day “hire and fire at will” bill. They are at home and feeling apprehensive about their ability to pay the bills, and what are we doing? Pinging them with fines for truancy.

So why are we doing this? No one likes truancy. We have, as the previous speaker admitted, put in a raft of policies to address it and we have been making progress. But is it not interesting that the party that decried nanny Statism and the erosion of civil liberty—the imposition of solutions against the many to address the problems of the few—is now addressing this with a blanket law to fine parents for something that none of us, including most parents, would want to see?

Achievement does not equal compulsory testing, attendance does not equal compulsory fining, and a safe society does not simplistically equal tougher sentences. Those things are apparent, rather than real. They are worthy goals, but they are tokenistic solutions. They give the impression of action, rather than being real action.

I picked up this bill off the Table and thought I must have picked up an amendment. But no, this is the whole bill—an introduction and one page of measures. We are setting aside the select committee process to pass flimflam. This is flimflam. This is not policy, this is not government; this is complete procedural and policy nonsense.

The reason we are here on Saturday is that this is an abuse of Parliament. If anybody at home was in doubt, Anne Tolley proved it. She first recognised the range of measures that our Government put through. She then said that this new Government had a range of things it wanted to do on truancy. OK, I ask where they are, and moreover, I ask why those measures are not in the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. If the Government does not have them ready yet, I ask why this so-called bill is on the Table. Why is it on the Table, being considered under urgency, when, apparently, most of what the Government is going to do is not here? Why does the Government not tell the public what it is going to do? It cannot possibly be this bill, because this bill is a joke.

I think the public knows that this bill is not a solution; it is the impression of a solution. It is not a policy; it is the impression of a policy. This is not government; it is the impression of a Government. The difference between National and Labour is that we take the public seriously and we give them the honour of knowing that they can tell the difference between good policy and bad policy. They know this is a joke and an excuse for government while the world burns, and the new Government is really trying to work out what to do. The Government is here to convey the impression of urgency without having anything real to put through, because it wants to look like an action-oriented Government, whereas in fact this is not real action. In the world around us the Americans are debating the bail-out of the auto industry, the British are restructuring their banking system, Australia has just announced another major stimulus package, and what is our Government doing? It is fining parents for truancy, as if that is going to change the world and as if that merits urgency. I say to members opposite that they are here today because they are abusing Parliament and the public. Members opposite may give the impression of being a Government, but we will most definitely be a real Opposition.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Kia ora tātou i tēnei ra. I really enjoyed last night’s debate. There were some great contributions from across the House, and it was pleasing in terms of Māori education to hear contributions from my own co-leader Pita Sharples; from Mr Kelvin Davis, who came from a practical point of view; from Hekia Parata, who has been involved in a number of initiatives in respect of Māori education; from Metiria Turei; and also from Parekura Horomia. It was great to know that although we might speak across the House from different perspectives, in the end, as Māori and as those involved in education, we acknowledge the importance of education to each of us. There was a huge wealth of experience in the House last night, and all of us being here today clearly shows that we take education seriously.

I want firstly to recommend the report from the Education and Science Committee in February of this year. New members should have a look at that report, because, firstly, it contains 2 years of work, and, secondly, a huge amount of discussion came to the table. I acknowledge the contribution of the late Brian Donnelly, who led that select committee. I think it would be good if this Parliament picked up on the recommendations of that 2-year report. What was it all about? The title of the report was Inquiry intomaking the schooling system work for every child. I suppose that title recognises that the system does not necessarily fit all students.

I suspect that Part 1 of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill—“School enrolment and attendance”—is an effort to get students to go to school. The problem is that the recommendations in this part may well result in parents having to pay fines for their children not showing up, but they do not address the fundamental problem. I have some sympathy with the Supplementary Order Paper lodged by the previous Minister of Education, Mr Chris Carter, but we will consider it down the line.

Is there a truancy problem? Hell yeah! We do not have to go very far to know that. I do not think that having select committee hearings about whether there is or is not a truancy problem will do very much. There is enough evidence around to tell us that there is a problem, and, indeed, previous administrations have recognised that by way of providing truancy officers, the Waitakere truancy project, the truancy from school research project, and the text messaging project, which, I understand, Mr Mallard was part of initiating. Is there a truancy problem? Yes, and we have to acknowledge that.

As other members have said, it is likely that Māori and Pasifika students are participants in truancy. As I said at the Education and Science Committee, truancy is a sign of a bigger issue. It is likely that those who are involved in truancy are also involved in the poverty trap, and their families are not likely, in the end, to be able to pay the fines included in this part of the bill. Truancy can be viewed as a sign that the school and/or the system as a whole is not making a connection with the students. We acknowledge that the Te Kōtahitanga project was recognition by the previous Government that the teacher making a connection with the students is a very important element of our education—and Mr Davis took that angle last night. We say that that project needs to be developed, in light of Part 1. Of course, the downside for us at the time was that the Te Kōtahitanga money was taken from the manaaki tauira project, which was indeed a valuable pūtēa, or pool of money, available to assist Māori students in the tertiary sector.

I will confirm some figures in terms of truancy rates. In 2002 truancy rates were 3.6 percent for Māori, 1 percent for Pākehā, and 2.9 percent for Pasifika students. In 2004 those rates were 3.7 percent, 1.2 percent, and 3.7 percent, and in 2006 they were 4.5 percent, 1.3 percent, and 1.4 percent. Clearly, those who are suffering at the notion of attending school are more probably Māori and Pasifika.

Is there a better way? Perhaps a lead could be taken from a project that was developed in Hawaii called the Truancy Reduction Demonstration Project. Rather than our saying let us just fine parents, I tried to look for some sort of solution that had come out of research. I did some research and found that in Hawaii a project had been developed to combat truancy. The project identified five key elements to addressing the issue of truancy: parent and guardian involvement; a continuum of services, including meaningful supports, incentives, and consequences; collaboration with community resources, such as law enforcement, mental health, mentoring, and social services; school building - level administration support and commitment to maintaining youth in the educational mainstream; and, finally, ongoing evaluation, including meaningful and relevant outcome data geared towards increasing productive factors and reducing risk. I suppose those are wide-ranging points, but truancy is not limited to Aotearoa; it is a factor across the world. Will introducing high fines to deal with this issue make a difference? It seems to me that it will not, and the research does not really say that.

In terms of addressing that matter, I have lodged a Supplementary Order Paper, and I look for support for it from across the House. Basically, it separates the two issues in this bill, to allow the issue of truancy to be dealt with by itself, and the assessment issue to be dealt with by itself, in the belief that upping the fines may not necessarily, in the end, deal with the issue. If it is about getting our tamariki and our students to go to school, putting up fines, which may well affect only the parents and not those students, will not deal with the bigger issue. The bigger issue is building the relationship between tamariki and the school and, indeed, as Mr Davis pointed out, the teachers themselves, and back the other way—between the teachers and the students.

The Māori Party asks for a little bit more work on the part of the bill dealing with fines. We do not think it will work, and we look forward to some support in the House for separation of the issues. It may well be dealt with a little further down the line, but from our side of things, today is not the day to deal with the issue of fines.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I am happy to take a call on this part of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. Truancy is an issue that everyone in the House is concerned about. It is an issue that the previous Government did much work on. It is an issue, of course, that this Opposition will be happy to work with the Government on if it puts before us measures that we genuinely believe will combat truancy and will not potentially make things worse.

I start off by acknowledging Hekia Parata and her maiden statement. Her sister Apryll was my sixth-form English teacher at Lytton High School. She was a very, very good English teacher. She was also my sixth-form and seventh-form dean. I am not worried to say that we were all a little bit scared of her, but she was a very good teacher, and it is very nice to have Hekia Parata in the House.

One of the things that I think is important, and we need to acknowledge this when we look at the statistics, is that we do now track children through the ENROL system. There was a time when we really had no idea where a lot of those children were, particularly the children of those families who travelled around a lot and changed schools regularly. When we consider the statistics, an important part is acknowledging that we do track children now and that we have a far better idea.

We are concerned that this bill will have no select committee process. None of the bills in this urgency motion will be referred to a select committee in order for the public and the sector to have their say. I just make a comment to Mr Flavell, who has just resumed his seat. The reason we are concerned about that is not that we do not think there is a truancy problem, but that we do not know whether this bill is the solution. We believe that the sector should have the opportunity to have its say because the bill might make things worse—we never know. If a family that is burdened with debt gets another fine on top of that when they are desperately trying to hold it together, it might actually make things worse. That is why we believe this bill should have gone to a select committee.

I ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Anne Tolley, what evidence she has that parents who cannot afford the fines now will be able to afford them when they are greater, and what difference increasing them will make. If those families are throwing up their hands now and saying they cannot do it, then why will making those fines so much more burdensome make a difference in those families? If it will make a difference and the Minister can show us the evidence, then why not make the fine $10,000 or $100,000 for parents whose children truant? I ask why we do not do that if the level of fine is what is important.

I think the problem is that we have been told that other measures are coming, but this bill is putting the cart before the horse. We do not know what those measures are. We do not know how they will fit in with the raising of the fines, and how it will make a difference. [Interruption] Maybe Mr King can tell us what these extra measures are. All the evidence we have seen this week so far, under urgency, is that this Government will pursue policies that hurt the most vulnerable families. We have seen tax increases for our low-income families. We have seen an employment relations bill that will take away rights at work for members of those families who are the most vulnerable in the first 90 days of employment.

I ask the Minister to consider this scenario. Let us suppose a mother is working two or three jobs, trying to hold her family together. It is hard to be a parent and try to hold the family together at the same time, especially for a solo parent. Let us say that she is in her first 90 days of work and she gets a phone call from the school telling her that her son or daughter has not turned up and that the school does not know where the child is. What does she do? Most people would say she will go to her employer and say: “My child is the most important thing. This is the thing that matters most so I will leave here, go home, and try to find out where my child is and get that child to school.” By doing that she flags to her employer that this might be an ongoing issue. This parent might be constantly called away from work, and what can that employer do in the first 90 days of that job?

Let us remember that hundreds of thousands of people change jobs every few months. They are mostly low-income people, who go from part-time job to part-time job, and who work a lot in the hospitality industry and in other areas where there is a high turnover.

That employer now thinks that he or she has someone here who will want a lot of time off, because this mother obviously has a kid who is in trouble or will truant a lot, even if that is not the case. All the employer has to say is: “Don’t come Monday.” Under the legislation passed in this House under urgency, where the public had no chance to have a say, all the employer has to say is: “Don’t come Monday.” The employer does not have to give a reason.

Kate Wilkinson, the Minister of Labour, might say that the mother can take a human rights complaint because she is parent and that situation is unfair. Well, she cannot do that, because how will she prove that she was fired because her child was a problem at school and because she is a solo parent? She cannot prove that. All the employer has to say is: “I am sorry. You do not look happy in your work. Don’t come Monday.”

I want to know whether the Minister is connecting these dots. I ask whether she is connecting the dots between the policies we have seen this week under urgency, which disadvantage our poorest families and give them no security at work, and the scrapping of a billion-dollar fund—as my colleague Dr Russel Norman has pointed out—that would have meant more healthy homes and more kids at school.

I want to raise another issue, and that is about a blog about a parent with a child with autism.

NATHAN GUY (Senior Whip—National) : I move, That the question be now put.

STUART NASH (Labour) : I was not going to speak in this Chamber until I had given my maiden speech, because that is the ancient tradition of this esteemed institution and I wanted to honour that. So to those who have gone before me, I do apologise. But last night I sat in this House and listened with growing anger and frustration to the utter drivel spouting from the mouths of members on the Government benches, and I felt I had to break my own rules on a topic that is so important it warrants it.

I listened to Mr Peachey lecture us about educational achievement. That member was the headmaster of one New Zealand’s largest schools, but it was also one of New Zealand’s wealthiest. His students knew about aspiration. They grew up with education—

Allan Peachey: Don’t talk rubbish! Get it right!

STUART NASH: —because their parents read them stories at night, I say to Mr Peachey. They had full tummies when they went to school. They went there in clean clothes, they understood education, they had a healthy lunch, and they had a great attitude. I say to Mr Peachy that his students’ greatest problem these days is where to park their cars when they get to school. [Interruption] You may have been able to get away with bullying your students and your staff, but you cannot do that here.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member cannot use the word “you”, as he is bringing the Chair into the debate. Also, members should please keep the tone down. Interjections are fine, but members should keep the tone down.

STUART NASH: Then Todd McClay lectured us about 9 years of a Labour Government, when he was not even in the country then. Todd McClay said in his maiden speech: “ ‘I have two ears and one mouth. I will be able to listen’ ”. Then last night he said he had talked to thousands of people in Murupara. What did he do? Did he talk or listen? He did not listen. Of course the people in Murupara want better for their children; we all do. But Mr McClay and Mr Peachey completely missed the point. [Interruption] The member wants to talk about educational achievement. Well, I tell him that I am in the throes of completing a masters thesis on tertiary education, economic transformation, and education. So I know a little about that.

The arrogance of not taking this bill to a select committee astounds and appals me. Democracy is the foundation stone of this country; “demos” means people and “-cracy” means rule. The select committee process allows democracy to be expressed. Democracy was the model first used in ancient Greece, when Solon founded the first democratic State over 3,000 years ago. How dare the Government dishonour that tradition when proposing social legislation? We may represent the people, but it is our duty to give them the right to speak and be heard. Does Anne Tolley understand that? [Interruption] The issue is not about her; it is about listening to the people who gave her the mandate to represent them. I say to Mr Quinn—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I know the member is a new member, but we are debating Part 1 of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, which deals with the issue of truancy. I have listened to the member very carefully, and I have not heard any reference to the bill, at all. We have had a great socialistic lecture about all sorts of things, but I think, Mr Chairman, that you should require the member—particularly as this part has been debated for some time—to address Part 1.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The point is well made by the member. We are looking specifically at Part. I ask the member to confine his comments to that. But I bring to members’ attention Speakers’ ruling 57/3, which relates to interjections. It states: “(1) Interjections in debate are out of order unless they are rare and reasonable; (2) occasional interruption by way of interjection is in order if relevant;”. I just draw members’ attention to Speakers’ ruling 57/3.

