Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I am pleased to speak on this bill. I do want to say at the outset that National will be opposing this bill but can I acknowledge that it's a big deal as a pretty new member of this House to have a bill drawn out of the ballot and can I congratulate her for bringing a bill to this House and for doing the work that she's done.Now the reason that we are opposing this bill is we believe that it is really important to be honest that this is a case that it is really what we call a ballot bill stuff-up. The reason for that is if you look at what actually the bill is doing it is making very minor amendments around the national education and learning priorities (NELP) and I'll give you an example of that. So if you actually look at the content—and again I would ask people who are watching at home: is this a good use of Parliament's time to change a phrase from resilience determination confidence [and] creative and critical thinking" and to add a couple of words at the end? We think that when you look at the bill clearly on the other side of the House they didn't want National members to have bills coming out of the ballot and they thought "We'll make a few tweaks to the NELP and that will enable us to have a bill in the ballot." and we don't think that's a great use of Parliament's time.I'll give you another example: one of the statements in the NELP that was passed by the last National Government which went through a select committee process was the phrase "good social skills and the ability to form good relationships". Well now what that's changed to in this bill is the word "good" to "positive" and others. We would argue again—let's just be a little bit honest in this Parliament about what this bill is doing: it's tweaking a few words. That's not necessarily a great use of Parliament's time.And then the second thing that this bill does—and again we think people should understand exactly what is occurring here—is that there is already the provision within the Education (Update) Amendment Act which went through Parliament reasonably recently to enable wide consultation with the public so the only thing that this bill does then is it puts in and describes some of that consultation. When you look at the various different parties—and I think if I just refer you to clause 5 where it talks about children national representative organisations of teachers and national representative organisations of principals—this is pretty obvious actually. The current NELP enables wide consultation so this is not needed in any possible shape or form.Again we really want to acknowledge the member Jan Tinetti. She has put some work in but we do believe in being incredibly honest about the fact that this is not a great use of Parliament's time. There is nothing in here that is dramatically going to change the world for a whole lot of young people and lift achievement. It is a bit symbolic in terms of what we did hear today from this Government. There is a lot of hui but very little dooey. My previous colleague the honourable Sandra Goudie used to use that phrase. But again we saw this today with the Minister's announcements that we are going to have three years of discussion and it feels very symbolic that we have this bill that is really about tweaks. It's not going to lift achievement. It's not going to help those kids who are in partnership schools. It's not going to help those parents know more about how their child is doing—whether it's the Government scrapping national standards. It's not going to change the game in terms of 21st century learning.The NELP was put in place to ensure that we all had a common understanding of the objectives and goals in education and this bill will not dramatically and fundamentally lift opportunities for young people. That's why we're not supporting it. We don't think it's a great use of Parliament's time. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou katoa."