Delahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Delahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8744] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. He mihi nui ki te Whare Paremata he mihi nui kite. For speakers of te reo rangatira and translators of te reo rangatira it is indeed a good day. 
What a happy summer break it was standing on the infamous Kopu Bridge and talking to carloads of visitors about why they were coming to the Coromandel. Strangely not one of them said: “I am hoping to see an industrial-scale goldmine in a forest park.” or “Lead me to the gold processing plant. I want to relax to the smell of chemicals and the music of crushing machines.” No one even asked to see Gerry Brownlee in nothing but his tramping boots paying final tribute to the schedule 4 forests and mountains before he assisted by the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday attempts to rip them open. 
What is schedule 4? Most people back where I come from call it the goldmining ban and they do that because we were part of creating it. In the Hauraki-Coromandel we drew a line in the land at Kopu-Hikuai and after about 15 years’ hard work we created enough support to see a level of legislative protection. We did not say that it was about protecting icons in exchange for stewardship land and it was voted in by a National Government. We said that gold was a finite resource and that modern goldmining was not sustainable. We still say so and we do not want the blood money from mining spent on conservation projects as a Faustian bargain. 
We called then and we call now for the protection of steep forested catchments and waterways for Tikapa Moana the Hauraki Gulf and the fragile coastal fringes. We call for absolute protection for Te Moana Hau o Tama-te-Kapua the maunga and we included every scrap of land we could because that is how we create real ecosystems and improve biodiversity. None of it is open for mining in our area; members should just come and ask the people. 
I asked the people what they wanted this summer at public meetings from Opoutere and Onemana which are outside schedule 4 right up to the Coromandel township which is surrounded by old gold reefs and stewardship lands. Every public meeting was the same. People wanted to take action to oppose any mining. They were not convinced by boutique mining which could become “maul-size”. They know what mauled land looks like because we have been through all this before and the land is only just starting to heal. 
As for surgical mining it sounds like some ghastly procedure to disembowel the earth. If that is the name for what has been happening on the West Coast recently then we are all in trouble. And do not get me started on the new language of offsetting biodiversity which Landcare and the Ministry of Economic Development are busy trying to trade off. However there will be a consultation phase which John Key appears to have pre-empted in his speech yesterday about his expectations to amend schedule 4. The Green Party looks forward to this as hundreds of people have indicated that they want to participate even if the Prime Minister will not listen. They have told us that areas from Murihiku Southland to North Cape are not open for coal and goldmining by multinationals. 
John Key stated in his address to Parliament yesterday that if there is an increase in mining activity New Zealand’s natural environment will also be improved. My co-leader Russel Norman said that that sounded like George Orwell but it also reminds me of George Bush. In the age of the big lie the Minister of Tourism attempts to sell destruction as protection and he thinks that this country will swallow it. Well I say to the Prime Minister pigs might fly and the Earth might be flat but we will not surrender our treasured places. Whatungarongaro he tangata toitu he whenua; people persist but the land remains. That is what we have to pass on to our mokopuna not toxic tailing dumps. 
More and more people understand that we live in the 21st century not the 19th century but it seems that this Government will have to be educated. I tell National members to look to their vote before they start on this reckless demolition. I ask whether their focus groups told them that mining in forests and national parks was a public relations winner or have they missed the essential component of our national identity: economic uniqueness and survival as a species the need to protect the integrity of the Earth. 
I will also comment on the Prime Minister’s statement in terms of education where there were some very interesting signals. That is as it should be because we have some serious challenges in this area not the least being the Government’s declaring war on many teachers and principals. We will not meet many people who do not believe that quality learning is a human right for our children but how is this achieved? It must be a matter for dialogue and negotiation. 
The Government has signalled that early childhood education will see some changes to increase the number of poor Maori and Pacific children participating. It does not say how that will be done and the Green Party would love to know how the increase in GST which affects childcare fees will help people to pay for early childhood education especially when unemployment statistics for Maori and Polynesian families are at a record high and when their wages are so low. Perhaps free quality child care will now be made available to the poor but we are not holding our breath. 
As for primary schools grappling with national standards we would love to know what the Prime Minister meant by “we will intervene more aggressively” in consistently failing schools. Does he mean the kind of aggressive intervention experienced by Aorangi Primary School which has now been closed without there being any of the conventional hallmarks of educational failure? It is great news that the Government will provide more professional development for teachers but to what end? We all agree on the need for quality education but the across-the-board adoption of standards without a trial or pilot sends the worrying signal that this is an ideologically rigid process in response to a genuine recognition of a problem. 
We have a deserved reputation for educational success at the primary level but we also have the frightening statistic that many Maori and Pacific children leave the education system without sufficient literacy unless they are Maori and go to kura kaupapa. The issue here reflects a harsh combination of the effects of social inequity in the way that our Pakeha designed and managed education system fails to engage children from other cultures notably tangata whenua. But when a child comes to school without breakfast or any lunch and carries the neighbourhood social damage on small shoulders their teachers cannot work some Hollywood miracle. 
What about children with a wide range of disabilities? How does a generic standard help them to become confident learners at their own pace? That is why national standards will not help. It has been tried in the No Child Left Behind programme which the Bush Government attempted in the United States. President Obama is now withdrawing from that approach because he has seen that literacy and numeracy have not improved. The United Kingdom experience is similar. Teachers started teaching to tests in order to protect themselves and their schools before the label of “loser” undermined their resources and their reputations and children have suffered. It is a sorry business when the education academics have to attack the Minister of Education. 
The names Snook Crooks Flocton and Hattie sound like a Dickensian law firm but they are actually quite diverse professors of education all of whom are warning the Government that standards without a pilot could create disaster. Professor Ivan Snook also points out that the rationale for introducing national standards ignores the detail in the 2009 Education Review Office report on the use of assessment tools which showed major improvement across the country. 
We need action across the whole community if all children are to have access to culturally appropriate quality education but as young teachers have said to me in the last few weeks the real losers from national standards will be the classes of children whom no one will want to teach because they will never meet the standard for reading and maths. Dedicated teachers can lift them from where they have started to much higher standards but for many it will not be possible to reach the standards set in the current national standards. It will not be an easy journey for those children unlike the middle-class children whose parents loved school themselves read to them constantly and live amongst peace and plenty. 
It is pretty alarming that the national standards are being rolled out when the Government conceded in its address to Parliament yesterday that “policy will be developed” this year. Most great educational ideas are based on policy that has already been developed but this one fails on this count and on many others. The Prime Minister’s speech also had some worrying threats to students about performance and punishment. 
We are very concerned that the education and the mining messages in the Prime Minister’s speech spell trouble for the environment for the tourist dollar for the future of this country as a home for biodiversity for the integrity of the Earth and for the education of our children. The Green Party will be challenging these issues in the year to come. Kia ora koutou katoa.