Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I do want to take this opportunity to welcome Jan Tinetti back and to say it is nice to have her with us for this debate. She was missed while she was away and while she was unwell and we're glad to see you healthy again Jan.But I do want to take issue very respectfully with the approach she took in that speech. What she kept referring back to was what would make the sector happy. I on this side of the House together with my colleagues unashamedly say that when we are assessing education legislation the concern we should have the motivation we should have should not be what makes the sector happy; it should be what improves the education of children and what improves the experience of the parents and families raising those children. Here on this side of the House our focus in education policy is children and parents. We make no apologies for that and I would say respectfully to the member and those of her colleagues that a sector-first approach will not lead to the best outcomes for children. Here in this bill we have actually quite a solemn and significant opportunity and it's set out there in the purpose statement and the Minister earlier made comments about what this bill sets out to achieve. It sets out no less than to update and modernise the entire education system. It's taken 2½ years to appear here and we are told that this is the grand solution. Of course there is so much we need to do in education because education is actually almost the most important thing—probably the most important thing—that a Government can do to shape the experiences that an individual has when they're born in this country. We can't control what happens in every family nor should we but we do have the power to change what happens in the hours that a child is in a State-run institution. All of us in this House thinking about that power that the Government has to influence a child's education would surely say if we were being honest that we don't do a good enough job in this country. How can we possibly think we do a good enough job of education in this country when we know that as many as one in five New Zealand children still leave school without the literacy and numeracy skills they need to succeed? They need to access further training and they need to contribute fully to our society. So the size of the task is significant and that's why we have a right to expect from the Government in this legislation some significant and meaningful reform because too many children are being failed by our current system.My conviction is that if we are going to see change in the education system that truly transformatively changes the experience for all those children who are being failed by it then that change won't actually come from big Government. As much as I like many of the officials in the Ministry of Education they're not going to be the ones that solve it. The real changes for education will come from the communities and families that truly make up our schools. Wherever we have seen successful innovation in education it has been community-driven. I give you partnership schools. Partnership schools were an answer to the question of why do too many children keep being failed by our State system. Partnership schools showed that when communities take responsibility for their own people when families can drive their own solutions when they're given the ability to innovate they can make positive change. But this bill says no to all of that. This bill doesn't have communities in it. It doesn't have innovation. It doesn't have families. Instead what this bill does is centralise at every opportunity. There on that side of the House we have members whose trust in the ability of big Government goes far too far. Here on this side of the House we have a healthy scepticism about what Government can really achieve. I want to take you through some of the aspects of this bill which I think demonstrate the unbridled confidence that Labour members have in what a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Education can achieve if only we give them enough power because this bill gives them more and more power at the expense of families and at the expense of communities.Let's start with the zoning provisions. When we look at the zoning provisions let's remember what zoning's all about. The purpose of zoning is to exclude children from the school their families would otherwise send them to. It's so that if a school is overcrowded we can make a choice to send some children away. Of course in an ideal world we would not do that. In an ideal world if a school is really successful it's doing a great job of providing education and a family says I want to send my child to that school because I think it'll give them the best education possible." then we as Governments would say "And so you should—you should have that choice." Yet of course no Government in recent history has been able to afford the increases to school property on an individual basis that would be required to support those choices and so successive Governments have had to make school zones to avoid overcrowding. I would put to you that in my lifetime if there was something I could do to change education for the better—if I was that education Minister sitting over there—I wouldn't just tinker; I would look at how I can truly empower parents to choose the schools that they want. But instead what this zoning law does is it says "Well let's just really zone in on our power to exclude and let's not muck around with giving communities the ability to define the home zone of a school. Let's not let communities be the ones developing where the boundaries might be. Let's not let communities be in charge of the consultation. Hey and let's not let them be the ones that are actually deciding the geographical boundaries because we can't trust them apparently." Apparently according to the advice we received from Ministry of Education bureaucrats who we must remember according to these members know better if we leave it to communities they might not have equity in mind. I would put to you that the people who best have equity in mind are the parents of a child who say "I want my child to attend that school." not a bureaucrat in Wellington saying that if you live in that neighbourhood you can't go to this school. I would put to you that a community has the best knowledge of which neighbourhoods and which families have the historic ties to a school and should have a right to go there. So this bill says bureaucrats know better and we on this side of the House take issue with that. We think that it devalues the role of communities and that it sets a dangerous precedent.That's not the only area where this bill puts the Ministry of Education first. Of course this bill very tidily incorporates all of the changes that were made in response to the tertiary training reforms. Of course they too were a radical centralisation of the tertiary and skills training system in which the Minister of Education took many of the powers of asset control and ownership away from local polytechs away from Southern Institute of Technology and other innovative providers and said we'll put it all in a central institution.Let's remember where this all came from. What started this bill out was the Tomorrow's Schools reforms—the review of the Tomorrow's Schools reform. The original report actually said that any kind of school board at all would be scrapped in favour of bureaucracy. We saw communities use their voice we saw parents use their voice we saw boards use their voice and utterly reject that. But what I see in this bill is the Government's attempt to sneak in as much central control as it can keep.Finally I want to raise the example of what goes on in early childhood education (ECE) in this bill. What this bill does is it introduces a new discretionary power for the Minister to accept or reject applications for early childhood education centres. I have been around education long enough and the Speaker will remember when he was the Minister that this country actually has a history of under-provision of early childhood education. There have been times in our history where if you wanted to enrol your child in early childhood education you couldn't find a place for love nor money. I think it's a good thing—and I want to put it on the record in this House—that now if you're living in an urban centre most likely as a mum or a dad or a caregiver you have a choice about where you send your child to early childhood education. I am nervous about a bill that creates uncertainty and creates an unclear process whereby the Minister can accept or reject an application for an ECE centre. I actually want to continue to see diverse provision of early childhood education in this country for more people to want to come in and educate our children. And I fear that this bill gets in the way.This bill is not only a missed opportunity; it shows the priorities of this Government which are bad and which tend toward centralisation. National would put families and communities first. We would do much better in Government."