STUART NASH: Let us talk about truancy. Is that a decile 10 - school problem? Does Remuera Primary School have a truancy problem, a truancy issue? No. Truancy is not an educational problem; it is a social-economic problem. Of course parents want what is best for their kids. They want them to be educated, but instead of low-income parents reading stories to their children at night, I tell Mr Peachey, those parents are cleaning his office, and they are delivering Mr McClay’s newspaper at 5 a.m. At 7.30 a.m. they are heading out to work in their day job, I tell Mrs Tolley. National’s tax cuts for the top 32 percent of income earners have made matters worse. Truancy is an issue because desperate parents cannot find the time and money to put food on the table, let alone books in homes.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Excuses—more excuses.

STUART NASH: Then that Government is going to fine them a month and a half’s salary. Does Mr Smith think that will help? No. I tell the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, to start addressing the issues, see where the failures lie, and understand the demographics of failure. It is not in Epsom or on the North Shore; it is in our poorest communities, where people are struggling with everyday issues of life. What are you doing about it? Nothing!

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member cannot use the word “you”. He should talk about the person by using his or her name, or by using the term “the member”. That might be the easiest way to do it. As soon as you mention “you”, it refers to the presiding officer at the time, so I ask the member to please take that point on board.

STUART NASH: I apologise—I apologise. The Minister should go and hold a select committee meeting in the Māngere community centre, take Mr Sio with her, and hold the meeting at a time when people can attend between shifts.

I will tell members this: at least Labour endeavoured to address what we know was the problem, through Working for Families and increasing the minimum wage significantly during its time—measures that the National Party voted against every time. National should address the cause of truancy and raise the minimum wage under urgency. That will help educational achievement, not this legislation. I dare the National Government to address the issue of the minimum wage. Let us do that under urgency—address the minimum wage. Truancy is a social-economic problem, not an educational problem. It is not an educational problem. The Government should go and hold a select committee meeting in the Māngere community centre.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) : I start by saying that the goals of what the Government is proposing are quite laudable. Truancy is not a joke. We all agree with that; everybody on every side of the House agrees with that. And we are starting from a reasonable base.

As the explanatory note of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill says: “The schooling system supports educational success for many students and, by international standards, a high proportion of New Zealand’s students achieve at levels comparable to the best in the world. The system, however, is not serving all students well, with 14 percent”—not one in five—“of students leaving …” without achieving good standards of numeracy and literacy. So we are starting from a good base, and it is laudable that the Government wants to do better. We all want to do better. That is great, but there is debate about how we do better. Because the Government has decided to get up on its high horse—its high Trojan horse—draw its sword, and crusade this legislation through Parliament under urgency, there is no opportunity for that debate.

We are not hearing from principals, we are not hearing from teachers, we are not hearing from students, we are not hearing from parents, we are not hearing from truancy officers, we are not hearing from the police, and we are not hearing from the truants. That would be a good place to start, would it not? How about we go and talk to the truants? That would be a good place to start. But we do not get to hear from any of those people, because the Government is ramming this legislation through under urgency. Here we are on a Saturday. I could be back in my electorate, listening to people. I have had to cancel four engagements today. One of them was at a school. I could have been listening to teachers and students talking about this issue. But, no, we are here, under urgency, because the Government is so keen to look as if it is doing something.

So let us hear from principals; let us give some of them a chance to speak up. The President of the Secondary Principals’ Association, Peter Gall, said in the New Zealand Herald yesterday: “Parents are very much in the same boat as schools, struggling to ensure the kids are in school, … Unless the truancy is condoned, it would not be right to prosecute the parents.” The Edgewater College principal, Allan Vester, in the Howick and Pakuranga Times on 13 November, said that any worthwhile plan introduced by the ministry needs a lot more than an increase in the level of fines. “Very few cases go to prosecution and that type of long term truancy is very uncommon.” He argued that what is needed are more resources for schools to follow up with families of students who miss more than the average days in situations where there is not a major medical issue. That is what those principals are saying; that is what they are telling us. But the Government insists on ramming this bill through anyway.

I decided that it would be a good idea to listen to my constituents, so I made a few phone calls yesterday. I canvassed a few educators in Palmerston North and managed to get hold of a couple of them, even at such short notice. Do members know what? The first person I spoke—

Nathan Guy: Ring Maharey? What’s he up to?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: He is a vice-chancellor, and I know what he does. The first educator I spoke to was a principal of a primary school. I explained what the Government was suggesting in the way of putting up fines. I asked her whether she thought that was a good idea. Well, when she had stopped laughing, and when she had managed to compose and control herself, she asked me a simple question: “What’s the point?”. I ask the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley: “What’s the point?”. The Minister had trouble writing down all the questions my colleague Grant Robertson had last night, so I have a simple, easy question for her: “What’s the point?”.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Get the children to school.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The member says that it is to get the children to school, but where is the evidence to show that putting up fines will actually achieve that? That is what we want to achieve, but how will putting up fines actually achieve it? The Minister has said that the threat of prosecution is enough. The threat of prosecution is already enough. A thousand dollars is already a lot of money. I am not fundamentally opposed to the Government putting up the amount; that is not a problem. But what difference will it make? A thousand dollars is a lot of money, and the threat of prosecution already works, and this is what we have got.

The Minister says that the Government has a priority plan of action. What is the first priority? She says that a range of options are available, yet the first priority is to punish parents. The first priority is to go after parents and to punish poor parents—the ones who are struggling.

Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) : This particular provision is for me primarily and largely about vulnerable families, and we need to factor them into the programme we are now debating. As we increase penalties for the most vulnerable, we must know that it is serious for them, and everyone from our side has already spoken out about that. We need to be clear that we understand when those punitive measures are to be triggered. They have to be triggered at the right time, particularly for vulnerable families. In order to ensure that we have the trigger points right, we ought to take much more advice than we have taken at the present time.

The Minister, Anne Tolley, said earlier that she was relying on 2001 research on the effects of this, which the ministry or someone else might have done. However, I say to the Minister that she ought to rely on contemporary evidence, and that contemporary evidence comes from the people who are not teachers but are working in schools right now, and who are working with these vulnerable families.

I was part of a group that pioneered school social work in this country. We placed social workers in schools for a good reason—to help and work with vulnerable families. I would like to hear from those social workers. What are they saying? What is their advice? What have they found out so far, what works, and what does not work? I think we ought to bring that into the consideration of this particular clause.

I agree with Mr Te Ururoa Flavell when he talked about the experience from Hawaii. As I understood from what he said, they were talking about involving parents and having a continuum of services. I did not hear him talk about punitive measures; I heard him talk about measures that enable people to participate. So simply increasing the fine will not address what is perceived as an important problem at the present time. I think the House should have the benefit of those people who have the experience and who know the conditions under which optimal assistance can be provided to families. The provisions in clauses 5 and 6 do not do that.

These considerations are important, because the families likely to get caught out for the non-attendance of their children come from the lower economic and vulnerable levels of society. They are likely to be families on a low income, or families with irregular work, and, more important, are likely to have many, many social issues. Those issues need to be understood and heard. We need to know what other factors must be considered in those sorts of provisions, so that changes can be made.

I ask members to consider for a moment these different conditions. If it were a family like mine, then working with the school would be quite easy. But consider the family that I talked about in my maiden speech; a family with disability in the home and difficulties with three children. If those kinds of families, which are coping with inordinate difficulties in the home, are fined or face a prosecution, how does that help them? The system the Government has designed in clauses 5 and 6 will punish them. When I worked with those families, it was the bringing together of all of their needs and using the power of the State, and the provisions that could be made, that made a difference in the life of those families. It will not be done by punishing them with fines. I urge the Minister to send this bill to the select committee, so that the experts can come along and improve on the proposals. This is a one-shot act of conscience only; it satisfies those people who want to punish.

The Minister is acting in an authoritative way but these provisions are not authoritative. What will make the Minister authoritative is to take the best evidence, take the right experience, from those who work with such families. We have worked with those families in the past ourselves, and having worked with them intensively, I say we need to understand their experiences and what will help. It simply satisfies the expectations of a different sector of society, who believe that only by punishing the vulnerable will we will improve their life situation. There is no evidence of that. We will develop a dog-eat-dog society, but we want to avoid that. If we listen to those with experience, we will avoid that happening.

TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) : I move, That the question be now put.

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatū) : We have been debating this education bill for about 2½ hours, and I think there is a consensus in the Committee that literacy and numeracy standards for students in our schools are things we all desire, but the question that the Labour Party asks is this: how does this bill do anything about lifting literacy and numeracy standards in schools?

We heard the new Minister of Education saying that somehow national standards would make a difference. Well, we have explained, more than once, about the national administration guidelines that govern all schools. I personally think the Minister has never heard of them and knows nothing about them. I want to tell her, as many members of the House have already done, that schools are required under those guidelines to do exactly what she says the national standards will do. So we ask ourselves—as the public and certainly all members on this side of the Chamber are asking—what the point of this bill is. If these things are already happening, why are we doing it? Labour members have explained already why we think the Minister is doing this. We think the Minister is doing this so that she can create competition between schools.

League tables will be an inevitable result if this legislation becomes law. It is about introducing, for the first time ever, the concept that primary schools would be able to compare their results with other primary schools, and that individuals would be able to compare their results with those of other individuals. It is not that a 5-year-old should know this, or a 7-year-old should know that—that is already required in schools. It is already happening in schools. We have the benchmarks; we have the progressions. We have asTTle tests whereby the individual achievement of pupils is recorded and is available to parents, and it is required by the national administration guidelines in schools to be available to parents. The Education Review Office checks it every 3 years. So what is the point? The point is a right-wing agenda in education.

The scariest speech I have heard in this whole debate was that of the Associate Minister of Education Heather Roy, who started to talk about what, I think, is behind this legislation. She talked about choice. She talked about competition. She talked about reshaping New Zealand education. That is a truly scary prospect.

Let us remind ourselves of what happened when we came into Government in 1999. We inherited an education system that was absolutely demoralised. Not only was it full of decaying buildings, through the neglect of the property programme, but schools were set up in competition with each other, and bulk funding had divided the profession and demoralised education. We had a crumbling education system. The Labour Government doubled the funding. We put in $5.5 billion extra. We put $3.4 billion into school property, and we put all sorts of amazing programmes into schools to lift literacy and numeracy. We employed 6,000 teachers above what was required by roll growth.

Those are the practical things that one has to do to lift numeracy and literacy in schools. It is not about slogans; it is actually about an ideology of making sure that public education is just that—available to all the public—and that the neighbourhood school is a quality school that any parent would be pleased to send their child to. As many of our members from provincial and rural areas know, the school is the centre of a provincial community, and it should be a quality learning place where quality teaching and learning takes place, and where literacy and numeracy levels are lifting for all students.

New Zealand education after 9 years of Labour is world class. It is cutting edge. During the time that I was the Minister of Education—and during the time of my two predecessors, Trevor Mallard and Steve Maharey, in that portfolio—international visitor after international visitor came to New Zealand to look at our education system. They asked why New Zealand 15-year-olds score best in the English-speaking world in literacy and numeracy. How is it that New Zealand education has been cutting edge, with everything from Marie Clay and the reading recovery programme to Professor Hattie with his asTTle programme at Auckland University rolling out into our schools?

International educationalists ask why New Zealand schools are so good. I will tell members why they are good. It is because we have poured resources into our schools in the last 9 years; we have had a culture in New Zealand of collaboration in our schools, a culture of innovation; and we have a curriculum, developed under a Labour Government, that is flexible enough to cater for individual creativity among teachers and educators and to allow for local flavours within those core competencies. We have an education system that is cutting edge. It is an education system that I as Minister was incredibly proud of. I was incredibly proud of what New Zealand teachers were doing in our schools.

Yes, we do have a tail in education. I have been the first to admit that. When we were in Government, we were the first to admit it. Indeed, that is why we rolled out the decile rating system. That is why we poured money into those low-decile schools. That is where the challenge is for lifting literacy and numeracy. That is where we have to make the difference, to pick up the tail. We have to lift up that 14 percent of young New Zealanders who are leaving school with no qualifications, and those large groups of students in low-decile schools who are not reading at their chronological age, not only for their own potential but for the potential of our country.

Māori and Pasifika students figure highly in underachievers in New Zealand education. The global picture is that New Zealand education is first-class—world class. Within that global picture there is a specific problem: how do we lift up those underachievers—the tail—for their sake and for all our sakes? We can do that only through resourcing. Slogans will not work. National standards or league tables for primary schools will not work. Making children in primary schools focus on a one-off test will not work.

What are the dangers of a one-off test? Well, those of us who are teachers—I was a teacher for many years; and on the National side I can see Hekia Parata and Mr Peachey, who have both been teachers—know that a test is a one-off event. A child may be sick or may have had something happen at home, or he or she could be freaked out by the pressure and tension of the test. It is a snapshot of that moment, on that day, for that child. It is not cumulative, and it does not show the progress of a child over a period of time.

We have moved in secondary schools from that one-off School Certificate and university entrance approach—an exam—to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, which is a cumulative assessment process. That is a modern, effective system. Indeed, young people are coming out of the system with a true picture of their quality. If we go to national standards for primary schools we will fall back into that old problem of the snapshot for kids.

A number of my colleagues have talked about the experiences of other countries that have done that. We will no doubt hear some more in the next couple of hours. In the United States there is the No Child Left Behind policy. What it has actually done is leave the education system behind. The American education system performs worst in the English-speaking world, and it has got worse under the right-wing Bush regime. Teachers’ salaries became dependent on the result of the tests. Schools’ funding became dependent on the result of the tests.

What was the effect in the United States of the sort of choice that Heather Roy was talking about yesterday—the ACT right-wing agenda where schools are in competition with each other? Well, teachers started cheating in the test. That is well-proved now by educational researchers. The tests themselves became the criteria for teachers keeping their jobs. Low-decile schools in inner-city ghettos and the poorer suburbs of American cities were closing down or were completely restricted in their resourcing. That was the effect of the No Child Left Behind policy.

In the UK the schools of Manchester are ranked 1 to 560. When parents looked at the rankings, who was going to send their child to the 560th school on the list? Everyone wanted their child to go to the schools ranked No. 1, No. 2, or whatever, but, of course, they could not afford to do that because they did not live in the right suburbs. That was the effect of national standards. That was the effect of having league tables between schools.

