Coddington Deborah: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12183] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I want to carry on from Stephen Franks’ speech because he hit on a very important aspect of this bill. This bill will not correct what it is trying to correct. There is only one way to get this country’s education system out of the hole it has got into with centralised control. As the Hon Lockwood Smith said it is to let parents choose. It is so interesting that every time this debate is brought up there are people who think that ordinary people cannot choose. It is as if they are reading directly from the script of  
Yes Minister 
 where that very situation was demonstrated in such a comical way. 
But let me draw members’ attention to what is happening in America and this will happen soon in Britain with the Blair Government. The Prime Minister said of Tony Blair the Prime Minister of Britain: “We are so close you couldn’t even slip a piece of paper between us.” That is not the case because the Blair Government has decided to introduce a voucher system to inner city schools for children of poor families where the schools are failing them. An article in Florida in the United States stated that there is no doubt why Jesse Jackson was in Tallahassee this month calling Governor Jeb Bush’s policies racist. He and his allies understand all too well that when poor African-American and Latino children start getting the same shot at a decent education as the children of our politicians do the bankrupt public education empire starts looking like the Berlin Wall. 
When the ACT party started talking about parental choice in 1996 it was considered mad. It is so gratifying now to hear the National Party vigorously championing the case for parents being able to choose. If we devolved the funding out to families and they took it to the school of their choice then we would not have to have legislation like this State Sector Amendment Bill (No 3) that takes what even little power parents have in the form of boards of trustees over teachers who are employed and how they are paid and removes it entirely back to the State Services Commissioner. 
This is draconian legislation. It should not be progressing through the House especially under urgency. It will make life a lot worse for those families whose children are struggling at school. I challenge the New Zealand First member who said that this legislation gives choice only to those who can afford it. Only those who can afford it right now have choice. They can either choose to send their children to a private school if they can afford it or they can choose to move into a particular school zone if they want to if they can afford it. It is choice by mortgage capacity. Property values are being driven up by this Labour Government in places like Epsom Remuera the Takapuna Grammar School zone the Mount Roskill zone and in places in Christchurch. If parents do not like the school that is next door to them but they cannot afford to buy or rent in those zones then they do not have any choice. 
Tell me how giving those parents the financial equivalent of their child’s education deprives them of choice. It is not logical to deny it. It is absolutely what we should be doing. It is how we should be fixing this situation whereby the Labour Government got rid of bulk funding stripped it away from those schools that wanted to have it and then took it back. The Government then realised it had created a bigger problem for itself so it has had to bring in this legislation that puts all the power for it in the hands of the State Services Commissioner. We will continue to vote against the bill.