Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker and thank you to the chair of the Privileges Committee the Hon David Parker for giving what I think was a good description of the reason we're here. I'd like to make a few comments about why a Minister telling the truth to the House is so important and why this particular policy issue that led us to this point is so important as well as comment on the findings of the report.To understand why it's so important that Ministers who come to question time like we've just seen in the last hour tell the truth to their other parliamentarians is that ultimately they're not telling the truth to us who are standing here asking the questions; they're telling the truth to all New Zealanders who elect this Parliament. This question goes right back to the very first time that our Parliament met at that time in Auckland in May 1854. At that time the people who governed New Zealand were sent from London and they didn't really answer to the Parliament. In fact that first Parliament really didn't have any power at all. The big question was something many people here will never have heard of: Do we have a responsible Government?" What they meant was: did those Governors from London actually have to answer to the 37 members of that first Parliament who'd been sent from 24 electorates up and down New Zealand? Some electorates got multiple people so there were more.It was a very hotly contested question. In fact in that first Parliament there was actually a fistfight over whether or not the Governors sent from London should have to answer questions. So I'm pleased to say that we're much more civilised these days than Parliament was in the 1850s. However it goes to the heart of how important this struggle between the people elected from up and down New Zealand and those who hold the chequebook and the keys to Government power really is. And it continues even to much more recent years. It's only a couple of years ago that Judith Collins who was sitting there was the Leader of the Opposition. There were serious questions when the Government was wielding unprecedented power locking New Zealanders down stopping them coming in and out of the country. People seriously questioned whether the Parliament should sit and whether she should travel from Auckland to Wellington as the leader of the largest party and stand on the same carpet as the Prime Minister and ask her questions. She was asking those questions on behalf of the people of Papakura and also all of those who had voted for the National Party at that time. So it is absolutely critical that the people of New Zealand can send their representative to Wellington stand on the same carpet as those governors and ask a Minister and the Prime Minister questions. But that is pointless if they don't tell us a truthful answer. This is not some academic exercise for Wellington policy wonks; this is actually the basis of a democratic society where everyone has power and a place.The second issue is that the particular matter was one of enormous importance. It was the question of "Are Kiwi kids attending school regularly?" The question was about when the people will find out information about that critical question for the future of our country. Without going into the topic in any great detail it's a real problem. If you go back 10 years—to 2011 '12 '13—about 70 percent of kids were attending most of the time. Now it's about 60 percent of the kids. It varies from term to term. One term last year it was only 40 percent of the kids who came most of the time. This is a real problem for the future of New Zealand. It's a real problem for the future of New Zealand as a country where no matter how rich or poor you're born or whether you're in the town or the country you actually have a chance—a chance to get knowledge that will extend you to the fullest extent of your powers as Peter Fraser used to say here when he was the Labour education Minister and Prime Minister. Yet fewer and fewer kids are getting that chance because they're not showing up. And those kids aren't the biggest problem—amazingly. It's not the kids who are enrolled in school and don't attend that often who are growing in number; it's the 10000 or so kids that have been reported—although we don't really know—that aren't in enrolled in any school whatsoever. This is a serious matter that the people of New Zealand deserve straight answers on from a Minister who tells them the truth and knows what she's doing.Unfortunately what this Privileges Committee that I have sat on has found is: well yes the Minister misled the House. She told us that she wasn't involved in releasing this information or delaying the release—because you see that's another problem. We don't get the information on how many kids went to school until about four months after the term ends. That's a really big problem as well because when something really matters you should be measuring it and people should know what's happening so they can do something about it. But we're managing this problem as a country looking through the rear-view mirror 20 kilometres behind. We don't know how many kids went to school until it's four months later. And into this walks a Minister who has basically in this report been found not guilty of the major charge. The major charge is that she deliberately misled the House and she's been found in common words to be not guilty. How is that possible? Because she did mislead the House—even she doesn't deny that. So how is she not guilty of deliberately misleading the House? Because she didn't do it on purpose! And the story that we are all expected to believe—and it's not just us; it's the people at home—is that she genuinely didn't think that she had to correct her answer even when she found out it was wrong because she thought that so long as she didn't know the right answer when she gave the wrong answer she had no obligation to update people with the truth.Now you just have to ask yourself—people in business people in everyday life—if you'd told something wrong to someone and then you found out that you'd told something wrong and you knew it was kind of important to them wouldn't you go back and think "Oh well I told them the wrong thing and it's important and I now know the right information. So wouldn't I go back and tell them?" Jan Tinetti apparently doesn't think like that. That's the first thing: that we have to take her at her word that she genuinely just thought "You can tell something totally wrong and if you find out that actually it was wrong you just keep on believing it and don't tell anyone." That's what we're asked to believe.The second thing we're asked to believe is that she did not know because she had no idea what was going on in her own office. She's in this office with all these education people going backwards and forwards having weekly meetings with a set agenda about everything that's going on in education and there's all these questions in the Parliament and there's all these people talking in the news about kids not attending school and this passionate educator—a former principal—was sitting there as the Minister of Education of New Zealand and she never thought to ask for months "Oh I wonder where's that data about how many kids went to school. Are we putting that out some time soon?" She wants us to believe—and we take her at her word because that's what we do—that she just didn't know; she didn't know what was happening in her own office even though the Prime Minister's office had been emailing people in her office saying "Well are we going to put it out soon? We'd like to time it with a political release so that it sounds good." But she didn't know about that!So what we have here is something that occurs in the context of 170 180-odd years of New Zealand's democracy: the tension between the people who are elected to ask the questions and the people with the chequebook and the power over Kiwis' futures—the Minister—and the obligation of the Minister to come here and tell the truth. None of that seems to be in dispute but the outcome is that there was no deliberate misleading of the Parliament there was no deliberate misleading of the people who watch the Parliament—the public; the people who pay the bills—and the reason for that is something much much much worse than any argument about constitutional issues. It is because we quite simply have a Minister of Education—who's responsible for the system that holds in its hands the future of 800000-odd kids and with them the long-term future of our country—and she doesn't know what's going on in her own office. Well that is the real verdict of this case and it is deeply troubling for every single New Zealander who cares about the future of our country. I support the call for the Minister to be asked to apologise. Thank you Mr Speaker."