SpeechHon NIKKI KAYE (Deputy Leader—National): Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa mālō e lelei talofa lava namaste ni hao. This has been a very proud moment in my career to be standing here and listening to the debate this evening. I want to acknowledge all of the speakers. I didn't agree with everything that all of the speakers said this evening but I do want to raise a number of points that I think have been very very well made by a number of speakers. The first is this is more than just our education system. There are many children as Jo Luxton has mentioned who are in early learning who want to have access and their parents want them to have access to learn from a very young age. We support that. What we're trying to do with this bill is enable us to ensure that in our compulsory sector we get additional resource. We also take the point that was being made by other speakers around ensuring at secondary school we have good access via NCEA and other language learning support in our secondary schools. The other point that I want to make this evening is absolutely around the fact that we do support ensuring that we get greater access to Te Reo Māori in our schools. We see this as an and/and". As my learned colleague Dan Bidois has said not only do we know the benefits if a young person at a very young age learns a language it may mean that it's much easier for them to learn a second and a third language. So we see this as an "and/and". The other point that I want to make and I do want to correct the Hon Tracey Martin is that the whole point in the bill is that Te Reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language will finally be funded and guaranteed by the Crown. That is a very important aspect of this bill and as I travel the country and I meet with iwi and I meet with leaders in our community I'll be making that point. The other point that I want to make—and it was made again well by a number of speakers in this House—is it's more than just learning a second language in school. It's about connecting with family. It's about people being able to speak to their grandparents who they may never have been able to communicate with before. This is about a wider vision for New Zealand. Many of us are travellers in this country. We travel across the world. We work across the world. The capacity and the opportunities that can be provided for more New Zealanders being able to speak a second language are massive. So many Kiwis—there's more than a million Kiwis in other countries—find themselves in situations where they would love to be able to converse with colleagues where they don't get the opportunities. For such a diverse nation it's been well written that it is unusual for us to be more monolingual and we need to change that. I just want to again make the point that many people across the House—and again it comes to the point made by Tracey Martin—have fought hard for additional investment. I know there are other members across the House and on this side that have approached Ministers and argued for language programmes or programmes to support different community organisations. The reality is what this bill does is it actually says we need to have a national language policy so that we have the resourcing that is required to follow this legislation so that finally we will be able to have a clear strategy around the numbers of teachers that we need the way that we invest in different community organisations the recognition that for some of our Pasifika friends the reality is if we don't do something in this country we may seriously lose the opportunity for generations for those languages to thrive. We heard that at select committee before particularly around early learning and Pasifika languages. The reality is this is a burning platform. It's a massive opportunity in history where we've got cross-party support to tackle this issue. I'm very very proud to have brought this bill to the House. It's been worked on by so many different people. But I acknowledge that it cannot be legislation alone. It must have this national language policy and it must have investment with it. We are not naive about the time that it may take to implement this bill to be able to ensure that we have the teachers that we need; that we have the language assistance that we need that as Jo Luxton has pointed out we have the online learning provision that we need; that the professional development is there; and that the kaumātua and other community leaders are on board. I am confident that this is a massive step for New Zealand to enable second language learning for our people and that there will be many benefits from a cognitive perspective a cultural perspective and a social cohesion perspective. I am very proud to support this bill to the House."