Mrs Tolley said that this information will not be available to the public; it will be available only to the Government. Has she not heard of the Official Information Act? Does she think that schools will not, with glee, publish the results of their tests, as they do already? With the tests that they sit—the Australasian maths test, and the Cambridge International Examinations—schools love showing what success they have. Who would not? Every teacher and principal is proud of what happens at their school. The effect of that, though, will be to create and compound differences between low and high-deciles schools; between perceived winner and loser schools. We have had a double whammy for education: the 90-day rule, which has made teachers in small schools vulnerable, and now league tables for primary schools.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) : I have before me an interesting blog from the principal of Ōpōtiki College—a college the Minister of Education would not be totally unfamiliar with. He makes within it some comments that are probably better not read in the Chamber. But he makes a couple of pretty succinct points. The first is that the country that has gone furthest along the line of this bill—the United States—ranks 42nd in the international Programme for International Student Assessment tests, while New Zealand consistently ranks in the top five. A school in a system that spends a lot of time measuring against a standard, rather than focusing on teaching and learning, is one that is not succeeding. He indicates the reason for this: spending time weighing the pig does not make the pig fatter.

The point I want to make is that as part of the learning process, having regular quality assessment is important, and that is what the National Administration Guidelines do. But doing more—putting it into a national testing system and having a national standard that people have to get to, which is the objective of this bill—will add nothing and, in my view, will in fact take away from our education system.

New Zealand has an enormous international reputation for teaching and learning, especially in the literacy area. We are the home of Dame Marie Clay, the person who developed reading recovery, which is now the basis of many, many systems internationally. We have had a lot of debate around the right way to teach reading. One of the challenges in my time as Minister of Education, it might be fair to say, was to get some officials within the ministry to accept that there is more than one approach to the teaching of reading and that different things work better for different young people at different times. It was therefore important not to write off particular systems, which I think it is fair to say had been written off under Nick Smith and Wyatt Creech as being unfashionable, old-fashioned, and not working. I refer especially to phonic approaches to reading. As a teacher I say that it is not my favourite approach, but there is no doubt that it works for some young people at some stages.

I felt slightly in two minds about heading down the route taken by Nick Smith and Wyatt Creech. I was supporting the systems that were more old-fashioned. I was supporting the systems that we learnt to read by. I am not saying that they were the best systems for all kids, and I am not even saying that they were the best systems for most kids most of the time, but I think we got to the point where we managed to more or less drive ideology out of the ministry with this approach. We did a lot of work bringing together the best evidence on the teaching of reading. There was a lot of documentation, and a lot of work now informs the teaching of teachers, both by way of their professional development and also within the colleges of education.

This is a slow process. It takes a lot of time to re-educate, and to develop in a professional sense, people who are teaching reading. We are actually talking about every classroom teacher, including most of the teachers within secondary schools. The point I am making initially is that I think it is very important that we do not get ideological in this particular area.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : When I spoke on Part 1 of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill last evening I lamented the fact that there was no opportunity for the general public to come to talk to Parliament about their views on these very, very important issues. This is even more so in Part 2.

There would be a lot to be gained from the Education and Science Committee hearing from people as to how they want to see these national standards put in place. What type of national standards would they be? What would they look like? What must we try to avoid? There are some things that we know we must try to avoid. We have evidence-based research from overseas that shows us exactly what we must avoid. We must avoid national testing, in the way that it drives teachers to teach to a test and therefore does not allow them to use their creativity to address individual children’s needs. I am pleased to say that there is a Supplementary Order Paper that may help to ease the general public’s concerns about their lack of consultation on this bill and the legislative process to date and I want to speak in favour of this Supplementary Order Paper put forward in the name of the Hon Chris Carter.

The purpose of the Supplementary Order Paper is to ensure consultation with the public before the Minister can publish, by a notice in the Gazette, any national standards. I think that is a basic minimum requirement. I would be very, very concerned if the Minister was to not support this amendment. If the National Party is not supporting this amendment, then I think the intention is very clear: the Minister, who has a lot of power and not very much knowledge about these issues, has absolute carte blanche to go ahead and decide what these national standards will be. That could very easily turn into national testing.

David Bennett: What do you know?

SUE MORONEY: I am not arrogant enough to believe that I am the person with all the wisdom on this issue, unlike the Minister, who has rushed this legislation through the House, has not asked for public submissions, and has not allowed the opportunity for ordinary people like me—just parents—who might like to have a say about what the education standards might look like for my children and for other people’s children as well. We have not been able to have that opportunity so I want to speak in support of that Supplementary Order Paper, and the associated Supplementary Order Paper from the Hon Chris Carter.

The second Supplementary Order Paper will provide for greater scrutiny of national standards and the ability for them to be reviewed, by treating them as regulations. I think that is a very important power, a very important amendment, that this House needs to consider very carefully. What if the national standards are gazetted by the Minister and they are not quite right? What would be the redress? What would be the recourse? How would we review that?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why should it be any different from the curriculum?

SUE MORONEY: I say to Dr Smith that I look forward to him voting in favour of this amendment. If he believes there should be a review, that there should be proper processes around this, then I invite him to support the Minister’s amendment, because I think it is an excellent one. I would be very, very worried indeed—I think it would be a very worrying signal to the New Zealand public—if National Party members could not find it in their hearts to support these two amendments. These are the safeguarding amendments to make sure that, even though we have not had a democratic process for this particularly important bill, there is at least some ability for the public to have some say over what those national standards may look like, and then to come back and revisit them and see whether they have worked and be able to review them. I think that is a very important part of any robust legislative process—not that this has started very well at all. It has not been robust from the start, because we have not had a select committee process.

I want to take the opportunity also to talk about a few other parties’ positions. I find it very interesting that the ACT Party, the party of freedom of choice, is supporting a bill that potentially forces everyone down the same pathway. They are national standards. Where is the freedom of choice argument from the ACT Party on this issue? Forcing children to go to school, for goodness’ sake, under Part 1! Where is the freedom of choice in that? I find the ACT Party’s position very interesting. I turn to the Māori Party’s position on national standards. Yesterday I listened very carefully to Dr Pita Sharples. He was very interesting. He talked about how mainstreaming does not work necessarily for Māori. I agree with him, but forcing national standards that only the Minister will have the right to have a say on—what will that do for Māori children?

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I am happy to take a call on Part 2, and to follow my colleague Sue Moroney in reiterating that members on this side of the Chamber are concerned at the lack of process in this bill.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will you repeal it?

MOANA MACKEY: I say to Dr Smith that there is a bill before the House that would normally be referred to a select committee, except it is being rammed through under urgency, on a Saturday, so that the Government can look as if it is doing something. The reason we oppose this bill is that all it does is write a blank cheque for the Minister of Education to do whatever she wants, with no redress to the sector, no ability for anyone to have his or her say, and no ability for anyone to do anything about it if the Minister gets it wrong. The Minister says that she will go out for consultation, and that is great, but why does she not send this bill to a select committee, which is the natural form of consultation built into this democratic process? I am sceptical about the fact that the Minister says she will consult. By doing it this way, it means she can pick and choose whom she consults. It means that those who disagree with her may not be asked to have any input into this process. So I ask the Minister to support the Hon Chris Carter’s amendment—which at least says that this would be done under regulation—so the bill can go to the Regulations Review Committee if people do have concerns about it.

The Minister says that this is not national testing. She has been quite at pains to let people know that. Of course, that is where this policy started. We have to ask why everyone in the sector thinks this will include national testing if the Minister says that it will not, and says that it is just about national standards. It is because anyone who knows anything, in the sector—and we can read the enormous amount of commentary on the bill within the sector—knows there is no point in having national standards if we do not test to them. Standards mean nothing if we do not actually compare students with them. This bill started as national standardised testing when it was policy in the campaign. But there was such an uproar from the sector, including from those who normally support the National Party, that the policy got watered down, and watered down. I was at election meetings with Mrs Tolley where she basically said it was not national testing; it was just standards. People would say that we do have those now, so why are we replicating what we already have in relation to a Government that said it wants to reduce compliance for schools?

I can tell members why we are doing it. It is so that the Minister and the Government can save face. They started off promising national standardised testing, but they backed down hugely under enormous pressure from the sector, which said that all the research showed that it did not work. The principal of Ōpōtiki College in the Minister’s own electorate pointed that out, as did a Programme for International Student Assessment test: the USA, which has gone down this path, is ranked 42nd; New Zealand, which has not gone down this path, is ranked in the top five. All the research shows that the policy does not work. But the Minister did not want to say they should just dump the policy and find something that worked, so she watered it down, and watered it down. It is now going to force schools to do something they are already doing—to replicate the work they are already doing—while she goes around telling them she will reduce compliance. I say to members of this Committee that no party should be voting for a bill when it does not know what the bill will do, and when there is no redress for the public, the sector, or for any member of this House to be able to change it if it is wrong. This bill will simply be gazetted, and then that is it. If it is wrong it will be tough luck. The Minister says she will consult, but I do not believe that.

I want to respond to something I heard last night from Te Ururoa Flavell, who talked about the very good select committee inquiry, and I was a member of that committee on that inquiry. I point out to the Māori Party that no one came along and said they wanted national standardised testing. In fact, they came along and said exactly the opposite. That inquiry was a very good inquiry, but if we read the report on that inquiry we remember—as I am sure the member does, because he was on the select committee just as I was—that everyone who came along talked about the very good testing that is already going on in our schools. They talked about the fact that the asTTle test is giving schools a chance to measure students in a way that is relevant. Not every student comes into our education system on the same level. To set an arbitrary standard and say that this is what children have to achieve, whilst ignoring where those children were when they came into the school system, will do nothing. In fact, the child who came into the school system doing very well, who achieved at that national standard, might have gone backwards. That child might have actually been above the national standard when he or she came in, but went backwards and then met the standard, yet the Minister will say that is fantastic because the school is reaching the national standard. Another child who came in far, far below the national standard, and who then fell just short of it, might have done an incredible job with incredible teachers to get to that point, but they will be told that they have failed. That is what national standards do. Those schools that pick up students who are in the latter category will find it harder to get teachers.

The Minister also said there would be no league tables. Is she going to tell me that every local MP who gets more resources because that school does badly under national testing will not go out and trumpet that?

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : In some of my earlier contributions I mentioned my concern that private schools will not be included in this policy. Private schools will not be subject to the national standardised testing regime introduced by the National Government, even though they get a considerable amount of public funding. Indeed, it is National policy to increase the public funding of private schools, from around $40 million a year to $70 million a year. That is nearly a 100 percent increase in funding from public money going directly to private schools, but without the imposition on those schools of the same obligations that State schools will need to have in order to meet the national standardised testing. That then raises the issue about how the schools that might not meet the standardised testing regime of the Minister will be funded and resourced in order to meet that standard or to support their children to meet those standards.

It recalls to mind the No Child Left Behind policy of the US legislation, which I talked about in my second reading speech. The experience in the US is that the standardised testing regime had a major impact on the schools that failed to meet that test, even if they were improving. None the less, if they continued to fail to meet those tests, then one of the obligations was that the school potentially had to hand itself over to be run by a private company rather than by the community. Indeed, there has been a great deal of interest in the No Child Left Behind policy in the US. Privatisation advocates in the US have said that in their view, the schools that fail to meet the standards would be the first to be privatised. They would be the first to be either handed over because of the law to private interests, or just bought out by private interests and run by private companies as private schools.

What will it mean for New Zealand if, in the future, schools consistently fail to meet the standard? They might be progressing and making advances but they might none the less not be meeting the standards. What will this mean for schools in poorer communities such as Aranui, Highbury, Ōtara, and Porirua at the same time that decile 10 schools and private schools will get almost a doubling in their public funding? For example, if we look at Kings High—and I understand that John Key is a parent of a child at that high school—it will get an increase per annum—

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: King’s College, not Kings High. Kings High is Dunedin; very good.

METIRIA TUREI: King’s College—that is quite right. King’s College is to get an increase in public funding of $1.2 million per year from the National Government. I am sure that will be very helpful to John Key’s children, but at the same time that school may not necessarily be subject to the new national standards. We might get some clarification on that. However, schools in Ōtara, Aranui, or Highbury may well desperately need those resources to try to meet these standards and provide support to their children—particularly decile 1 and 2 schools.

Where will that money come from? I have said in earlier debates in this House that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have said that there will be no new money for Ministers to spend in their portfolios, and that if they are to have any new initiatives, then they will have to find the money from within the portfolio for themselves. So where will this new money come from to fund private schools? It will come from the poorer schools in our community. The money will be used to do the standardised testing and to force our State schools into league tables, which will identify some of them as failures and make them more subject to criticism and disregard, even though those schools actually need a great deal more financial support. The money will be sucked out of the decile 1 schools and funnelled into the expensive, private decile 10 schools that do not need those resources.

This is another means by which the National Government will suck money out of poor communities and funnel it into rich ones. All the legislation passed under urgency so far has been exactly about that.

What will be the next steps? National’s policy talks about allowing popular schools to expand in the future. It talks about having capital funding for those schools that are growing their role, which will again extract money from out of the schools that need support and into the schools at the high decile end that have community support. It will be helping them to grow at the expense of the other schools.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) : Last night I spoke about what is currently available in schools—notably, the curriculum levels and the achievement objectives for each level. Part of my point was that we already have standards in schools.

If we look at an intermediate school year such as year 8, it is reasonable to expect that a child in that year will be learning and functioning at level 4 of the curriculum. In fact, in each curriculum level there are three sub-levels. It is relatively easy for a child who comes into a school and is operating at, say, sub-level 11 to progress through one sub-level in the course of a year and reach the benchmark. A relatively mediocre teacher can achieve that. It is a lot more difficult for a teacher who receives a child who is working at sub-level 5 to progress that child through five or six sub-levels to reach the benchmark. A teacher who gets a child at sub-level 5 and progresses him or her through four sub-levels is actually doing a fantastic job—a better job than the mediocre teacher who gets a child to move just one sub-level and reach the benchmark. That excellent teacher could be penalised and called a substandard teacher, although he or she has actually done a better job in raising a child from a lower level.

