Adams Amy: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: General Debate[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15240. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Communications and Information Technology): Today we have been discussing education in some detail and it is a critical topic. It is a topic that is fundamental to the success of our country. What we have seen overnight from the Programme for International Student Assessment out of the OECD is that the decline in our educational standards that began in 2000 is continuing. That is a matter that I know is of concern to the entire House because if our people are not coming through schools with the skills that they need to build a future for themselves we all need to be worried about that.This is not a simple issue. It is an issue that requires a multi-pronged approach to its solution. That is something that this Government recognised from the day that it took office and it has been delivering real changes to the way that we educate our children to turn that round. Every single time that this Government has had a plan to do something tangible about that Labour has opposed it. Labour has opposed it because it is far more interested in protecting its union mates than it is worried about the children.This is the Government that brought in national standards. We want to know whether our children are succeeding. We need to know this in primary school not once they get to high school and then think: “Gosh why are we not getting there?”. In fact the children that this Programme for International Student Assessment surveyed went through those critical primary school years under the Labour system of education. Now we have national standards that will help us to identify and address those shortcomings considerably more.We are investing a huge amount in the quality of our teachers because we know that the one thing that will make a difference more than anything else is high-quality teachers. We want to support that. But it is also about providing the resources to our schools to raise educational standards and to make sure that every child in every school has access to the resources that they would have in the best schools. A big part of that is through digital enablement.I want to commend my colleague the Hon Nikki Kaye who is leading a programme of work through the Network for Learning. This programme is taking advantage of the ultra-fast broadband that National is rolling out to schools because we know that that sort of digital connectivity is absolutely critical in preparing children for the modern world. The ultra-fast broadband has so far been rolled out to more than 1900 schools. By 2016 every school in this country will have access to ultra-fast broadband and will have access to the Network for Learning. That means that every child in every school from the smallest to the largest will be able to access the best resources offered in the best schools in the world. Is that not interesting?The Labour Opposition has done everything it can for 5 years to derail ultra-fast broadband. It voted against it. It tried to block it. It complained that it was all happening too fast; it complained that it was all happening too slow. We are now seeing the Opposition getting behind a campaign to try once more to derail it. Why is it doing that?It is doing that for its own selfish political short-focused short-sighted self-serving gains. That is the only reason it is doing it.Do you know who benefits from this? Do you know who would benefit from derailing the build of ultra-fast broadband? I can tell you who it is not benefiting. It is not the consumers; it is the retailers. So if we insist on a lower price for the wholesalers as Labour wants to happen—follow the money. Follow the money. I will tell you who benefits: the large corporates like Vodafone which benefits from the extra money. That is what Labour is supporting. That is what it wants to see happen.I will tell you what will happen now. The consumers will not see anything at all I predict. If they do it will be a tiny fraction of any drop. Do you know why? Because now we are going to be embroiled in years and years of litigation while the retailers fight very hard to keep those profits. If anybody in this House is naive enough to think that this is about consumers they are dreaming. This fight is about making the retailers keep the extra money. It is the big corporate retailers that we are seeing Labour get in behind. The retailers are now coming out and saying: “Oh well we don’t think we will be able to pass any of it on. Sorry about that. Oops!”. Well that is exactly what we have been saying.I would suggest to the opponents in this House who are trying so hard to derail ultra-fast broadband—who are trying so hard to stop New Zealand schools New Zealand families getting access to world-leading education and world-leading health services—that the economic benefits alone of ultra-fast broadband are massive. It is creating so many jobs around New Zealand. It has been independently modelled to add about $33 billion worth of economic benefits. Labour and the Greens are once more saying: “Let’s just block it. Let’s stop it. Let’s say no. We are more interested in ourselves and our own point-scoring than in the people of New Zealand.” We are not going to let that happen.