Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's my pleasure to speak on this bill which we won't be supporting but I listened with great interest to the speech of the previous speaker—Jan Tinetti—who talked about teachers being at the centre. I presume she meant the centre of the education system. I always thought it was the pupils who might also be at the centre of the education system which is what we're supposed to be focusing on and growing them.It sort of makes me reflect on this bill which really is to be honest scraping the barrel somewhat. I came in and I went to have a look at this first piece of legislation from the new Minister of Education. I was expecting a rather thick well-thought-out piece of legislation that the Government had produced and I found this sort of three-page affair that looks like it's been written on the back of an envelope prior to the election. It's a member's bill that has been found—Hon Chris Hipkins: Good things come in small packages Paul. You should know that. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes and it's true. We don't measure the quality of our legislation by the kilo and this really takes that to the nth degree. So we have this—Hon Chris Hipkins: It'll be one more piece of legislation than you've managed to pass.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No that's not true. Actually I've had a number that have been passed. But anyway you're trying to divert me from what is a simple question where we have this little piece of legislation that's been thrown together by an Opposition member. Really he thought Well what could I repeal that the National Government has done and put it in a member's bill?" and he thought "Oh yes we can focus on rearranging the appointment process for the Teachers Council because that's a major issue." And yeah I'm sure it's an issue of great interest to some people but it's probably not the No. 1 education issue confronting certainly parents of children who are starting school this week and they are very focused on very great outcomes. But that's what we've got.That is what we've been delivered here as a new Government bill—a member's bill that's been scraped from that brought into the Government's legislation and presented as one of the things that they're working on in their 100-day plan. It shows to me a Government that isn't very well prepared for office. They have spent nine years in the wilderness in Opposition pointlessly and have arrived with very little in their bag in terms of detailed research about what they can be doing to deal with the big issues of the education sector which are around continuing to raise achievement.Obviously everybody's focused on getting back to school at the moment and the question that keeps coming back to me from the community is: "Well hang on a moment. I don't remember people marching in the streets wanting to get rid of national standards but they've gone." We've heard these fine speeches about the partnership with teachers and the partnership and trust that this Government is going to develop yet we didn't get any sense of that partnership or that communication with the people who are at the school over whether or not they wanted to do away with national standards. It was just a fiat from high from this new—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Can you come back to the bill please.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Sorry. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker I will but I was really referring to the—Hon Ruth Dyson: Or come to the bill.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well there's not much in the bill to talk about really. I mean it's a very short piece of legislation that rearranges the appointment process for the Teachers Council and renames it and that is the extent of it. So at a time when we've got the new Government spending $2.8 billion on free education—and we've heard today that there are actually no new students coming as a result of it—this is what we're talking about. We're rearranging the appointment process for the teacher's council and renaming it. I personally think that's a bit of a metaphor for this Government. They've arrived here they haven't been spending their years in Opposition thinking up some clear ideas of how they would advance New Zealanders' education and keep on raising those standards so that New Zealand children coming through the system are well prepared and continue to be well prepared to engage in an ever-increasingly competitive world.The final thought I wanted to make was that the one part of the speech where I did absolutely agree with the Minister was the fact that we all want and incredibly value our teachers. I am a son of a teacher—a son of a maths teacher of 20 years. We know the passion and commitment they all make to their profession and we want the very best for all teachers so that they do a great job of educating our children. So I reject any suggestion that the previous Government didn't have the interests of teachers at heart. We certainly did and we want the very best for the profession and for the profession to succeed in the interests of everybody in this country.So at the start of the school year I want to wish them all the very best for what we believe will be a highly productive year and I just wish the Government was a little bit better prepared on coming into Government to tackle some of the big issues rather than some of the perhaps second-order issues as dealt with by this bill. Thank you very much."