If that teacher and the school do a fantastic job in raising achievement to a greater level but still fail to meet the benchmark, the school could be deemed to be a failing school in the league tables. The effect of a school being deemed to be failing is that parents tend to vote with their feet, the school suffers a falling roll, and that affects resourcing. Good teachers who see the writing on the wall then get out of that school because they can, while they can, and lower-quality teachers tend to remain. There is a downward spiral effect on the quality of achievement. In effect, the school starts to suffocate through the good teachers leaving and through the resourcing leaving with the kids whose parents vote with their feet, and there is a detrimental effect on education overall. There are alternatives. It is reasonable to expect—and this is something our school worked with last year—a child to progress two sub-levels in the course of a year. I suggest that instead of setting a benchmark or a standard, we look at alternatives such as minimum progress over the course of the year.

However, because the bill is not going to go through the select committee process, we are unable to explore all the various options. Members have spoken about getting the truants to come in; well, how about getting the parents of truants to come in? We could get all manner of people within the sector to come and talk about truancy, and we could hear the various options that are available. It is arrogant of us to believe that we sitting here have all the answers and know what the various options are.

So that is the effect of comparing schools’ results—the league tables that will inevitably happen if we have national testing. My biggest concern about this whole process and the lack of transparency is that we are neglecting to bring people in to give them an opportunity through the select committee process to have their say and put forward alternative systems and ideas.

The bill is not going to raise achievement whatsoever—which, of course, is the goal of the bill. I keep going back to the point I made last night that we will not raise achievement until every child in every class in every school has an excellent teacher in front of him or her. I believe that it is the role of the Government to provide the conditions where excellent teachers can weave their magic. Generally, a child will truant because he or she is disengaged, unmotivated, and disenfranchised from the classroom. It is imperative that we give the teachers the skills, the training, and the opportunity so that they can weave their magic for the kids.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) : I would like to have just a quick word because I get the impression from Opposition members that they are rather confused. They have been saying that we do not need this bill because we already have it, there is nothing new there, and we are already doing it. I again acknowledge the very thoughtful contribution from Mr Davis. His is a welcome voice in this debate. However, unfortunately not all principals are as thoughtful and competent as Mr Davis has shown in this Chamber that he is.

We have to wonder why the previous Minister went out to the media yesterday and said “We cannot support this legislation because of its content.” If the content is something we are already doing, how can he vote against it? The Opposition needs to think through the processes. I say again to Mr Davis that he has done a fantastic job at his school, and we want every single school to have that same opportunity. In 2007 the Education Review Office told us that unfortunately 56 percent of our schools are not doing that. We are setting these standards because we want every child to have that opportunity. It is very interesting that the previous Minister of Education, Chris Carter, said that if Labour gets back into Government he would repeal this law and would not have educational standards for children. That is what a Labour Government would do in the future.

I remind Opposition members that while they are trying to make up their minds whether something we are already doing is a bad idea, a former Minister of Education Trevor Mallard himself said that “A national system of benchmark testing was needed so principals and teachers could significantly raise standards in schools and help New Zealand to regain its status as a world leader in education. Mr Mallard said standards testing was necessary to improve the delivery of education.” Mr Mallard said that. He said that if he were Minister of Education, “trial testing would have started this year.” Well, why do not those members make up their minds? I cannot believe that on the one hand they are saying that we are already doing it, but on the other hand they are voting against it.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) : If there is any confusion in this Chamber today, it comes from the Minister. Nobody on this side of the Chamber has said we do not want there to be standards in education. The Minister seems to be unaware of the situation, so I will help her by drawing her attention to the National Administration Guidelines, which already say “Each Board, through the principal and staff, is required to”, among other things, give “priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy, especially in years 1-4;”, and “through a range of assessment practises, gather information that is sufficiently comprehensive to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated;”. That is already in the guidelines. They say that student achievement in literacy and numeracy, especially in years 1-4, is a priority.

We have to ask ourselves again why we are debating the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. I think the regulatory impact statement on the bill gives us some guide to that. We read in it that “The Minister of Education can set national standards through the existing provisions of the … Act … either by way of the national education guidelines or by regulations. Regulating for this power could achieve the same policy objective as legislating”. So why would we not do that by regulatory power? Why would we not have a situation where the standards could come under some scrutiny? Today and throughout this week we have seen that National members do not want their policy to come under scrutiny. They do not want to hear from parents, they do not want to hear from educators, and they do not want this policy to come under a proper gaze.

We are left with the Minister being able to gazette the standards. There is no chance for anyone to look at them; that is the Minister’s prerogative, and into the Gazette they go. Members on this side of the Chamber believe that if we are to have standards in education, then we should actually trust parents through boards of trustees, and with their schools and their teachers using the guidelines, to put the standards in place. Those members are saying they do not trust parents. That is the message we are hearing from the National members today. They are shutting parents out of this debate. Part 2 of this bill should be debated by parents and educators in a select committee process. That is important. Does National not believe that getting the views of parents on an important issue like standards in education is something we should do? It is a shame on this Committee that the National Government is ramming this bill through.

There has been a lot of talk in recent months and years from National about the compliance costs for businesses. We often hear those members talk about cutting red tape; they say that has to be the aim. If we refer to the regulatory impact statement on this bill, we see there are some interesting statements about compliance costs. I will quote from it. It states: “The Ministry of Education is unable to calculate the compliance costs of setting national standards at this time, as this is dependant on its implementation.” So we do not even know what the costs for schools will be. We do not even know what the impact will be on hard-working teachers and stressed principals of putting this unnecessary extra load in place. We hear that compliance will come about by having further reporting and more assessment programmes, which will put more pressure on teachers, who are already stressed out and already finding it difficult to do all that work.

This measure does not cut red tape; it increases the burden of compliance for no gain, because we know from the administration guidelines that schools are already doing those things. We have heard from my colleague Kelvin Davis about the excellent work that is going on around the country in terms of standards. We are getting there, and there is no need to go down this path. Why would we want to go down a path led by George W Bush, with his No Child Left Behind policy? We know that policy has been a failure; we know about the inequities that have been caused by that policy. Why would we choose to follow USA down that path? More particularly, why would we choose to go down that path without bringing in the educators and the people who have researched it, to hear their point of view? But no, this Government, 1 week into office, believes it can simply ram this bill through under urgency, without any input from people in the sector.

We have an education system in New Zealand that we can be proud of. It is staffed by dedicated professionals and dedicated teachers who should be talked to, who should be listened to, and who should be brought in to analyse this bill. The learning that our children do is defined by the teachers in the classroom—and I totally support Kelvin Davis when he says that. This bill is no crusade for literacy and numeracy in education; this bill is pure politics. It is about National members being able to say they have done something on literacy and numeracy. Well, I say to the Minister that she has not done anything in this bill.

PAUL QUINN (National) : I move, That the question be now put.

Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana) : Mr Chair, kia ora, talofa lava, and warm Pacific greetings. During the election campaign in the Mana electorate an education forum was held at the Whitireia Community Polytechnic in Porirua. Representatives from the early childhood, primary, and secondary education sectors attended. Most political parties, including National, were represented at that forum, and heard the strong voice and the views of the education sector. The educators spoke with one voice. They said that there had been a lot of education reforms, but now they had got it right. They said that the education system is not broken, so we need not fix it—if it ain’t broke, do not fix it. Teacher after teacher and principal after principal stood up and emphasised that fact. As research has proven, we New Zealanders have a world-class education system. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), despite early problems, is now working and is very successful. The educators were all against National’s policies to introduce more tests and the one-size-fits-all approach, disguised as the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill crusading for numeracy and literacy. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”, they said.

The testing regime, as proposed by National, will lead to winners and losers. It will lead to elite schools and disadvantaged schools. It will lead to haves and have-nots. The current education system, introduced by the Labour-led Government over the last 9 years, has been reducing inequalities in education, building inclusion, and ensuring that all of our children—Māori, Pacific, Pākehā, Asian, and all the other cultures—have the educational opportunities to reach their potential. That was the vision of Peter Fraser and Clarence Beeby. Every person, whether rich or poor, or from town or country, has a right as a citizen to an education that will allow that person to fulfil his or her potential. Their vision was implemented by Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, and now, under the leadership of Phil Goff, Annette King, our Labour team will continue that vision. We will shed light on the Government’s real agenda, and we will hold it to account.

I have visited every early childhood centre and every school in my electorate, and have attended prize-givings. I have talked to and I have listened to principals, teachers, support staff, boards of trustees, parents, students, and members of our communities. There is a deep sense of pride as a result of Labour’s massive investment in education and in the outcomes. The proof is shown, with most of our schools performing extremely well, and New Zealand is already a world-class leader in literacy, participation, numeracy, retention, and achievement. This manifests itself in the way our children from schools in Porirua East, like Cannons Creek School, walk tall. They have worked hard, and they have all the support in terms of world-class teachers and support from schools, families, and communities to achieve. I also add that all the support from Labour, with 20 hours’ free early childhood education, numeracy and literacy support, home-school participation, the Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters, Computers in Homes, Gateway, apprenticeships, the Youth Enterprise scheme, and the emphasis on Māori and Pacific preschools, has led to wonderful results. And our parents are in work, they are in affordable housing, and they are getting Working for Families and cheaper health, which all leads to better education outcomes and pride in our children. That is what I want to emphasise.

With regard to Pasifika children, we are above the national average in terms of leading level 2 in NCEA examinations. We have increased numbers in tertiary education. Our graduation levels have gone up. Yes, there is room for improvement, but it is always there and we are committed to that. The education system ain’t broke—do not fix it. If it ain’t broke, do not fix it. Our New Zealand schools are already world leaders in literacy and numeracy achievement and they already have all the assessment tools needed to measure and benchmark our children. The targets have already been set, including in relation to Pasifika children. We have already a joint education programme with the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs with the targets. National’s testing regime will lead to winners and losers. It will lead to elite schools and disadvantaged schools, the haves and have-nots. The worst and most dangerous agenda that National has—and the Minister of Education should listen—

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : Tēnā koe, Mr Chair; kia ora anō tātou katoa. I will refer again to the Education and Science Committee’s report in February on the school system, for two reasons. The first one is it seems to me, on reading the report on that inquiry again, that all the information is there—that is the first point. The second point is that, importantly, most of the parties in the House at this point in time contributed to that report, so one would think there was a commonality of view about it.

If I could firstly just set the scene, the report states that the National Administration Guidelines aim “to put good assessment practice at the heart of the schooling system. Accurate, comprehensive assessment enables teachers to plan appropriate learning programmes to build upon students’ knowledge and skills and address their learning difficulties. It also enables schools to report on what students have achieved to parents and the wider community.” Here is the crunch: “Persuasive evidence was presented to the inquiry that inconsistent assessment practice hampers the development of appropriate learning programmes in many parts of the schooling system. The most significant inconsistencies in the effective use of assessment occur within schools, between classrooms or teaching teams. The failure to observe the National Administration Guideline means that students do not learn progressively and cannot steadily improve their achievement. This is particularly damaging to the underachievers, for whom the consequences of following an unsuitable learning programme can be lifelong.” If there is a rationale for this particular part of the bill, there it is.

The second point is that the report talks about assessment tools. This point was picked up by my colleague Moana Mackey. The report continues: “A wide variety of assessment tools are available. They can provide teachers with a wealth of information about what students know and can do, and can be of immense value in planning programmes that will enable students to improve their achievement. . . . Reports are generated to show what students know, what gaps they have in their learning, and what they need to learn next.” Well, I do not necessarily agree with Moana Mackey about the discussion in the select committee. What that discussion told me was that there are umpteen numbers of assessment tools, but the problem is that they assess different things and, therefore, deliver different outcomes. Again, if ever there was a rationale for moving in this direction, there it is, because the general view of the submitters to the select committee was that the vast number of tools produce different outcomes. I will read out some of them: Prose Reading Observation, Behaviour and Evaluation of Comprehension, the Junior Oral Screening Tool, the Numeracy Project Assessment, and the Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading. Those are some of the ones mentioned in the report. It told us simply that, yes, tools are available, but they produce different outcomes. This provision will perhaps streamline that process.

The third point that the select committee made was in respect of the use of data. Its report states: “We are satisfied that teachers have plenty of suitable assessment tools at their disposal. Our concern is that the schooling system as a whole is not using the huge potential of these tools to support the creation of programmes to improve the achievement of students. This is an issue for all students, but is particularly important for those in the underachieving tail.” The vast majority of those students are probably Māori and Pasifika. “The gaps and deficiencies in the learning of these students cannot be corrected until they have been precisely diagnosed.”

Those are important points, but perhaps we should reflect on a point made further on about an Education Review Office evaluation in March 2007 of how effectively schools collect and use assessment information. The report states: “only half of the 314 evaluated schools demonstrated effective assessment practices, and only 44 percent of schools used worthwhile assessment information which gave an accurate picture of the achievement of students across the school.” This is important information. I would be the first to acknowledge the risk of having too many assessment tools, because they place a huge demand on teachers, some of whom may feel that the assessment takes up time that would be better used in curriculum delivery. But in terms of some of the statistics we have on Māori students in particular at this point in time, I think the effort to give us more data would, in fact, shape those programmes, particularly in terms of what I read out at the start of my delivery.

The final point I want to make in terms of the report is that it also said we should not just go about the process and put out another assessment guideline; it said we should back it up with professional development. Again I quote from the report: “Access to good professional development is essential if assessment is to be used effectively throughout the schooling system.” I totally endorse that point, and I am looking forward to Dr Pita Sharples working with Minister Anne Tolley on this particular issue. In terms of that, the report makes one final point—if the Committee could indulge me by allowing me to provide this information. The report states: “We recommend that more resources be devoted to the provision of comprehensive professional development in assessment practice, so that by 2010 all schools have experienced appropriate training in the collection and use of assessment data. This would make a considerable difference to students’ achievement, particularly among the tail.”—the tail of underachievers.

From the Māori Party’s perspective, schools should be held to account for their part in the underachievement of Māori students. We see this particular part of the bill as an important ingredient in the data gathered being used for productive ends—for setting positive programmes for the future. It is an initiative that the Māori Party will be supporting.

TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The debate has been quite relevant so far, and I have been impressed with the contributions being made.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : The Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill is both unnecessary and alarming. It is unnecessary because, as is stated in the bill itself, the Minister of Education can set national standards through the existing provisions of the Education Act, either by way of the National Education Guidelines or by regulations. Regulating for this power could achieve the same policy as legislating, so why are we here and why is this bill alarming? We should be clear about this: the bill is alarming because it gives the Minister of Education the power to introduce national testing in our schools. The Government says it does not want to have national testing, so why are we passing a bill that allows for it? National could achieve the raising of national standards simply through using the existing regulatory powers that it has, but it does not want to do that; it wants to introduce national testing and performance pay for teachers. This is a slippery slope, and we are well on the way to it.

National claims that this bill is about raising standards, but we in the Labour Party know that there is a big difference between raising standards and standardising education. That is what this bill is about. It is about standardising education, and implementing a one-size-fits-all approach to the education system, rather than catering to the needs of individual students. This Government needs to wake up to reality and realise that different kids learn at different rates, and not all kids arrive at school at exactly the same point. Some have had early childhood education, and some have not. Some have a lot of support at home for their learning, and some have not so much. We need to recognise that fact in the primary school system. This bill will penalise good teachers who choose to teach in disadvantaged areas and teach disadvantaged students. It will reward the teachers who choose to teach in higher-decile schools, where the kids are already at a higher rate in their learning. The bill will stigmatise the students who live in lower socio-economic areas, and it will increase the gap between the rich schools and the poor schools.

My colleague Trevor Mallard spoke earlier on about a number of the things that Labour did when we were in Government to increase the number of resources for schools. He did a lot of work in looking at assessment tools in schools and promoting tools like the asTTle assessment tool—I tell Mrs Tolley that I am not referring to a cricketer. He focused on things that work, and he talked to the teachers, the principals, the parents, and the school boards of trustees. Why is this Government so afraid of hearing what those people have to say that one of the first things it does is ram this bill through Parliament without giving them any chance to have a say through a select committee process? In the Labour Party we focus on what works. We listen to the evidence, we listen to what teachers tell us, we listen to what the principals tell us, and then we act accordingly.

National is not at all interested in what the teachers have to say or what the professionals have to say. National knows best; it has had its polling company out there. Its polling company told it that raising national standards was the way to go, so that is what National will do. It will have a bill that is a page and a half long and is all about raising the national standards. That will save all of the problems that we have with literacy and numeracy! National is on a crusade—it is a page-and-a-half long crusade! It will not last for very long.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Less bureaucrats!

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right; National is on a crusade for fewer bureaucrats, as well, so let us load a few more compliance costs on to schools!

Hon Members: Fewer bureaucrats!

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right.

Moana Mackey: Less bureaucracy.

CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right.

The Labour Party, which I am proud to stand here and represent, is focused on what works. In the 9 years we were in Government we focused on giving schools the resources they needed to deliver on what works. We do not agree with Bill English, who said the low-decile schools were “awash with cash”. We do not agree with that; we base our policies on sound evidence, not bumper stickers that Crosby/Textor has told us are good ideas. We listen to what the teachers have to say. This is a typical National Party approach—it says whatever it needs to say in order to become the Government, and then it does whatever it wants to do when it gets there. And it will ram legislation through under urgency so that nobody gets to have a say on it.

This bill puts the boot into the people at the bottom of the heap, and that is what this week has been all about for the new National Government—putting the boot into the people who did not vote for them. This week has been about putting the boot into the families who have just had their taxes increased. These who are going to be impacted on by many of the measures in this bill, have just had their taxes increased by the incoming National Government. They have just had their work rights stripped away and their job security stripped away, and they can now be sacked within 90 days, just like many of the teachers who will be expected to deliver on this.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : I seek leave to table two documents at this stage. The first is a report entitled “Exacerbating inequality: the failed promise of the No Child Left Behind Act”.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

• Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

METIRIA TUREI: I seek leave to table a second research report, which is entitled “Testing and Social Stratification in American Education”.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I will take one more call.

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) : We are debating Part 2 of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. As the Minister of Education said, this provision is part of the National Government’s action plan. It is trying to identify underperforming schools and help them, but in discussion on the floor of this Chamber we have had identified the amount of funding that this Government will be providing to schools to assist them with the whole issue of standards. That amount is $18 million, which is just a tiny fraction of the current education budget. It will not provide any of the supposed turbocharge indicated by the Government. Some action plan it will provide!

We heard the Minister in the chair, the Hon Anne Tolley, say that 32,000 children are truant every day. I ask her what extra resource will be provided for a typical low-decile school, because it is the low-decile schools that will be most affected and will need extra resources to deal with the issues of truancy, numeracy, and literacy. I also ask her what resources will be provided for Māori schools and for children of Māori origin at schools, because our friends in the Māori Party have been asking for assistance in that respect. The explanatory note of the bill refers to the compliance costs. It advises that the Ministry of Education cannot calculate the compliance costs for schools, but it will supposedly take steps to minimise those costs. I suggest that this provision will simply mean another layer of red tape regulation that schools have to meet.

This bill is about a one-size-fits-all approach to schools. It will pit school against school. I have visited just about every one of the 35 schools in my electorate of Christchurch Central, and I can report that not one principal, not one teacher, not one parent, and not one board of trustees representative has ever raised with me the need for this kind of legislation. What many of those schools in Christchurch Central require—many of them being low to moderate decile schools—is more resources. That is what will address the issues still there in terms of literacy and numeracy. In fact, this bill is simply more right-wing dogma. It is a one-size-fits-all approach. It is picking up on the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, which is failed policy. The analysis has been that that policy has failed.

I want to also comment on suggestions that there was failure in education over the last 9 years, under the previous administration. That is offensive, I think, to all those children who did well under the last Government’s policies, who are still doing well, and who have made extraordinary achievements under those policies. It also, I think, provides offence to the many thousands of dedicated teachers who go beyond the call of duty every day to assist their pupils, and who do a darned good job, as many world league tables show.

As the Minister indicated, this bill is also about getting higher achievement. We all acknowledge that schools can do better, but I suggest to the Minister that what she needs to do is already in place. I took the previous Minister, the Hon Chris Carter, to see a decile 3 school in my electorate, Linwood High School. That school acknowledged that it had problems with literacy and numeracy, so a dedicated teacher at that school set up the LANE project—the Literacy and Numeracy Empowerment project. It has become an inspirational project for that school, and I suggest that it provides a model for the Minister of Education to look at, if she truly wants to address numeracy and literacy issues. The school has assessed every year 9 pupil coming into it, right across the board. It assesses the children’s family background, health, educational status, and the sorts of situations they come from. Many of the children come from one-parent homes. Many have very poor teeth, because they cannot get proper dental care. Some students were arriving at school having had no breakfast. The most extraordinary thing of all to be determined by the Literacy and Numeracy Empowerment project, which covers every year 9 pupil at Linwood High School, was that one in five of those children could not read.

MELISSA LEE (National) : I move, That the question be now put.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hon Darren Hughes: Small but perfectly formed!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allan Peachey: Shouldn’t they?

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

Allan Peachey: Why shouldn’t parents know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata) : I move, That the question be now put.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sandra Goudie: Too simple for her to understand.

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

Hon Chris Carter: Did he?

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

PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) : I move that this question now be put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Clayton Cosgrove.

H V ROSS ROBERTSON (Labour—Manukau East): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I was just going to remind you that National moved the wrong motion.

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

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : I am indebted to Mr Robertson, as always. Mr Robertson is always on point.

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

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

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

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Yes; I am sure he has the angles right on it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: No, that would be impossible.

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

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

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

Hon Darren Hughes: We look forward to question time.

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

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

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed.

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

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed—do not replace her.

NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) : I move, That the question be now put.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) : I move, That the Committee divide the bill into the Education (School Enrolment and Attendance) Amendment Bill and the Education (Literacy and Numeracy Standards) Amendment Bill, pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 3.

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

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

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice) : I move, That the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. We are all haunted by the names of children who have died at the hands of those who were supposed to treasure and nurture them. We cannot stand by and simply brush it off as something that happens to somebody else’s kids. They are all our responsibility. This Parliament must send a message that such acts are obscene. In August 2007 I made a commitment that if elected to Government, I would revise the Sentencing Act as it relates to violent crimes against children and ensure that the age of the victim should be more than just an aggravating factor at sentencing. I can advise the House that officials are already working to bring sentences for crimes against children into line with penalties for crimes against adults. This process will result in legislation being put forward when the House returns next year.

The Sentencing Act already lists aggravating and mitigating factors that can be taken into account when sentencing. Some of these factors will apply to offending that involves violence or neglect of a child. For instance, one aggravating factor covered in section 9 of the Act concerns offending against a victim who is particularly vulnerable by reason of age or health. That could cover offending against a child, but it also covers a range of other victims and scenarios—quite rightly—including the elderly and those who suffer from a form of impairment. That is how it should be, and the bill currently before the House does not change any of the existing provisions.

This bill provides a new section 9A that deals specifically with offending against children that involves violence or neglect. It actually lists factors that the court must take into account when sentencing for this type of offending, in addition to those factors already set out in section 9. All the new factors are designed to make the sentence more severe than would otherwise be the case, because they all reflect the fact that offending against children should involve a high degree of blameworthiness, and sentencing needs to reflect that.

The first of the new factors that the new section obliges the court to take into account is the defencelessness of children. Unlike adults, children cannot physically protect themselves against an adult assailant or permanently escape the offender. It is the cowardly bullying of a captive and weaker victim that justifies a harsher response from the State. The second factor requires the court to consider the serious or long-term harm that can result from offending against children. A childhood marked by violence or neglect can have profound effects on the individual and society, and that individual can even repeat the cycle of offending as a parent, thereby perpetuating the misery that this type of offending breeds.

A crucial aspect of being a child that can be taken for granted is the special relationship of trust that children are entitled to enjoy with adults who are responsible for their care. Children do not choose their parents or caregivers, and for the first years of their lives are utterly reliant on their care. This bill puts that trust to the forefront by requiring the court to take the magnitude of the breach of trust into account when sentencing.

Finally, the new provision requires the court to take into account any threats made to the victim that are designed to prevent him or her from reporting to the authorities, or any attempts made to conceal the offending from the authorities. There are instances where social workers may have experienced the sudden disappearance of children from a house when they came to it, or the sight of children clothed from head to toe on hot days so that bruising will not show. The sort of behaviour that results in these situations must be denounced, and this bill will take a step towards ensuring that.

This bill represents the first step in the Government’s response to offending against children that involves violence or neglect. As I stated at the beginning of this speech, we will go further next year by introducing a bill that tackles the issue of setting maximum penalties for offending against children. In the meantime this Government thinks it is important to get this legislation into force before the Christmas break, when so many children are especially vulnerable to abuse, stressful households, and neglect.

I do not pretend nor advocate that these measures are anything more than just a part of the solution. The Government will continue to work with social policy agencies to prevent child abuse and mitigate the harm it causes, and we will continue to look for new responses. There also needs to be a response from the criminal justice system in terms of denouncing such abhorrent behaviour.

I understand that all parties in the House are supportive of this legislation, and I want to thank, in advance—unless I am proven wrong—all members for their support. When a New Zealand child aged between 1 and 6 years is 8.4 times more likely to die from an assault than a child in Sweden, and a child under 7 is almost 4 times more likely to be hospitalised for assault, I am reminded of the words spoken in a different context that strongly emphasise the fierce urgency of now. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : May I say from the outset that I share with the Minister of Justice, Simon Power, as I believe all members of this House do, the utter revulsion that we all feel as we see—too frequently—these cases of child neglect, violence against children, and, ultimately, tragedies where children are murdered. No one could stand by and feel any emotion other than total revulsion.

We on the Opposition side of the House will not oppose the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill, but I have to say it is a sad point that this bill will not stop one child being murdered. I do not say that in any grandiose or political way. This is a prescription that deals with action after the event. I am glad the Minister qualified in his speech—and I accept him at his word—that this bill is only part of the solution, but it is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It is not proactive, it is reactive. It is action after the event. It is not a bill filled with a vision or a plan. I note that he said, and I am gratified by it, that he would still be willing to work with non-governmental organisations and others who are at the coalface, who go into houses everyday—with tears, I suspect, in their eyes—and identify what is going on. Given that statement by the Minister, I would have thought it would be preferable to meet those words with actions and refer this bill to a select committee so that organisations like the Salvation Army, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Plunket, Barnardos New Zealand, and the whole host of other wonderful organisations could have input and provide their expert knowledge and experience. When we look at who was consulted about this bill, we find it was Government agencies only.

This is an exceptionally serious issue. It strikes at the heart of the most vulnerable in our community. I have to say, and again I do not say it with relish, that the problem with this bill is that the provisions that allegedly are ramped up here already exist in the existing legislation. In fact, in the Minister’s opening he said that the bill does not change any of the specific provisions in existing legislation. In a qualified way, I say that this is smoke and mirrors. I quote the words not of a politician, or of somebody who is partisan in this House, but of a learned expert, Otago University professor Geoff Hall, who, as members will know, specialises in sentencing in criminal law. He said that section 9(1) of the Sentencing Act already dictated that judges must take into account the age or vulnerability of the victim, which covers children in no uncertain terms, as an aggravating feature. He said “It’s already there. It sounds to me like it’s window dressing,”—referring, sadly, to this legislation—“what is being proposed, unless [the Minister is] suggesting that priority be given to one factor over another.” That is what Professor Hall said. I hope it is not the case, but I wonder whether certain parties in this House are not being a tad cynical with such a huge issue that strikes at the heart of our community by attempting to put forward legislation—a wee bit like the Bail Amendment Bill, although that issue is secondary to the gravity of this issue—to try to play a bit of a hoax on people.

This bill, as I said earlier, is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It does nothing. I would have thought the way to start would be to deal with issues of resourcing in respect of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. What worries me is that I saw in the New ZealandHerald—I think it was on 10 December—the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Paula Bennett, quoted as saying she would hold to account the Ministry of Social Development as National moves to cut 500 front-line staff from agencies within it like the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services. Of course, we know that in the 1990s the National Party did exactly that. It slashed and burned.

Hon Judith Collins: You cut 450 front-line staff out of the ministry last year.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: This is not an issue for silly interjections. We have had a bit of frivolity and humour in debate on other bills, but this is actually a really serious issue. But I will let Mrs Collins go because she shows herself for what she is. We know that in the 1990s there was a slashing of child, youth and family services. Those services work with non-governmental organisations to identify, as they are happening, issues like violence and neglect in the home before they translate, sadly, into death and murder. There is nothing in this bill to deal with resourcing or any proactive action that can identify those issues of potential child violence and neglect and can cauterize, ring-fence, and deal with them before they develop into a death and another little white coffin being taken by a family to a cemetery. I do not say this as a means of politicking, but I feel it is appropriate to point that out.

