Tinetti Jan; Pugh MaureenHon JAN TINETTI (Labour): It's been a long time in this House that I've heard such a confusing rant by a Minister. In fact six times—six times—the Minister mentioned the Labour Party; obviously enamoured with us on this side and the wonderful legislation that we had put in place obviously can't wait to be over on this side again and obviously with terrible legislation like this that won't be that far away.Hon David Seymour: She said my speech was confusing!Hon JAN TINETTI: I say that this was confusing because on one hand you've got the Minister talking about flexibility and on the other hand you've got him talking about tightening up in areas such as attendance; a totally confusing piece of legislation totally contradictory to itself. I would have to say to the Minister: please go and learn what tino rangatiratanga actually means because he obviously has no idea. I know that my colleague is going to talk about that in greater depth and greater detail later on.Charter schools represent more than anything an absolutely concerted effort to deregulate the public education system. They have few restrictions in place on pedagogy curriculum class size discipline and other details in their operation. We have the most devolved education system in the world. How on earth do we think that having that absolutely devolved system like that is going to improve the education system for young people who have been marginalised within the system?Charter schools represent a slow drip towards privatisation within our schooling system. Let's go back a little way to see where charter schools came out of. They were born out of the States by a gentleman by the name of Albert Shanker who was what is called the founding father of charter schools. He withdrew his endorsement of charter schools in 1993 and became a vociferous critic against them; totally—totally—absolutely appalled with the direction in which they were moving in. He watched the charter schools movement evolve as he saw new businesses jump into the education industry. In the States charter schools have been started by social service agencies universities teachers parents philanthropists hedge fund managers for-profit firms corporations charter management organisations and community groups. Now we might hear people say on the other side Well that's not New Zealand" but hang on a moment go and have a look at the early childhood education (ECE) sector because that is very much New Zealand and those groups are very much represented right throughout the early childhood education system.Again we might hear the other side say "Oh but hang on a moment that wouldn't happen within the schooling system in New Zealand." I would then cite a white paper that was written by one of the groups who was interested in opening a charter school which said "For widespread success there needs to be the ability for sponsors to get a return on capital which has made the ECE model so successful in New Zealand." So we're talking about a slow drip towards privatisation that will quickly become an absolutely leaking drip. When we look at the research that sits around whether charter schools have been successful or not the Minister often quotes the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) study. Last week in our Estimates hearings we talked about the reliability of that study and we were able to put that one to bed completely. The Minister has been completely selective in his research. There is research that has come out of Stanford University—the Minister might actually note that Stanford University is a big university—that shows that 80 percent of charter schools in the study performed either the same or worse than the local public schools: 80 percent. Why on earth are we looking at introducing something to this country that has an absolutely backward impact on the number of young people in this country?This is a sad day for education. This is an absolutely atrocious day. The other side should hang their heads in shame for what they are doing to the young people of this country. This is an absolute attack on quality public education. I do look forward to showing that throughout the select committee process and I do look forward to those members hanging their heads when they see the evidence of how bad charter schools are for young people in this country.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Members I need to insert that the question is that the motion be agreed to."