Moroney Sue: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:608] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and talk to Part 1. I am rather sad to acknowledge that normally during the Committee stage of a bill as important as this we would be able to refer to the many submissions that we would have received during the select committee process. I am sure there would have been many submissions in the select committee process had the new Government allowed that opportunity for the public the parents the education sector and the many people who would have had an interest in this. I know we would have had a lot of very good submissions on Part 1 and the school enrolment and attendance issue. I feel very sad that we are not able to refer to those submissions but there have already been many fine contributions during the course of the debate on this entire bill. If we think about the passion energy and information that has come through this debate just from the members sitting in the Chamber alone I know we could have had so much more coming through had we had the opportunity to have public submissions on this bill. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: They wouldn’t want that! 
SUE MORONEY 
: I am not sure why the Government would not want that because I think it is a missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity to engage the broader community. All parties across the Chamber have acknowledged that education is the key to our future. Our children and their education are the key to our future and we should be taking some time to gather that information. 
However much has been made by the Government about clause 6. This is the clause that allows prosecutions to be taken by the Secretary for Education. I want to ensure that people listening to this debate know that prosecutions can and have already been taken over the issue of truancy in this country. I think it is really important to acknowledge that and it is important that the new Government does not make it look as though this is something that it is bringing in because this ability has been there all along. Sadly on 29 November the  
Waikato Times 
 reported on two families in the Waikato who were prosecuted for not having their children attend school. One was in the town of Morrinsville—a student from Morrinsville College—and the other was in Matamata—a student from Matamata College. It is rather interesting because I come from Matamata and my good colleague Jacinda Ardern comes from Morrinsville so we both knew those families. It was really very interesting to note that when we looked at the information and talked about those families we knew that there were many many issues going on for these families. Prosecution has happened in this instance. It probably is not the best outcome for those families; neither was the unavailability of their children—those students—from the education system. 
But it is not as simple as just increasing fines. It is not as simple as just having an outcome at the end after everything has gone wrong. Very complex issues are at stake here. It is really interesting when we observe the families who face prosecution. Often they come from the lower socio-economic ends of our communities and this was certainly the common thread that existed in those two cases. There has been the ability to prosecute and it has been happening. Certainly I think the initiatives the Labour-led Government put in place have helped to ensure that we know what the level of truancy is. 
Again there is a bit of a theme developing here. I think it is quite misleading to say that because we now know and can quantify what the problem is it means therefore that there was not a problem before and that it somehow emerged just over recent years. Of course these problems did not emerge just over recent years but the Labour-led Government was committed enough and was brave enough actually to quantify and measure these problems. The Labour-led Government implemented the ENROL system that my colleague the Hon Chris Carter talked about before and that helped us quantify what the nature of the problem was. That is a very important thing that the previous Government did.