English Bill: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
English Bill: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:575] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 I thank the Hon Pita Sharples for his speech. He was absolutely right. His speech made clear the problem that the Labour Party has with the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. 
I am gobsmacked that Labour is voting against this bill. I look forward to parading up and down the country over the next 3 years and telling people that the Hon Phil Goff is opposed to education standards that he believes in low expectations and that he does not care about the bottom 30 percent of kids who are not reaching those expectations or those standards. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Oh rubbish! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Labour members cannot make up their minds. On the one hand they are saying that this is absolutely terrible and it will ruin everything; then their next speaker gets up and says that this is already happening. It is one or the other. Will it wreck the teaching of literacy and numeracy in our schools? Or is it as Trevor Mallard has said already happening? Actually unusually Mr Mallard is somewhere closer to the truth than Chris Carter. It is not unusual that Chris Carter is a long way from the truth. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Be careful. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Chris Carter should have been careful. That is why he was the least credible Minister of Education that Labour has had in a long time. Trevor Mallard was much more credible. Actually in this sector Trevor Mallard built up—picking up what Nick Smith started—a body of sensible policy about literacy and numeracy standards. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Nick Smith had no policy. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He did actually. 
The next logical step is that every child gets the benefit of expectations and standards and of reporting to parents. About 40 percent of kids probably get it now. At a stretch it might be 60 percent. But as we should be used to by now it is the kids who need it the most who are not getting it. The schools that really should be doing it cannot be bothered. The only reason Labour did not follow the logic of its own policy to this point is that it did not want to upset anyone. Labour thought its relationship with the unions was more important than raising expectations for kids for whom education is the way out of the circumstances they are in. Labour put the interest group before the children. Until Labour starts apologising to the country for that the public will not take it seriously. 
When Labour votes against this bill tonight all that will do—in case it is not aware—is prove to so many parents why they voted against Labour and for National. It will confirm that Labour cares more about the system a fragment of union opinion and its mates than it does about the kids. If Labour is following the advice of Chris Carter to vote against the bill then it is doing the wrong thing. Those young new progressive MPs need to know what a dead-end they are being led to. [ 
Interruption 
] Well three groups matter more than the teacher unions: the first is the teachers and actually a lot of them voted for us this time; then there are the parents and an overwhelming majority of them voted for us this time; and then there are the kids and Labour thinks it can ignore the kids because kids cannot vote. 
We support this bill. We believe that it is the next logical step in New Zealand’s progress with literacy and numeracy standards. We find it hard to understand that the Labour Party is so arrogant and contemptuous about anyone else who has an opinion about education that it is making the biggest single political mistake it will make in the next 12 months by voting against this bill.