SpeechDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. It's a pleasure to rise this evening to speak to the first reading of the Education (Strengthening Second Language Learning in Primary and Intermediate Schools) Amendment Bill. I think this is the most consequential bill that we've discussed today for the future of our people and our nation. I'd like to start off by acknowledging the Hon Nikki Kaye.This is a fantastic bill and I'm so proud that it is a National Party MP that is bringing this to the House. But I thought I'd just take a step back today and tell you a personal story of a situation since I've lived overseas to give you a sense of the importance of languages for New Zealanders when they're abroad and New Zealanders when they're home. This personal story takes me back to the time when I was a young policy analyst at the OECD in Paris. I was sitting down at a meeting. In my team my head of division was Italian my direct boss was French and my colleagues were Russian Ukrainian English French and German. In the course of this one-hour-long meeting the conversation shifted between languages from French to Italian to German to Russian and a small fraction of that was in English. That is an example of the struggles that many Anglophones or English-only speakers face when they're overseas.I learnt very very little from that conversation over that hour-long period. Over the course of those few years I struggled because I hadn't had a second or third language behind me. I say that because in fact many New Zealanders struggle with learning a second language. There were many New Zealanders at the OECD in Paris; few of them knew any other languages other than English. I think that this is quite common in Anglophone countries where we assume that everybody else in the world speaks our own language and so we have a bit of a—possibly—arrogant attitude when we go out there in the world today.Research indicates that actually learning languages gets better the more you learn; so the marginal effort to learn a language—whether it's a second or third—actually gets easier and easier. So with respect to the conversation we've been having about Te Reo and the importance of Te Reo—and I absolutely acknowledge the importance of Te Reo in this country—we should be agnostic on whatever languages are taught and whatever languages our kids learn because we know that the marginal effort to learn a third or fourth or fifth language reduces significantly.So this is just such a fantastic bill. I just want to again reiterate the importance—we've talked about domestically but it's also really important in that we've got a million expatriate New Zealanders travelling the world doing well in the commercial sectors overseas and it's extremely important that we arm these Kiwis with the tools they need to succeed in the world today. We've talked about languages like Mandarin which is extremely important for where we are placed in this geographical context.So I am really really excited about this bill and look forward to hearing all the submissions during the Education and Workforce Committee process. Let's not forget about the vision here. The vision is that when kids leave school they all know a second language. This bill is a part of that but it's not the only measure that I think we need to take in order to get us down that long-term strategic path. Another thing that I'd like to see in this debate is the role of things like exchange programmes because quite frankly actually learning languages is best when you're immersed in those languages. I want to do a special shout-out to two schools in my electorate: Birkdale North School in Birkdale who does French and Māori immersion; and Birkdale Primary School who do Māori immersion. So we commend this bill to the House—looking forward to select committee.