Collins Judith: Education (Charter Schools Curriculum) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: Education (Charter Schools Curriculum) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7232. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): What a depressing and distressing contribution from the Green Party member Gareth Hughes who has just resumed his seat.There I was all excited to be coming to the House to speak on a bill put forward by my good friend the Hon Phil Goff a new independent candidate for the mayoralty of Auckland and I thought “Well Phil and I we often do TV together.”—not as much as Annette King and me but Phil and I do. And I thought “Well this will be good.” and then I read it and I thought: “Oh for goodness’ sake! Come on really? Where is the harm that we are trying to fix?”. And I looked at it and thought “Well all the charter schools”—or partnership schools as they are called here in New Zealand—“at the moment they are teaching to the New Zealand Curriculum. So where is the great harm?”.Well the great harm is apparently that they might want to be teaching creation theories rather than scientific theories of evolution. Oh dear well so does the Bible. Should we ban that too? So does the Koran. Should we ban that too? So do all sorts of other things. Should we ban them too? Should we not in fact be a Parliament where ideas can flourish even if we disagree with them and even if they are wrong? We should be able to do that and so our schools should be able to teach the children whom they need to teach in the best way that they can.When I look at charter schools—and I have one in my electorate South Auckland Middle School—the only complaint I have heard in my electorate Papakura about partnership schools is that we do not have enough of them.Tracey Martin: What about special-needs children?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That is the only complaint that I have heard. I know that there are entities working with young people who are really struggling in our schooling system for whom the curriculum does not hold much joy actually and who want to be able to do something to get some skills so that they can in fact become positively contributing members of New Zealand society rather than say members of New Zealand First—you would not want them to become that. And when I look at some of those young people many of them come from homes that are pretty dysfunctional. But also some come from homes that I would not describe like that at all with caring parents or grandparents or whānau who are trying to do their very best for their children and who somehow for some reason—whether it is their fault whether it is a disability whether it is a teaching fault—something has happened or something is not happening so that these children are not getting the very best that they can from our education system.One of the reasons that I am someone who is in favour of this diversity in the provision of educational service is that I know that our prisons and our Child Youth and Family residences are full of people for whom our current education system—the way in which we teach the way that we do things which works for the vast majority of young people and which I fully support—has failed for these very few young people. And I do not want to see more people going into our prisons or particularly more people going into Child Youth and Family justice services because what we see in those is that it tends to be a one-way track through to a life of crime and misery. I want to see young people succeed in education and I think everyone in this House does; we just sometimes disagree as to how to achieve that.As a parent I can tell this House with all honesty that I was a complete expert in parenting until I became a parent and then I suddenly realised that all the things I thought my parents had done wrong they had done right. I did not understand that parents try so hard for their children and as children I think we are so often ungrateful for what our parents are trying to do or do not even understand the opportunities available to us to learn. These young people need something. They certainly do not need us getting all ideological and deciding what they need to learn. We need them to learn something. We need them to care we need them to get passionate about something we need them to learn and we need to keep some freedom of choice in the provision of education.I support the provisions that David Seymour has brought to this Parliament. I do not support the contribution of the bill by my dear dear friend the Hon Phil Goff.