Carter Chris: General Debate 
Carter Chris: General Debate 
[Volume:649;Page:18021] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Much has been much made in this House in the last few days about integrity about honesty and about being upfront. Well the people of New Zealand are asking the National Party which seeks to be the next Government how upfront its members are being about its policy. 
We have had of course some examples of the so-called hidden agenda. I think that more and more New Zealanders are seeing that the National Party does indeed have a hidden agenda. We saw of course Kate Wilkinson’s release that employers would pay less for their contribution to KiwiSaver. She was dragged in but she said it. We saw Bill English saying that National would sell Kiwibank. Then he tried to clarify that but never actually denied it. We had Lockwood Smith saying that National would have to swallow some dead fish but once in Government it would be able to really convince people that these so-called dead fish were ones that it was going to toss out. Finally of course there was Maurice Williamson’s release last Sunday morning on public-private partnerships where he talked about tolling but also talked about introducing public-private partnerships into schools. 
I am privileged to be New Zealand’s Minister of Education. I stand before the country in the election campaign with the proud record of the Labour-led Government’s 9 years in office. Labour has almost doubled education spending. It has increased teachers’ salaries by some 35 percent and by 43 percent for principals and it has invested a whopping $5.5 billion extra into education. The electorate knows where Labour stands on education. It is about resourcing education so that we have a quality education service. 
But what does National stand for in education? We have not of course had any policy releases about the really big questions in education such as what young people need to learn in their schools in the 21st century how we address the barriers facing children and young learners who are currently not succeeding in the education system and how we resource our schools adequately. None of those questions has been addressed. But we have had a few glimpses of National’s hidden agenda. We have had four of them. The first of course has related to public-private partnerships which we have talked about in the House today. As I explained in question time public-private partnerships have not worked well in the UK in Australia in Canada and in the US. Indeed the province of Nova Scotia with its quite conservative Government has ended all public-private partnerships in education because it discovered that the education system and the taxpayer were being grossly overcharged by construction firms and those seeking to manage private business in schools. 
In Australia the Federal Parliament found in a recent review of private funding in schools that schools were far less transparent in their processes with that private involvement. It has found that the commercial and confidential nature of many business proposals means that the taxpayer and the state and Federal Government do not have a chance to look closely at these proposals and that there is not the transparency that there is in a fully publicly funded process. In the US Bush America—which I am sure the National Party would like to take us to—has companies using public-private partnerships in schools as hosts for other business. McDonald’s for example provides food in schools and private preschool centres and so on. In the UK there have been tremendous problems with private companies not finishing projects and local government and cities having to pick up the cost of private construction going on in schools. That construction has been grossly under-tendered for so the taxpayer as well as the school system has suffered. 
We also have another obvious sign of the hidden agenda in education from National. We had Mr Key’s commitment on the  
Agenda  
programme that National would double the amount of money that goes into private schools. In other words we have capped it at $40 million and Mr Key said National would just about double it which is another $40 million out of our public school system into the private system even though only 6 percent of New Zealand students attend private schools. We have had Mr Key and Anne Tolley National’s education spokesperson talking about standardised testing. Actually Madam Assistant Speaker as you would know as a former school principal standardised testing has been totally discredited internationally not least of all in the UK. We have formative assessment in New Zealand. New Zealand has some of the best assessment systems anywhere in the world. 
Finally taking the “free” out of free early childhood education is National’s plan as well.