Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): As the final speaker on this bill I acknowledge the arguments from Penny Simmonds the previous speaker. However we will not be persuaded on this side of the House but I do acknowledge the effort there. We have an incredibly diverse country here in New Zealand—culturally diverse—and we are becoming more diverse with every passing day and that's a good thing. We are connected to the world in a global context and across the world there are many many languages and I think it's really good that we're having this debate in the House. I do wonder if I walked out the door and looked at some of the Hansards from maybe 80 years ago or 100 years ago I'm not sure we would be having the same debate in terms of acknowledging the diverse cultural aspects of Aotearoa New Zealand. So it is very positive that we are having this debate and I'd like to acknowledge the Hon Nikki Kaye for bringing this bill to the House and initiating this debate. I remember back in I think it was 2018 when she brought this bill to Parliament there were a number of conversations had. Obviously Nikki Kaye had a conversation with Minister Hipkins I personally had a conversation with Nikki Kaye just out in the corridor about this bill and I acknowledge her passion both for languages but also in general her passion for education because she understands the importance of education for people to have opportunity and for people in this case to have an aspect of the various forms of connection. We do have a large migrant population and I'll get on to some of the submissions. Many of them came from our migrant New Zealanders and they talked about the importance of language to them in the same way that Ibrahim Omer has spoken about that. I'd also like to acknowledge the Hon Paul Goldsmith who picked up the bill as National's education spokesperson and he's brought it to this point. Look I think that Nikki Kaye in effect should really see this as some form of a win really because even though the bill is not continuing in its current form—and this side of the House have clearly outlined some of those issues that we have with the bill there that unfortunately weren't able to be resolved—the work that's begun on the national languages strategy may not have begun at this time without the work that the Hon Nikki Kaye did in bringing this to the House. So it's something I believe of a legacy for her and hopefully she is watching tonight although she might have other things she's doing—who knows? I don't know how many people are watching Parliament TV in Auckland but we'll see if she is or not. So—Hon Scott Simpson: They turned off three minutes ago. JAMIE STRANGE: I thought I was doing pretty well. The objections to this bill have been outlined and I will just highlight a few of them but before I do that I'd like to share a little bit of a personal story which I think is always good for speeches. Hopefully it will spark the interest of the member opposite. So as a former music teacher—as a former teacher in the area of music—I want to acknowledge the importance of having a diverse curriculum. Now when the previous Government were in power they tended to have a bit of a move towards narrowing the curriculum. Literacy and numeracy are obviously very important and I felt they were a little bit too obsessed with those two. However this Government are very much strong believers in having a diverse curriculum and I look at the aspect of music as it relates to this bill because this bill is encouraging a diversity of curriculum as is the national languages strategy. When I was teaching music as an intermediate-age teacher yes I was teaching some of the skills whether it be guitar drums band—other forms of music. Singing I sort of tried to teach but not so well. But what I was developing—and it links to the languages aspect because there's a link to it and the link is confidence cooperation working with others creativity and often these aspects are seen as what we call soft skills within an education system. But sometimes those words tend to demean the benefits of those aspects. Look if I was to talk to any employer in New Zealand I think that the majority of them would say the importance of people skills being able to relate to a diverse range of people—the benefits of that would be acknowledged. The benefits of learning a second language are not being argued here in the House. There is agreement on both sides around the importance of a broad curriculum and learning languages. We have heard a number of those benefits and I'd like to touch on a couple of others that I haven't heard—just add to my contribution to the debate. I know the member opposite is watching with interest. There's an aspect around engagement with the rest of the world. I mentioned at the start of my speech the fact that we are a small country in a global context. We are very dependent on trade. As the Rt Hon Helen Clark once said Trade is the lifeblood of our economy." Now someone who can speak many languages—it obviously has a benefit in the economic sense around trade. Our connection with Asia—obviously growing markets in the Asian region—is of particular importance. So there's no argument I don't believe; I believe there's consensus around the importance of languages. And I do wonder about the economic cost of our underperformance in a linguistic area in terms of lost trade and investment. So I was particularly pleased to see the Minister tonight talk about the work that has already started on this national language strategy. In my final three minutes I'd just like to touch on a couple of the submissions. We heard from the New Zealand Sikh Youth around the importance of Punjabi. And I would like to acknowledge our close relationship with India and as I mentioned in terms of trade it is absolutely a growing market and there are discussions around various free-trade agreements and aspects progressing. So the aspect around Punjabi is absolutely important. We had quite a few submitters—I'm not part of the select committee but I had the privilege of sitting in on a number of the submissions.Penny Simmonds: We were so lucky to have you Jamie.JAMIE STRANGE: Oh well thank you. Thank you. The member opposite said that they were very lucky to have me—very kind. Look I certainly appreciate the submissions and we had a number of submissions from various ethnic groups who were stating the argument as to why their language should be included in the 10. Now we acknowledge those submissions and we acknowledge the importance of all languages here in New Zealand. We also heard from the North Asia Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence. They outlined some of the benefits of learning some of the Asian languages. They actually raised the same point that I was talking about before in terms of New Zealand's context with the wider world and the work that we do there. We heard from the New Zealand Chinese Language Week Trust. Now China is certainly one of our largest trading partners and we have a close relationship with the Chinese country. Actually New Zealand back in 1972 was the first country to acknowledge China as a country under the Rt Hon Norman Kirk and we signed the first free-trade agreement. But actually it was interesting the New Zealand Chinese Language Week Trust they obviously advocated for the importance of the Chinese language which I'm sure we'd all agree on here in this House but they said "In New Zealand Te Reo Māori holds a special place which must be acknowledged and strengthened." This sort of links into what we heard from the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) who said we are doing good work around the Māori language—Chris Bishop: Oh NZEI!JAMIE STRANGE: One of Mr Bishop's favourite organisations. So what we heard from NZEI was that while we are doing good work in learning te reo let's do that well rather than you know sort of stop that and then move on to these other 10 languages that—you know how do we pick these 10? But look the reality is that through the national languages strategy there is work being done in this area both in terms of te reo and many other languages that I've outlined. And so I am very pleased to see that the work that the Hon Nikki Kaye did bringing this to the House is continuing. One of my colleagues is talking in my ear to acknowledge the select committee. I would like to acknowledge the select committee and all of the officials who did hard work on this bill in terms of bringing it to this place. And it looks like my time is up Madam Speaker. Thank you."