I said to Mr Power in the debate on the Bail Amendment Bill, and I will say it now in a different way, that if he wanted to have an impact immediately, and to create a deterrent to make people—families and children—in these situations feel safer in and out of their homes, he could have triggered the parole legislation. He could have done that without the participation of this House, because Mrs King passed that legislation. He could simply activate it through the Governor-General. I believe that would have a huge impact. Again, it is after the event, but it would have a huge and sustainable impact around these issues. When Labour was in Government we backed organisations like the Salvation Army and Barnardos New Zealand. We worked with and partnered those expert organisations. We set up, for instance, the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families. We set up and actioned the It’s Not OK programme. I have to say, sadly, that programme was criticised during the election campaign by a number of members opposite as being PC and nanny State. When a programme has a smidgeon of potential to save a child’s life, to prevent family violence, or to correct behaviours within the home that could lead to tragedy, I think it is worth giving it a go. It may work; it may not. During the election campaign some described the programme as nanny State and PC. Then there are organisations like the Methodist Central Mission, the South Auckland Family Violence Prevention Network, and parenting and family counselling organisations working all around New Zealand. These are agencies that deserve a backing.

This bill does not acknowledge the 16,000-odd cases of reported child neglect and violence that happen in the home every year. This legislation does nothing to be proactive—to move into that space with non-governmental organisations and Government agencies to try to cauterize those problems before they develop into potential tragedies. Maybe this Government can reassure us on this side of the House. Perhaps Ms Bennett could take a call to advise us whether, in the drive to cap and slash so-called bureaucrats, 500 staff from the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services and the Ministry of Social Development will be taken out of play—because they are needed. Who are these 500 people in the ministry who will be cauterized, sacked, or withdrawn? As I say, Ms Bennett is holding her own ministry to account.

I come back to where I started. Sadly, this bill will change nothing and will not save one child’s life. The provisions in the bill mirror the provisions of existing legislation, and Professor Hall, an eminent expert, believes—to quote his words, not mine—that it is window dressing. It is also predicated on a premise that judges are not smart and do not take these aggravating factors into account. If that is the case, I ask the Minister of Justice whether he can provide us with some evidence of court cases where, in his or the ministry’s view, these issues were not dealt with appropriately by a learned judge. I wonder whether he could provide us with that evidence and with the research that his ministry has done in the short period it has come up with these measures. As I have said, consultation has been exceptionally limited.

Hon Dr RICHARD WORTH (Associate Minister of Justice) : National is wholly committed to effective law and order policies, and has clearly signalled that there will be major changes to the law and legislation that exists today.

The situation during the Labour Government’s period in office saw a number of things that are saddening: a significant rise in crimes of violence, the growing power of gangs and their involvement in criminal trafficking, and the need to protect vulnerable members of the community.

I accept, of course, that the enactment of this legislation does not of itself resolve lawbreaking, but it does send a very clear message to the community as to activity that we abhor and are determined to confront, it does send a clear signal to intending offenders, and, of course, it sends a very clear signal to the judges to seek, in the exercise of their discretion in imposing sentences, a particular weighting on the issue that is the subject of the bill.

The Sentencing Act 2002 is structured in a way that might very well contemplate this law change. Section 8 deals with the principles of sentencing. Section 9 contains a number of aggravating factors, then concludes by saying that nothing in these provisions “prevents the court from taking into account any other aggravating or mitigating factor that the court thinks fit;”.

Hon David Parker: Including age.

Hon Dr RICHARD WORTH: As Mr Parker has just commented, there is not sufficiently direct reference to the position of children in section 9(1)(g), which provides as an aggravating and mitigating factor “that the victim was particularly vulnerable because of his or her age or health or because of any other factor known to the offender:”. The section is aligned with the definition in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 of a child as a boy or girl under the age of 14 years.

There is a sad commentary in the explanatory note, which accompanies the bill. Under the heading “Status quo and problem” it reads: “Offending against children has extremely serious consequences, including the long-term consequences for both its victims and society as a whole. In 2006, Child, Youth and Family received over 63,000 referrals as a result of child abuse, violence, and trauma. Reported family violence, a substantial proportion of which involves violence against children, is growing faster than the reported violence category as a whole.”

Mr Cosgrove said in his comments in the House that this bill is simply a smoke and mirrors change to the law, but that is not so, and I am sure that, intuitively, members of the House know that it is not so. Why would Labour vote for this change, if it were only a smoke and mirrors change? The reality is that it sends a sharp and determined signal to those entities that I have already identified. This is a law change that, on any measure, is appropriate, timely, and necessary.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) : First, I will comment on a couple of remarks made by Dr Worth from the other side of the House by saying that there is not a member in this House who is not absolutely appalled at the tragedy, which we witness year after year in this country, of child death by abuse and neglect. It is not a party political thing. Over the last two decades about nine wee children a year, on average, have died at the hands of their caregivers or their parents. The level of substantiated abuse in our community, according to Child, Youth and Family, is around 16,000 children. That is something that all of us as New Zealanders are deeply ashamed of.

Every person, I imagine, in this Chamber is here because of the benefit they have had of growing up in a secure, stable, and loving family. That ought to be a child’s birthright, yet it is not for a significant minority of our children. If the answer to child abuse and neglect was a simple one, then it would have been implemented by Governments decades ago; we know that it is not simple.

We will support this Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill because, as my colleague David Parker has suggested, it does no harm. But, I have to say to the Minister, nor does it make any real difference. That is not a political statement, I say to Mr Power.

There is a text that Mr Power and Dr Worth, as lawyers, will know about. It is Hall’sSentencing, which is the foremost text on sentencing in New Zealand, written by the foremost expert on sentencing. That expert is Professor Geoffrey Hall from the University of Otago. I will read out what Professor Hall says about this legislation. He stated that section 9(1)(g) of the Sentencing Act 2002 already dictates that judges must take into account the age or vulnerability of the victim, which covers children in no uncertain terms, as an aggravating feature. He stated: “It’s already there. It sounds to me like it’s window dressing, what’s being proposed,”. That statement was not made by a politician or by a person with an axe to grind; it was made by a person who is the expert on sentencing in New Zealand.

This law does not, in essence, change the existing requirements that I put into the Sentencing Act 2002. I happen to have—

Hon Dr Wayne Mapp: It strengthens them.

Hon PHIL GOFF: No, no, it does not. I am afraid it does not even strengthen them. I have a great deal of respect for the Minister of Justice, Simon Power. I believe that his intentions with the bill are honourable. I believe that he is concerned about the well-being of children, and I would not accuse any member in this Chamber of being motivated by anything other than what is good for protecting those of our children who are most desperately in need.

There is nobody in this Chamber for whom the name Nia Glassie or a reference to the Kāhui twins does not bring a sense of outrage that these vulnerable children could have been treated in that way. It is not a new list; tragically, it is not a new list. We can think of James Whakaruru, we can think of “Lillybing”, we can think of Delcelia Witikā—all cases that New Zealanders are familiar with and have been appalled by.

But notwithstanding that this measure is the same as what is in the existing legislation, it demonstrates that legislation is what happens after the event to punish the perpetrator of the abuse. I happen to be one who believes that somebody who abuses, neglects, and, most particularly, kills children deserves the strongest sanction that we can place on them. But even if we did have capital punishment, I would not pretend for a moment in this House that any one of those wee kiddies whose names I have mentioned would have been saved by that sort of legislation. My challenge to any speaker in this debate is to say whether they believe otherwise.

We know what we have to do to stop this sort of thing. We know what the common factor in the deaths of each of those children was: they were from dysfunctional families—families where children were born to teenaged mums, and where drugs and alcohol addled the minds of the people who were there. If we consider the faces of the people who killed Nia Glassie, we can reach our own conclusions about the nature of that household, that family, and how things operated.

Therefore, it stands to reason, I say to the Minister, that if we are to make a real difference, and if we are to protect our children—the most vulnerable citizens of this country—then we have to address the cause of those children’s deaths. That is where this House can make a difference, and that is where the challenge is: for all of us to work in a multiparty way to try to find those solutions. But please, I say to the Minister, do not come into the House with legislation with the message that “sending a message”—as both Mr Power and Dr Worth have said—will change that reality. We do not “send a message”; we have to act to do that.

Although I am the architect of some of the toughest justice legislation on our law books with regard to offenders, I say that legislation, by itself, is not enough. It is about prevention, it is about early intervention, and it is about putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to preserving children’s lives.

This is a problem that successive Governments have addressed, and I am very proud to have been part of the Government that brought in programmes like Family Start and Early Start, which said that we can identify those families that are dysfunctional—[Interruption] Members can interject, but I am making serious points. I am not being partisan about that, and I believe those members should get off their high horse, listen, and contribute in the same constructive way. We have to deal with those problems by early intervention, by identifying those children who are being born into and are growing up in a family where they lose their birthright of living in a safe, caring, and loving environment.

We will be judging the Government on whether we are resourcing those things, and we will be working constructively and positively with the Government to make sure we are resourcing them. My challenge is not simply to Mr Power or Mrs Collins; it is actually to Paula Bennett, who is the Minister for Social Development and Employment. It is the dollars that we put into intervening with those dysfunctional families that will make a difference in the lives of those children and that will stop the tragedy of 16,000 children in our country being subjected to abuse each year.

I know that this bill is about the Government’s 100 days of action, and about creating the impression of action. We saw that with the bail law, we are seeing it with this sentencing bill, and we saw it with the education bill that has just gone through. These are about perceptions, but perceptions are fine if one is dealing only with politics. My plea to the Government is that it should deal with the reality of what is causing those problems. I ask Government members not to play politics with it or to come in here with things that are simply window dressing. Labour is putting an offer to the Government to work together to deal with the tragedy of child abuse, neglect, and killings in this country. That is a genuine offer.

I know that the Minister is bringing this bill into the House with the best intentions in the world, but the Minister knows, Professor Hall knows, and every member of the House knows that it will not make a difference. It will not make a difference because it is already in the law, and it will not make a difference because we need the fence at the top of the cliff, not just the punishment afterwards when the damage has already been done and the appalling consequences are already in place.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) : The Green Party will be supporting this bill, and I am very proud to represent a party, the Green Party, that has led the debate, and indeed legal change, for the protection of children from violence. It has done the hard yards on these kinds of issues and has consistently promoted the elimination of violence against children, women, and families. I pay tribute to my colleague Sue Bradford, who would otherwise be here to address the issues in this bill, and who herself was the architect of the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act and led the agreement of, largely, the whole of this House to support that legislation.

The Green Party supports this bill because we support the recognition of the potentially vulnerable status of children around issues of violence, particularly those children under 14. We all know, and we have talked about this so far, that violence against children in New Zealand is rife. Children are still considered largely to be the property or the chattels of adults and parents. That is an attitude that still pervades this country. We saw that attitude alive and well in the debate around the repeal of section 59.

We agree with Labour members that section 9 of the Sentencing Act deals with this issue in a general sense, so to some extent this legislation enhances, if you like, existing provisions. The extent to which it will make a specific difference is still a bit uncertain, and because there will not be the opportunity for a select committee debate on this, we will not get any information from those at the coalface of dealing with this kind of legislation, whether it is the Law Commission, lawyers, those involved with family violence in the courts, or judges who might want to have a say on this. They will not be able to give us the information we need to know the extent to which this bill would make a difference to sentencing outcomes in those cases of extreme violence and neglect against children.

So it is very difficult at this stage, I think, to really understand the extent to which this bill will make a difference. We will support it in principle; we do not think that it will do any harm. But that is not a good way to make legislation—legislation should be much more considered than that. It should have a demonstrable impact; otherwise it is just a waste of taxpayers’ time and money. So we thought that a select committee process for something as important as this, something as significant to New Zealand’s families as this, an issue of violence and neglect like this, should have been taken out to the public so that they too could have had a say about it.

I want to refer to a Supplementary Order Paper in my name that will be tabled shortly, and available to members. I have spoken to some members about it. It is to remove paragraph (a) from new section 9A(2), inserted by clause 4. This would remove the defencelessness of the victim as a factor. On the face of it, it looks perfectly fine to include that in the legislation but, after further consideration, I am assuming that it is really about the vulnerability of the victim, the child under 14 years. To that extent there is a lot of case law and law on the vulnerability of victims. But my concern, and the concern of my party, is that on sentencing it may lead to arguments in court that such children may not have been without opportunity to defend themselves or that they had a capacity to defend themselves, whether or not they took it.

We have had, for example, issues around provocation. In fact, during the debate on section 59, before the section was amended, many of the decisions in the court cases that allowed parents to beat their children with weapons were based on the fact that the child under the age of 14 had provoked that attack or response. It was a reasonable defence that beating a child with a weapon, whether a piece of wood, a piece of wire, or a hosepipe, was justifiable in the circumstances because the child had behaved so badly that such a beating was reasonable. Of course, we have amended that legislation now, so that defence is not possible any more, which is a very good thing. But we do not want to see, with this provision, that somehow those arguments are being made again in the courts—that children might perhaps have provoked such a response, or, what is more likely, were able to defend themselves in some way but did not take that opportunity and, therefore, that is a mitigating factor to be taken into account in sentencing.

It may include issues such as the build of a child—some 14-year-olds are quite big; they are big kids, sometimes—for a child’s relative age when between the age of 0 and 14, but there is also, perhaps, a child’s ability to tell someone. There might be some argument that a child is verbal; a verbal child, beyond the age of 2 and a bit, could have told somebody if that child had had an opportunity. Perhaps someone might have asked a child about the abuse or neglect, but the child did not tell that person. Does that become an issue about the defencelessness of the child?

