Harawira Hone: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHarawira Hone: General Debate[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9945. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. Yesterday the House debated ACT’s charter schools bill which Māori Party membersvoted for. They did not speak to it—heck no. They were too embarrassed to do that. Hell they were not even in the House for it. They must have cringed when their National and ACT Party buddies sang their praises over it but they still voted for it.So what is all the fuss about? It is that the Māori Party is backing charter schools overkura kaupapa Māori. That is what the fuss is all about. It knows what it is doing too because Pete Sharples—Associate Minister of Education with responsibility for Māori-medium education and co-leader of the Māori Party—is supposed to be the big daddy of kura kaupapa Māori. The Māori Party knows that Governments have starved kura of funding and imposed rules on them that no other school has to adhere to yet kura kaupapa Māori remain one of the most successful educational initiatives for Māori by Māori of the last 100 years. But last night the Māori Party voted with ACT to spend massive amounts of money on charter schools while kura kaupapa get bugger all. That is what the fuss is all about.Massey University professor of education John O’Neill said that early indications are that charter schools will get more than twice the level of funding that mainstream schools and kura kaupapa Māori get Mr Bennett. It is one thing to watch the rich white boys give their mates all the lollies while the poor little Māori kids get by on scraps but it is bloody embarrassing having to watch their Māori mates cheer them on. The Māori Party members should be ashamed about turning their backs on kura kaupapa Māori. That is what the fuss is all about.Māori fought long and hard to establish kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa Māori because we know that making a commitment to Te Reo to whānau and to kaupapa Māori is critical to providing for successful outcomes for Māori students. The kura have proven that to be the case time and time again—and that is a quote from Mr Henare. But will the charter schools that the Māori Party supports make those same commitments? Hell no. Charter schools will have no accountability to whānau no commitment to Te Reo no responsibility toTe Aho Matua no obligation to put registered teachers in front of our kids and no transparency under the Official Information Act and they are going to get heaps more money thankura kaupapa Māori ever got. And the Māori Party supports that? That is what the fuss is all about Mr Bennett.Charter schools will not have to worry about the Office of the Auditor-General either. Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu’s submission on the bill says: “Overseas experience shows that Charter schools are highly susceptible to fraud waste and abuse ...”. Dr Bronwyn Hayward a political scientist and senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury referred in her submission to the problems of crony capitalism tax evasion fraud and corruption that have plagued charter schools elsewhere. She described them as “a naive and reckless governance model”—and the Māori Party is voting for them! That is what the fuss is all about.Mainstream schools are not exactly pathways to high achievement for Māori students and clearly there is much to be done to change that but that is what the Associate Minister of Education is supposed to be doing—identifying and promoting better models not backing expensive high-risk low-accountability charter school ventures that as 20 years of research shows achieve nothing that cannot be done without them. [Interruption] That is what the fuss is all about Mr Henare.The Māori Party talks about how important it is to be at the top table. Well tomorrow we will find out whether that is true or whether it is just a big fat lie to keep those members on their big fat salaries and in their big fat limos while delivering a big fat zero on Māori education. If tomorrow the Māori Party can get for kura kaupapa all that it is giving to charter schools if it can get an extension in mainstream schools on the Te Kotahitanga programme that it brags so much about and if it can get manaaki tauira reinstated to help all Māori students get a tertiary education then it deserves a paton the back. If on the other hand it does not achieve these things then it will have failed its mantra about being at the top table will have been exposed and its support for charter schools will be shown up for what it really is—a plea for scraps from a Government whose actions prove that Māori issues rank with the Government somewhere between nowhere and obscurity.That is what this fuss is really all about because our kids—all our kids—deserve the very best in education not the failed experiment that charter schools have proven to be. Kia ora tātou.