Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It's a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa on the Education Amendment Bill in this here third reading. It will of course be of no surprise that we support this bill and its contents given that it is exactly what all three parties in this Government campaigned on. It therefore should come as no surprise to the Opposition nor to the majority of New Zealanders who voted for this Government that this is exactly what we are implementing. It's been stated by a number of members of the Opposition that what we are seeing today is ideology. Again I would like to raise the point that: is it not the case that the actions undertaken by the National Party were informed by their ideology by their values of individualism whereas we come from a place of collectivism? We come from a place of believing that all kids should be able to get the best possible education from their local school. So this piece of legislation does a number of things for a number of different parts of our education system. As has been well canvassed it removes provisions for charter schools. I don't intend to labour that point any longer but presume that the Opposition will get back on that horse. However I will speak briefly to the point around removing national standards empowering provisions because in particular members of the Opposition have cited multiple times without any evidence to back it up that this was about kids and their achievement.What we've seen after nine years of national standards is no discernible change in achievement. In fact in some areas it's actually gone down. OECD measures of our poorest kids achieving averages in reading maths and science in 2006 showed that 36.6 percent were beating the odds. This was obviously prior to the introduction of national standards. But in 2012 four years after the introduction of national standards the number of those kids beating the odds had dropped by more than 10 percent to 23.6 percent. So I'm quite perplexed by the statements by the Opposition that this is about our poorest kids who are disproportionately currently in our society Māori and Pasifika when the national standards project did not work for them. So too I'm quite fascinated by the recent kinds of statements from the Opposition that they now care about teachers and that they now want to see reduction in class sizes and they want to see the workload on teachers reduced. Well if that's the case I would suggest that they sit down with teachers many of whom are represented by those evil unions they so often lament because in 2016 a survey by the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand showcased that 69 percent of teachers in primary and intermediate schools narrowed their curriculum as a result of national standards.So I am proud to stand in this house this afternoon—I would note probably as the member closest to having had an experience of the education system—stating that I am incredibly proud of the fact that we are removing these national standards to focus on the needs of kids.A third part of this piece of legislation is restoring elected places for elected staff and students on tertiary education institutions councils. It's been quite fascinating to watch this argument play out in an incredibly polarised manner with members of the Opposition in particular belittling representation saying that there is no guarantee of expertise. I would reiterate my argument on that point: that's exactly what we are here in this House as MPs. We are elected to be representatives. There is no guarantee of our expertise. The point is that we bring the perspectives of our communities to this decision making.In response to the select committee submissions—and there were a huge number of select committee submissions to our Education and Workforce Committee on this piece of legislation. There were 641 many of whom we heard and 481 of those submissions spoke in particular to staff and student representation on tertiary institution councils and 451 of those supported guaranteed places. However 449 of those submissions wanted more than one representative of both staff and students. That's more than 90 percent of submissions on the issue of staff and student representatives on tertiary councils who wanted more than one.So I would just note that I'm a bit gutted that my Supplementary Order Paper 104 to see out this request from members of the public was unfortunately voted down in the committee of the whole House stage. This of course was off the back of an open letter from 14 different presidents of student organisations around the country facilitated by the New Zealand Union of Students' Associations. It was to ensure that what we were seeing wasn't check-box tokenism but was genuine representation so that there could be the ability to share and discuss confidential information between at least two students to come to robust decisions and so that they could feel supported in putting forward their views and indeed in speaking up. I also want to speak just briefly to the final two provisions in the Education Amendment Bill. They are of course—one is about making it an offence to make a false representation on an application for free tertiary education. This ensures the smooth sailing of that introduction of free tertiary education. I have been incredibly pleased to be around the country recently visiting a huge number—all actually—of our tertiary education facilities around this country speaking to first-year students about their absolute delight of not having to be saddled with immense amounts of student debt. If I may report my own for the sake of members in the House who perhaps went through university before tertiary fees were instituted the personal student debt that I racked up was to the tune of $43000 and these are the kinds of fees that we were talking about imposing on our next generation.I just want to touch as well on the point made by members of the Opposition that the mainstream isn't working. That's right: the mainstream isn't working and it's not working for all of our kids.Nicola Willis: What are you doing about it?CHLÖE SWARBRICK: So what should we do about it Nicola Willis? We should fix it and we have an opportunity to fix that with the education conversations that we are working on. Nicola Willis and members of the Opposition have been invited to participate in this educational conversation which we as a Government are facilitating to move into the future—a fit-for-purpose education system that works for all of our kids. And I think that this is particularly important because of the points that have been raised about tikanga Māori about Te Tiriti o Waitangi because our current education system absolutely does not put those kaupapa at our core and we have an opportunity to evolve the education system so that it recognises our past and our history and so that it teaches our kids how to be engaged citizens not just workers.So I think that this is an incredible opportunity actually for a cross-partisan project to develop a sustainable outcome that works for all kids moving into the future. And it's an opportunity actually to put the petty point-scoring aside and work on something that all of us can be proud of because all of us and all of our kids are going to be looking at this education system to carry our country into the future.Just briefly in my final minute or so I want to acknowledge the incredible mahi of Catherine Delahunty who was our former Green spokesperson on education. All of the things that are happening in this Education Amendment Bill are things that she campaigned tirelessly on and are things that she actively engaged with the sector on and they're things which we in the Greens are very proud to be supporting through the House this afternoon. It is something that makes me incredibly proud to be a part of this Government: that we are getting on with creating an education system that works for all of our kids because in the words of Mary Richmond All I can ask is to give every child as fair a chance as possible. As we are a formal democracy let us be truly democratic.""