These concerns are probably on the margins of the kinds of cases we are talking about; none the less we do not want to see this law allow for any kind of apportionment of blame to the child. In our view, there should be no debate as to whether the child could have avoided that abuse or neglect by his or her own behaviour. This is the kind of argument that often happens in rape cases and sexual assault cases, so it is not unknown for these debates to happen in the courts. In our view, a child under 14 years old is by definition without defence—by definition. In our view, there is nothing that children under the age of 14 could do ever to justify neglect and abuse—not a single thing could they ever do to justify abuse, or to provide some kind of mitigating factor. So having criteria such as “the defencelessness of the victim” in the legislation may be interpreted as some kind of way of apportioning blame to the child in the courts.

The role of Parliament is to make the best possible legislation we can for the protection of the vulnerable as we can, but given the short circumstances we have in which to debate and analyse this legislation, this might be a reasonable mistake to have been made. It may well not have been intended to have that consequence, but, with the risk that it might, we say that wording should not be in this bill. I look forward to the further debate on that issue. There may be some assurance we can get that that is not what it will actually do. I am not prepared to accept an assurance that it is not intended for that to happen; that is not enough. It will not be enough for the child who has to suffer the consequences of counsel, at a sentencing, arguing as to whether that child itself could have done something about it, or stopped the abuse or neglect. That is not acceptable.

It would have been good as part of the process, and perhaps this issue would have been raised in those circumstances, to have heard from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, because I understand there was a great deal of consultation around this bill. It has been looked at by the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, the New Zealand Police, the Crown Law Office, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, the Office of Ethnic Affairs, and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. They have all been consulted in the drafting of this legislation, but the one parliamentary body whose responsibility it is to care for, and protect, the interests of children in legislation and policy making was not consulted on this legislation. The most important office—the one that has had the greatest impact on providing policy advice, information, and support for campaigns to protect children against violence—was excluded from the consideration of this bill. That was a very serious oversight—

Hon Judith Collins: Was she in the country?

METIRIA TUREI: Judith Collins is making smarmy remarks about the office, but this legislation is about the protection of our most vulnerable children, and particularly those in abusive households and environments. Judith Collins can be as smarmy as she likes, but we are talking about protecting our babies from violence. I say: “Be smarmy all you want, Miss, but this is about protecting our children.” If she wants to play politics with this issue, that is her business and the public will judge her for it.

We should have had the proper agencies looking at this legislation to make sure that it would actually be effective. There will be no opportunity for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner to look at this legislation now. It will be passed on a Saturday afternoon, under urgency. So that opportunity to really assess the impacts of this legislation on the lives of children by experts in that area has been lost. That is a very poor process for legislation of such significant input as this, dealing with the issue of protecting our children, our babies, from violence. Thank you.

DAVID GARRETT (ACT) : I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to add my support to the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill, and also to try, naive though it may be, to bring everyone back to a focus on what we are doing and why, and away from politicking. To that extent, I agree with every speaker so far. This is probably the first time since I have come into this House that I have agreed so wholeheartedly with the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, but I do agree with him when he said that this is not a bill for making frivolous interjection on. I could not agree with him more about that. I would also say it is not a bill for party politicking on, at all.

I have looked through the explanatory note of the bill carefully, and the first thing that strikes me is the “Objectives” section. Who can possibly disagree, or even quibble, with the wording of the objectives of this bill? I was gratified to hear the Opposition’s position on the bill—at first the wording was “will not oppose”, but then that changed with the Hon Phil Goff’s speech to “will support”. And now the Greens are making the same commitment as Labour. It is clearly a multiparty commitment to support a bill that the people in the gallery or those following proceedings on the radio or the television, I am sure, would call a no-brainer.

The only possible source of disagreement could be on how to achieve the objectives set out in the explanatory note, and we have heard a bit of quite sensible and moving, frankly, comment on that from the Hon Phil Goff. I will just touch, for a second, on his speech, and also on a speech he made yesterday on the Bail Amendment Bill, where he alluded to the fact that maybe we need to go into some very, very difficult questions. I think he may have been alluding to the ability, or the right, of people like the Kāhui parents and the Glassie parents to be parents at all. I think that is what he may have been referring to.

In my speech I was going to remind the House of a few of the most horrible cases, because I think they are worth remembering, but the Hon Phil Goff has already done that. One of the things that moved me the most, that got to me the most, in the Nia Glassie case—although I have found the stuff that everyone else has found revolting quite hard to read and quite hard to listen to, this ties in with something that is in this bill—was the testimony from the neighbour who said that she realised that the little girl was hungry and she thought she had been abused, so she went to give her food. She said the little girl shook with fear, covered her eyes with one hand, took the food with the other, and then ran away like a frightened dog. I hope the House will understand that that moved me as much as, or more, than the abuse involving the clothes line and the dryer and all the other terrible things.

This bill simply inserts “additional aggravating factors”. To touch on Metiria Turei’s comment, I think her amendment might have some validity, or some purpose, if it were not for the word “aggravating” in new section 9A(2) in clause 4. If it were just “the following factors” to be taken into account, then, yes, there could be some clever legal argument of the kind that Ms Turei has referred to. But in my view, and I am not an expert in the criminal law at all, the fact that they are listed as “aggravating factors” removes any possibility of such a convoluted argument.

In my opinion this measure should go through the House with whatever is the equivalent of “by acclamation”. There is no issue here of the separation of powers. The judiciary is not being ordered to do anything; judges are being told they must take these factors into account—that is all. The legislation leaves judicial discretion untouched. It does not fetter the judiciary in any way; it simply provides judges with some extra factors to be taken into account.

The House could filibuster through some of the debate on this bill, as we saw with regard to bills yesterday, and I will not go any further into that. Those kinds of speeches on the meaning of commencement dates, etc., I think would be an insult to the memory of James Whakaruru , whom the Hon Phil Goff mentioned, and to all the names I have written down here. And those are just the ones who were killed. There are 15,000 or so abused children who were not killed, minus the 10 who were. It would be an insult to them if we play politics with this bill, make frivolous interjections, and talk about nonsense meanings of the commencement date, etc.

This bill should pass as quickly as possible. It may not do much, but members on the other side of the Chamber have conceded it does no harm. In my view it does do something, and I am coming back now to the Nia Glassie example that I used. New section 9A(2)(b) states: “in relation to any harm resulting from the offence, any serious or long-term physical or psychological effect …”. I would like to think that in some case in the future—one like the Nia Glassie case—that did not, please God, result in death, if evidence was called of a little girl shaking like a frightened dog and covering her face, then that subsection could be taken into account in order to lock up a piece of vermin for as long as possible. I commend this bill to the House.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) : When I was a child, I knew the meaning of the words “he aroha whāereere, he pōtiki pirihi poho”—“a mother’s love, a child clinging to her breast”. When we refer to a mother’s love for her child, we mean our nannies, our koros, our aunties, our uncles. We mean whānau. Growing up in Whakatū, we knew that our whānau treasured us, their children, more than anything else in the world. We were their hearts growing outside of their bodies. They would all gladly suffer themselves, rather than see any child in any form of misfortune. This is the model that I have drawn on to raise our children, and our children are now replicating this same learning with our mokopuna. And that is how it goes, generation after generation reminding us that children have a right to our protection, they deserve to be heard, and they are entitled to be loved.

We know through the writings of early missionaries and their observations of Māori that this is how it has always been. The diary notes of the Rev. Samuel Marsden back in 1814 encapsulate these views: “I saw no quarrelling while I was there. They are kind to their women and children. I never observed either a mark of violence upon them, nor did I ever see a child struck.” I often return to my childhood memories for strength when day after day we are fed tales of horrific abuse, and through the eager eye of the camera we witness blow-by-blow accounts of sickening violence against children.

I have no desire to replicate the horror stories of violence and neglect against children. We must move away from the obsessive-compulsive fascination with retelling tales of torture—the endless roll-call of names, and the courtroom evidence that is trumpeted, broadcast, repeated, and replicated through viral networks. Every time a member brings the name of a child into this House that member brings with it the overwhelming shame of the extended family of all who identify with that same name. As a new member, I know that every time I rise I bring with me not only the name of my husband and children but the breadth and depth of the Hippolite and Gray whānau throughout Aotearoa and, indeed, the world. It is an awesome responsibility to live up to our family name in all my actions and utterances. So I ask whether it is right or fair that members recklessly punctuate speeches with the names of innocent children—names that will be for ever associated with criminal violence. We must be able to talk about the vile behaviours and actions that have led to child assault without forever vilifying the family names of the victims. We must start raising our sights above the sordid and the sensational, and agree to some common ideals; ideals like children having a right to feel safe, to feel good about themselves, to be appreciated, and to be encouraged. Ka tipu huna ana te tūkinotanga. Violence grows in silence.

This bill, then, sets a benchmark for our future, a future where there is no excuse for child abuse and no place for violence. What this law does is to create a new and specific section in the Sentencing Act that replaces the court’s existing discretion with additional instructions when judges are sentencing offenders convicted of violence against, or neglect of, a child under 14 years. We have to ask: why settle for 14 years of age?

We were also somewhat surprised that the Children’s Commissioner had not been approached about this bill, so we contacted Dr Cindy Kiro. We were advised that she was supportive of the idea about clarifying the law and providing specificity, direction, and prescription for judges when considering cases of child abuse. But she also introduced a question around the age-limit in this bill that we in the Māori Party believe is a very interesting idea. Dr Kiro poses the question to the House of what the appropriate legal age for children and young people should be. Within current law, section 10B of the Summary Offences Act 1981 makes it an offence for a parent to leave a child under the age of 14 without reasonable care and supervision. Fourteen is also the minimum age for a babysitter. At 15 one can earn a restricted driver’s licence. Young people can be sent to the youth wing of a jail at 16. At 16 one can leave school or leave home without parental consent, have sex, get a tattoo, start full-time work, and get married, but one still requires parental consent for medical or dental treatment. At 17 one can join the navy, the army, or the air force. At 18 one can buy firecrackers, get a firearms licence, join the police force, borrow money, open a cheque account, buy cigarettes, drink alcohol, and vote. Those are just a few of the diverse definitions of age-limits that complicate our current legislative framework.

The question that confronts us in respect of this bill is what threshold we are prepared to accept. When can we say that the age of the child makes him or her particularly vulnerable? The crux of the issue, of course, is that we are actually entitled to protection from violence at any age. This change addresses society’s abhorrence of a fundamental breach of trust. This issue extends outside the scope of this bill, but it is an issue that we may need to consider further in other debates. It appears that the younger the age, the greater the outrage. But I want us to consider that although the defencelessness of the child is, of course, a major issue, the serious long-term physical or psychological effect on the child as a result of the offence is severe no matter what the age.

There was never any question that we would do anything but vote in support of this bill. We believe that it is vital that we do everything we can to demonstrate society’s condemnation of all forms of violence, and this bill is another step to doing that. But it will not cause violence against children to stop overnight. That is a crisis we must all attend to. It is a crisis we must attend to in our own behaviours, our own families, and our own workplaces, and I include this workplace in that view. We must all be responsible for marking a line in the sand and ensuring we promote peaceful, non-violent communication. We must be consistent in our deeds and our words. All of us have the responsibility to demonstrate leadership in this regard. It is inappropriate for anyone in this House to point the finger at others and name and shame the perpetrators of violence if we do not also display our own commitment to model behaviour that is inspirational. All of us—and of course I include the Māori Party in my vision—must work hard at exhibiting conduct that displays respect for one another and that is truly mana-enhancing.

Offences against children are intolerable. They are not part of anyone’s vision for the future of Aotearoa. We know, too, that many complex issues underpin the breakdown of families: the devastating effects of poverty; the mind-altering dysfunction created by alcohol and drugs; the pervasive impact of mental health issues, including post-natal depression; and the narrow range of options that some families and individuals become trapped in. And we must acknowledge the enormous harm created by generations of violence, sexual abuse, physical damage, and emotional offences, which, if not attended to, will continue to restrict the opportunities for generations to come.

The Māori Party is proud to support this bill as the first indicator that the forty-ninth Parliament is prepared to stand up and make clear our concerted efforts to eliminate violence from our world. We are proud to support this bill, just as we were proud to support the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act, which was initiated by our colleagues in the Greens. And there is nothing, in my mind, more worthy of urgency than the goal of eliminating violence from our society. Kia ora.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections) : The honourable member who has just resumed her seat, Rahui Katene, has made a very good point, I believe, in relation to the constant naming of children in this area. Certainly, I quite often think about how hard it must be for the extended family of children who have been harmed, and for those people who are quite innocent of any wrongdoing themselves, to constantly have their family names used in the media and in this Parliament.

I will take just a couple of minutes to deal with some of the issues raised by the Labour-Green Opposition. There has been some talk today about the need for a select committee to look at this bill. I disagree. This bill is actually not about what causes an adult to hurt or kill a child; it is about the sentencing of people in relation to this area. It is not about what we can do to stop people doing this; it is about what we will do with them when they do. So, really, we do not need a select committee process in order to send a signal to the judiciary and to the public that we have heard the message of the public. We campaigned on this particular area during the last election, and the public has said that they want some action in terms of sentencing. That is the reason we are bringing this bill in, under urgency, before Christmas—to legislate for that as fast as possible. That is what the public of New Zealand has asked us to do.

When we look at some of the areas around how or why people offend in this way, we can look at some of the things that have been shown to make a positive difference. Family Start and the Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters were all started under a National Government in the 1990s. In addition, Social Workers in Schools is another initiative of the National Government of the 1990s, which the former Government—which is now in Opposition—took up as well and supported. But so often when children are killed, there are so many people who know about what is going on, including people in the health sector, the education sector, neighbours—as we have heard—family members, and others. So often, I think, we tend to dwell on what they could have done differently. That is a good thing for us to consider. But this bill is not about that.

This bill is about those who commit the crime. It is about time, I think, that we also stopped and said: “Actually, no matter what else the rest of us can do to alert the authorities or to take action, at the end of the day these children are killed because an adult or some adults decided to do that.” It is about time they have to face up to the consequences of their actions. This bill will not, as has been said, stop children from being killed. It does, however, go some way to valuing our children a little more than we have in the past.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) : I first of all commend the House for the quality of the debate on the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill. I think there is nothing like a bill where children or vulnerable people are being discussed to bring the House together. It is true that, across all parties, we care for our families, we care for our children, and we care for our community. At times we like to have the political debates and the rumble of Parliament, but when it gets down to tintacks we really do believe, I think, in the common good of our fellow human beings. I commend the House for this debate.

