Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is a pleasure to rise after the fearmongering of one Tim Macindoe. The Education Act was originally assented to in 1989. That means that it's been alive for five years longer than I have. A year after the Education Act came into force in 1990 the World Wide Web was invented. Access to the internet has changed the world and indeed education in ways that were once almost unimaginable. My point is that the context of our lives and the context of education are ever changing.However I believe that the values and principles behind why the State provides our country's children with a supposedly free accessible compulsory education—a high-quality free universal education is one of the foundations of Aotearoa New Zealand yet for some reason I can't see even National's David Bennett standing up and shouting Socialism!" at that. It's in our DNA. It is what we as a country believe in.It is a vision best summarised I believe by Mary Richmond the founder of New Zealand's kindergartens who speaking on the right to access public education said over 100 years ago in 1906 and I quote "All I ask is to give every child as fair a chance as possible. As we are a formal democracy let us be truly democratic." That vision lives on and it is at the heart of the legislation that we are debating today. This bill is about cutting the white noise and getting back to delivering on that vision.This bill as has been noted by many who have spoken before me removes the ability of the Minister of Education to set national standards. At the Education and Workforce Committee yesterday as was brought into this House's kōrero by the Hon Nikki Kaye members from this House on both the Government and Opposition benches heard explicitly from Ministry of Education officials that the regular testing required by national standards relies still on elements of subjectivity. To that extent as has frequently been said in this debate they are neither national nor standard.To echo the sentiments of Minister Chris Hipkins after nine years of these national standards we've not seen discernible increases in achievements among students.It was found in a 2016 survey by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research that 69 percent of primary and intermediate teachers had narrowed their curriculum as a result of national standards. This morning I met with the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI)—a union!—who represents 50000 teachers staff and principals from the early childhood sector through primary intermediate and secondary schools. As a powerful collective voice for teachers who have been required to implement our national standards for the past several years they noted their absolute joy at this legislation on today's Order Paper.Removing these national standards does not look like removing testing nor does it look like removing reporting to parents. Those things existed long before national standards—which I note were only implemented in 2008—and will continue with the removal of national standards.As mentioned to me this morning by the NZEI—that union—removing national standards looks like removing the shackles of consistent testing that soaks up time teachers would rather use for teaching. On the point of the preferences of teachers with regard to how they teach the Opposition has spent quite a bit of time this afternoon trying to drive a wedge between the profession and parents by stoking unnecessary fear about how we'll spiral out of control with the removal of national standards. I understand the cynical politics of it but I find it deeply disappointing.Hon David Bennett: You're in the Green Party; that's all you do.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: It should be pretty obvious that teachers are not teachers because of the pay packet Mr Bennett. It is an important thing for the Greens—and the Labour Party—to ensure that teachers are paid fairly for their work but as it stands there is no massive financial incentive to become a teacher. Nor is teaching glamorous Mr Bennett. Unfortunately it does not hold the social standing or mana that we believe it should. So I ask the House the question: why is it that teachers teach? It's not the money nor the glamour nor the power but ask any teacher and I guarantee you that they will tell you it's because they believe in our kids and they want to do their best to help them succeed.So forgive me when I am frankly quite perplexed at the allegations from the Opposition that the Government is bowing to the wishes of the "unions" of the teachers—those evil teachers who want our kids to succeed! We're listening to the people who work at the coalface with the impacts of the legislation that we here in this ivory tower waffle on about and deeply politicise. I also want to touch on the points raised by the Hon Nikki Kaye previously the Minister of Education. Nikki spoke about vulnerable kids and how we will be deeply damaging these vulnerable kids by removing national standards. But I note that OECD measurements of the poorest kids achieving OECD averages in reading maths and science found in 2006—I note before the introduction of national standards—that 36.6 percent of those kids were beating those odds. But in 2012 four years after the implementation of those national standards it had dropped by more than 10 percent to 23.6 percent. So that correlation simply is not there and I would contest the "facts" that have so far supposedly been bandied about.This bill of course obviously also removes the provision for the creation of charter schools. Charter schools are another recent invention of the previous Government. They came into effect around 2014. I believe and the Green Party believes and this Government believes that every child should have a high-quality education at their local school. I do not believe that charter schools provide the best mechanism to make that happen. Charter schools do not guarantee quality. Nor do they guarantee that access so fundamental to the value of our public education system.I want to acknowledge that there is an important conversation that we need to have about how mainstream education is currently not serving all of our kids but the best mechanism to make that happen is a nationwide conversation about the purpose of our education system and what success looks like which this Government has committed to—yes a conversation involving teachers and parents and children and genuinely getting a grasp and an understanding of what they would like to see from this system not simply politicised waffling much of which we've heard from the Opposition. As was heard at the Education and Workforce Committee as well the Ministry of Education is working with all charter schools currently on a plan for their future. They are not simply to be dropped into the abyss.With the short period of time that I have left I note that this legislation also restores staff and student representation on tertiary councils and that is for us simply a matter of democracy. That is appropriate decision-making which is a core Green Party charter principle. It's about ensuring that the people who are affected by the decisions that are made will have a seat at that decision-making table. So too it makes practical and common-sense comprehensive enactments around the framework for fee-free tertiary education and straightforward changes to school boards' strategic planning time lines.In summation I really look forward to hearing from New Zealanders about this legislation at the select committee. I look forward to progressing the values and vision for a free accessible universal education for all that which Aotearoa was founded on and which I implore David Bennett to yell "Socialism!" at. I commend this bill to the House."