Walker Holly: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 30 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15710. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green): Well it is great to see that children are at the heart of politics at the start of election year. It is about time even if it means we have to listen to speeches like that one from the Hon Anne Tolley. It is good to hear her conclude that what we need for our kids is good kai healthy homes and good learning or something to that effect. She is right; that is exactly what we need. But the vitriolic attack that she launched on the Green Party’s policy would do exactly the opposite. At a time when 270000 children are living in poverty and one in five suffer from the kind of severe material deprivation that the Hon Anne Tolley has just outlined when they cannot learn when their health is compromised and when they have no chance of a good life and a fair future that is the time to ask the question of how we can best take care of those children and there is a stark difference in the prescriptions we have heard from the three major political parties so far this year. National wants to introduce performance pay for teachers in all but name and do nothing at all about the immediate material needs of those children preferring to rely simply on the idea that quality teaching is all that is required to pull them out of the adverse effects of inequality and poverty. That is what the Prime Minister said yesterday in his answer to MetiriaTurei’s question.Well we actually are out there in the community no matter what Anne Tolley would have you believe and do you know what? Kids are going hungry out there in the community. They are going to school without food without shoes and without raincoats and you can do very little learning when that is the condition that you arrive at school in. So by contrast the Green Party’s vision focuses on investing in our children’s health and well-being directly not indirectly. We agree that schools are an essential tool in eliminating some of the effects of poverty and inequality but we take a much more hands-on approach to doing that than this National Government. Our plan to turn decile 1 to 4 schools into community hubs by providing lunches nurses on site and employing community hub coordinators to tailor the community hub services at the school to the specific needs of that school and those children would have a far more beneficial effect on the direct material deprivation that many children are suffering than simply putting a bunch of executive principals in suits with $60000 pay rises in charge of those schools.I think that what you have heard this week is a vision of what an alternative Government could do for children because combined with the Labour Party’s policy of investing in the preschool years with more paid parental leave with greater family support payments and with greater investment in early childhood education you start toget a picture of what a progressive Green-influenced Government could do for our children. It is a very exciting vision in my view but it could not be more different from the kind of top-down bureaucratic divisive policies promoted by this National Government.The dismissive casual attitude of our Government towards children has never been more evident than in the comments of the Prime Minister in the House earlier this week when he said: “Give the odd kid a lunch—that is not actually going to solve the problem.” Well I will tell you what—it is a lot more than the odd kid; it is tens of thousands of children in schools around the country and it actually will go a really long way towards solving the problem of the impact of poverty and inequality on our kids’ education. I think it will do a lot more than a bunch of executive principals earning an extra $60000 a year. You can feed a lot of kids for that money.The Greens do support investing in teachers and we do support that undervalued workforce to get better recognition for the vital work that they do but we would not do it in the way that the Government has described and we would never claim that good teaching alone could solve the problems in educational attainment that are linked to poverty and inequality. When kids are going to school without food shoes and raincoats and with skin infections and respiratory diseases they have no chance of learning. They have no chance of a good life and a fair future. Our Schools at the Heart proposal to make schools the community hubs that they can be and should be would do a much better job.I want to conclude with the words of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation President Philip Harding whom I trust a lot more than the Prime Minister. He said: “This is a superb initiative and will make a huge difference for those kids that currently arrive at school unfed and unhealthy.” That is good enough for me.