I say to the Minister of Justice that Labour members will support this bill. We will vote for it. In fact, the whole of Parliament will vote for it. But, as has been said, that is not because it will prevent a single child from being abused, maltreated, assaulted, or killed. We know that this bill is about what happens after the event. It is about what we do about the event. As Judith Collins said, it is not tackling the causes; it tackles what we do to the people who have committed the crime. So of course we will support the bill. The National Party manifesto states that National wants to send a message that violence against children is abhorrent and is not to be tolerated. There would not be a member in this House who does not support that message. During the debate on the Bail Amendment Bill yesterday all sorts of claims were made about what it will do; we all know that this bill will not stop the abuser from abusing.

We all know, as well, that the reasons why people abuse and perpetrate violence against others are very, very complicated indeed. It is a complex issue. As Phil Goff said, if there was an easy answer, every party in this Parliament that had been in Government would have put that solution in place. It is a complex issue. Abusers will not stop their behaviour just because today, a Saturday, at 3.15 in the afternoon and under urgency, we amend an Act of Parliament and put in place some window-dressing changes. It will not change the action of the abusers. They do not believe they will get caught, anyway. The behaviour of many of them is long term. For many years they abuse young people, often throughout their young lives, and they use their position of power to suppress and frighten their victims into silence. Their whole aim is to ensure that nobody knows what they are doing. They are certainly not thinking about what the aggravating factors will be.

As we have heard today, this bill does not make a great deal of difference in terms of the existing legislation. David Garrett said it may not do much but it does not do any harm. I agree with him. But I wonder why the Minister of Justice did not broaden his consultation, even though he was not going to refer the bill to a select committee and allow the public to have a say. Why did the Minister, in his consultation on, and putting together of, this legislation, not go outside Government departments and seek advice from somebody like Professor Geoff Hall? Why not approach people like him? Why not go to some of our extremely good non-governmental organisations in New Zealand that deal with children every day? Why not go to the Children’s Commissioner? Why not go to people who have great knowledge of what is happening to our children or who work on the front line in terms of providing support and programmes? I am very disappointed that the Minister saw fit to ask only Government departments—the same Government departments that many of the members of his party have called useless Wellington bureaucrats. Why not go further, in terms of his consultation, to find out what others thought?

I think it is a shame that the Minister, if I heard him correctly, intends to bring another bill into Parliament next year to deal with sentencing for crimes against children. The Minister is nodding. We have to ask why we are here today, under urgency, passing this legislation that people know will make very little difference—and that no one is not going to support—when a larger piece of work by the Minister will be introduced next year and, hopefully, sent to a select committee. The Minister is affirming that. Why could they not be done together? I can think of only one answer, and unfortunately I do not really like it. It is because this bill is a political manoeuvre, part of the Government’s promise of 100 days of action. That can be the only answer. The Minister knows that this bill will not stop an abuser today, tomorrow, or next week from abusing a child. So why not do the proper thing? Why not bring in the bills together? Let us, across this House, work on child abuse in New Zealand. Would it not have been a great start to the forty-ninth Parliament for us to genuinely take a cross-party approach to child abuse?

The Ombudsman in his report of December last year said that one of the problems we have in terms of crime and criminal justice is that it has become highly politicised and the subject of a lot of uninformed comment. He said, further, that we have two opposing philosophies driving policy matters in New Zealand at the moment: one called “penal populism” and one called “soft liberalism”. What we really want, and what he called for, is a rational debate on criminal justice. But he very much doubts that that is possible. Well, I believe that it is possible, with goodwill, but it does mean that, on a bill like this and on other bills that the Minister will bring in next year, he should open the door to other parties being able to debate the issue; he should genuinely extend an hand across the House and say: “We want to find the best solution to these incredibly complex issues.”

You see, it is not only New Zealand that faces the problem of child abuse. Professor David Fergusson, who is the director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study, has followed around 1,200 children who were born in Christchurch in 1977 for all the years since. He has also been part of a special report based on 8 years of studies in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, the United States, and Canada. Those studies show a similar pattern in all the countries we like to relate ourselves to—that 4 to 16 percent of children are physically abused, that one in 10 suffers neglect or psychological abuse, and that it happens every year, year in, year out. So it is not just a New Zealand issue; it is an international issue.

But I believe we are better placed than most countries to deal with this issue. The reason is that we are small. We are a small country, we have many nationwide services, and we are relatively well connected. I think we have many good policies and programmes in place. I do not care whether the National Party started some of them in 1953 or whether the Labour Party started them in 2000; we have some good programmes in place, we can build on those programmes, and we can take the best of them and make them work.

But that does mean having a commitment. It means having a commitment to dealing first with the most vulnerable in our society. We know that over the last 8 or 9 years the number of children who live in poverty in this country has been halved. We are left with about 150,000 vulnerable children living in families. They are the hard core, the children who are likely to appear in crime statistics in the future. That is where we need to start now. That is where we need to continue the work that is being done, and we need to commit to that work. I was pleased to see Paula Bennett identify those children. I will be interested in her putting out her programme and her plan to tackle them, because there is so much good work being done. I hope she does not treat that work in a political way—does not disregard a programme because it was Labour’s work or work that was done in the past—but picks it up and runs with it.

My only question of Paula Bennett would be to ask her to assure me that despite her commitment to reduce the staff of the Ministry of Social Development—500 staff over the next 4 years, 80 percent of whom are frontline workers—not one of the people who deal with vulnerable children will lose his or her job. It will not be easy getting rid of 500 staff without those people being affected. I would like that commitment, because we can deal with this issue if we deal with it across this House and work with our communities.

CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) : I rise to address two or three issues that have been raised by speakers on the other side of the House. Firstly, I reconfirm what this legislation does. It is a way of communicating with the court—with the judges and the lawyers. It is not intended to send a message to offenders, because offenders will never read it. Mr Goff’s good friend, Professor Hall, who wrote a book on sentencing, agrees that this is how Parliament communicates to the courts. Putting this legislation through under urgency does a particular thing that is very significant. This measure has been scoffed at by the other side, but it is important to note that although this is just one small step that is taken in urgency, it has achieved some profile because it has become part of what is known as the 100-day plan. It draws the attention of those people to whom it is directed. [Interruption] Would Mr Goff agree with me that the offender who is arrested tomorrow morning for an offence he commits against a small child tonight, and who pleads guilty and is sentenced before the court next month, will receive a greater sentence because of the notoriety of this—

Hon Annette King: It wouldn’t stop him doing it.

CHESTER BORROWS: We agree, but it is not directed at stopping anybody from doing anything. It is particularly directed towards the sentence that is imposed on an offender who appears before the court.

Maybe if the Leader of the Opposition had appeared in court in the past, he would have heard judges talk about recent statements from Parliament and the abhorrence shown by members of Parliament, which is a direction to judges, who pass sentences on those convicted of crimes, to sentence accordingly. The statements made in Parliament are then enforced on those offenders, and in this case the abhorrence of Parliament towards child abuse, child neglect, etc., will be reflected in a sentence that will probably be more severe than it would have been.

It is true, too, to say that a number of measures are directed towards a particular evil in this society. Yes, we need to direct a number of portfolio areas and the legislation associated with those portfolios towards child abuse. Some of it will be about education and health. This particular bill is about law and order and the justice system. It does not seek to be a silver bullet. It does not seek to solve all problems. It seeks to underline society’s abhorrence of these crimes and the fact that they are a regular occurrence.

About one child is murdered each month in this country by the people who care for that child. For some particular reason, we seem to murder people at about twice the rate that they do in the UK. We need to address the fact that we do live in a comparatively very violent society for a Western World country. I am pleased to be part of a Government that is prepared to do this. It is a small step at this stage, growing incrementally with legislation that will come in during the next 12 months to address more serious issues.

I finish by mentioning the comments made that this small piece of legislation has not gone before a select committee, and has not had the opportunity to be discussed by those, for example, in the non-governmental organisations. If we did that they would say: “Just get on with it.”, because we would not find a single non-governmental organisation that would not agree with society’s underlying abhorrence for these crimes, and would not agree that saying, through legislation, that the age of a child, a child’s vulnerability, and the fact that the crime is a breach of trust should be added to the list of aggravating features under the Sentencing Act. It is bit like asking children whether they like ice cream. We know what the answer will be. So those organisations would say to us: “Look, we pay you to be there, so get off your bums and do it!” Thankfully, we are, and I am pleased to see that the Labour Opposition is prepared to support that.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) : We all abhor child abuse and neglect. I do not need to say that again; it has been well canvassed by others. We acknowledge that New Zealand does have a serious problem with child abuse and neglect. Some countries that we would like to compare ourselves with are as bad as us, but others that we would also like to compare ourselves with do better than us. Whether or not they do, we certainly aspire to do better than we are doing in New Zealand.

As has been said, we will not oppose the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill, but it is important to put on the record, for the benefit of the courts, just how much of this bill is window dressing and why it is being put through. National raised expectations during the election campaign that it would find quick solutions to these somewhat intractable problems, so National thought it necessary to introduce this face-saving legislation into this urgency motion and put it through under urgency. The Hon Simon Power is a person who honours more than most National members the traditions of Parliament and puts significant legislation through to select committees, particularly where it affects the rights of people. Of course, criminal justice legislation does that. The very fact that this bill is not going to a select committee shows that it is not of very much significance. So does the explanatory note of the bill, which as much as admits that all the factors set out in the bill are already taken into account in sentencing.

The only thing I would disagree with is on page 5 of the explanatory note, which states: “However, as the factors that the court will be required to take into account are already usually taken into account under the current regime, we do not believe that this impact will lead to any substantive delay in courts.”, because it will not change much. The explanatory note says these factors are “already usually taken into account”. That is wrong. They are always taken into account now, because the law says that they “must be”, not that they “may be”. I think it is important to put on the record how new section 9A, inserted by clause 4 of this bill, compares with section 9 of the current Sentencing Act. Those aggravating factors must be taken into account under the existing legislation, as is made clear in section 9(1), which states: “In sentencing or otherwise dealing with an offender the court must take into account the following aggravating factors to the extent that they are applicable in the case:”. There is no discretion; the courts must take aggravating factors into account.

If we look at the first of the so-called new aggravating factors that are provided for in new section 9A(2)(a) in clause 4 of the bill, we see the courts must take into account “the defencelessness of the victim”. The comparable section in the existing Act is 9(1)(g), and it reads that an aggravating factor that must be taken account is “that the victim was particularly vulnerable because of his or her age or health or because of any other factor known to the offender:”. Clearly that matter is already covered by section 9(1)(g) of the Act, and the new provision does not add anything to it. New subsection 9A(2)(b) in the bill says “in relation to any harm resulting from the offence, any serious or long-term physical or psychological effect on the victim:”. Section 9(1)(d) of the existing Act already says the court must take into account as an aggravating factor “the extent of any loss, damage, or harm resulting from the offence:”. That is very broad and it clearly already covers serious or long-term physical or psychological effect.

Section 9(1)(e) of the current Act also requires that the courts take into account as an aggravating factor any “particular cruelty in the commission of the offence:”, so nothing new is introduced by new section 9A(2)(b) in clause 4 of the bill. New section 9A(2)(c) purports to say that “the magnitude of the breach of any relationship of trust between the victim and the offender” must be taken into account. Of course, that is already covered by section 9(1)(f) of the current Act. It states that an aggravating factor that must be taken into account by the court is “that the offender was abusing a position of trust or authority in relation to the victim:”. Nothing is added by the new subsection. New section 9A(2)(d) covers “threats by the offender to prevent the victim reporting the offending”. That is clearly covered by the existing provision in section 9(1)(a) of the Act, which requires the court to take into account “actual or threatened violence or the actual or threatened use of a weapon:”. That is clearly covered there. The last aggravating factor in the new legislation, in new section 9(A)(2)(e), is the “deliberate concealment of the offending from authorities.” Again, that is covered by section 9(1)(i) of the existing Act, which talks about premeditation, etc.

Judges will be scratching their heads about this legislation for two reasons. The first is the idea that without any legislation, judges would fail to find offending against children to be worse than offending against people who are not defenceless. That is nonsense. Judges are humane people, they are wiser than most of us, and they see the full ambit of crime. They already know what constitutes a more serious offence than other offending. I am confident that even without any legislation, the interests of children would be taken into account by judges when sentencing offenders. As if that were not enough, we already have law that makes that absolutely clear, because this is an area where it is important to make sure there are clear signals to the judiciary. That is why the legislation that was promulgated by the Hon Phil Goff and passed by this Parliament in 2002 already covers every one of the factors that are the subject of this bill. That is why I take issue with members on the other side of the House who are pretending that this bill somehow advances the protection of children, when it clearly does not.

I think if any further advice is needed on that, it is provided by Professor Geoff Hall through the newspapers, because he has not had the opportunity to do so through a select committee hearing. Once again I repeat that he said this legislation, although harmless, is also worthless, and that it adds nothing to the current law. For the record, Professor Geoff Hall is, if not the leading academic, then one of the two or three leading academics in this area of the law. He has experience that spans 4 decades. He is the author of the leading text in this area, Hall’s Sentencing, and he has looked at this legislation and said unambiguously that it adds nothing to the law.

Having said that, I say this bill is harmless and we will not be opposing it on this side of the House.

SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) : It is my privilege to speak on the Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill—as someone who has had the humbling and gut-wrenching task of prosecuting and sentencing many for child abuse in its variety of forms. One point that is perhaps less thought of, which occurs to me, is a potential application in relation to this amendment bill and focuses on the central point that the abuse of children comes in a variety of forms. This legislation may well enable courts—and I emphasis that it absolutely will be for the courts; and I agree with the Hon David Parker that judges are wiser than most of us—to deal with the increasing problem of the so-called “P babies” whom courts deal with directly and indirectly. This problem occurs when defenceless babies, through no fault of their own, are subjected night after night to P cook-ups in the same houses that they sleep in. It seems to me that those babies will be suffering under subclause 9A(2)(b) “serious or long-term physical or psychological effect” and, in terms of 9A(1), they will certainly be neglected. That potential application is far more than window dressing, and it will enable courts to deal with that issue. This could make a difference in sentencing and it would indeed be very positive. There may well be other types of cases where this law can be used by the courts for the protection of children, and I am sure that no one in this House would disagree with that application and would not vote for it.

• Bill read a first time.