Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It's appropriate that you're in the seat actually Mr Speaker because I want to highlight a petition that was received in 2010. It was organised by NZEI Te Riu Roa 38000 Kiwis signed it and I believe that you and the former member Catherine Delahunty received it. At the same time we had 225 boards of trustees members. We had teachers we had the New Zealand Principals' Federation and we had the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) who said that national standards were fundamentally flawed they were confusing and they were unworkable. They had no confidence in them. They were untried untested and they labelled children as failures and what I really want to highlight is that the workload for teachers was going to be awful. So from 2010 to today—can I say that national standards are gone by Christmas.I want to acknowledge Minister Chris Hipkins because we listened. We listened to the sector. We listened to boards of trustees that had parents on them. So finally—finally—New Zealand has a Government that's whakarongo mai. We are listening to the parents to our stakeholders that are critical to an effective organisation of our education system.I also want to highlight a comment by Melanie Webber from the PPTA—she's the vice president. In May 2017 she said this: It is a crisis if you're a kid in school and you don't have a teacher … [trained] in a speciality in front of you … no-one's paying attention". Well guess what? We are paying attention because the initiatives that were outlined today by our Minister of Education Chris Hipkins are going to address the teacher supply package. Under the previous Government according to their Minister Hekia Parata in August 2016—at that point in time—there were 4000 teacher vacancies. Four thousand—and what did she say? She said that that's not a crisis; no it's just a shortage. It's pretty much like the housing situation in every other aspect.But what I want to highlight is what the former Government knew between 2005 and 2015 in respect of teachers aged between 60 and 79. In 2005 there were 3608 of them and in 2015 there were 8434. So we had a 134 percent increase in teachers aged between 60 and 79. That Government knew that—did nothing about it. At the same time between 2010 and 2015: in 2010 we had 17000 young people training to be teachers and in 2015 we had 11000. We had a 6000 reduction. That actually was a Government responsibility—to address the looming crisis.I have to commend a couple of people in my electorate. The first is Karen McMurray who is the principal of Randwick Park School and who in August last year organised as the president of Manurewa Principals Association for us to get together. They had vacancies then. All of the schools in my electorate had vacancies. Well today 65 percent of schools in Auckland have vacancies—40 percent across the country—and that Government the previous Government did nothing as I've outlined to address the crisis. Why? Because they wouldn't admit that a crisis existed. And we've seen it in other sectors: 70000 houses short people living on the streets and in cars and these are children who we want to have a great education.So I want to talk about the initiatives that were outlined today because what we have done in the voluntary bonding scheme is to now increase it to include decile 2 and 3 schools. That is specific and it's targeted because we know that there are some schools like in South Auckland that find it incredibly hard to find teachers. We are also focusing on teachers in science technology maths and Te Reo Māori. Why? Because they're the speciality areas where we lack the capacity as Melanie Webber said to make sure that our kids actually have a teacher but not just a teacher; they have to be good teachers and they have to be teachers who know their subject of speciality. So this Government after 43 days I am proud to say is getting on with the business and we are ensuring that the crisis is addressed."