Delahunty CatherineCATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou ko tēnei pō. I would like to just congratulate the member who put up this bill Nanaia Mahuta. I think that she is a person who has a long tradition of working for communities understanding the needs of the people she represents and caring about what happens in the education system. This is a narrow effective and just piece of legislation which should go through. If it does not it just shows the double standard that she mentioned in her speech. But really I found that the previous speakers from the National Party and ACT do not seem to understand the concept of transparency in a modern constitutional educational framework.The point my friends of having the Official Information Act (OIA) and the Ombudsmen Act is so that when things go wrong there is somebody who is a higher independent voice who can check on behalf of the vulnerable and maintain democracy and transparency in education. That is why the Ombudsman came and said that the four provisions of the Ombudsmen Act should apply. I know this is a serious issue. I know this bill matters because I receive many calls from people who are struggling in the State system as well but at least in the State system they can say to me Will you write an Official Information Act request to the school about this child of mine who has experienced abuse?" or exclusion or something very serious. And yes I do that and yes that can be done because it is State money and it should be held to account.It is also a State institution that has to respect the human rights of the students. But for some mad reason a completely unjustifiable reason these schools—when it suits them they are State schools and when it suits the Government they are not subject to these provisions. I can say without exposing more detail that there are people who have contacted me whose children are in charter schools and are experiencing the same kind of vulnerability and they cannot use the Ombudsman or the OIA and they want to. They have no redress through the system because Nanaia Mahuta's bill is not law yet.It is fine to talk about quarterly reports—I read those quarterly reports—but it has got nothing to do with potential human rights abuses. They do not appear in the innovation jargon of the education sector reports on charters. So why are the Government and the ACT Party so keen to sacrifice the rights of our children? It is extraordinary. The stories that come to me are deeply painful and they tell me that some of the charters are doing no better—in fact worse—because they are subject to less scrutiny which means these children who are supposed to be priority learners and who are supposed to get all this benefit have no protection under the law. For shame! These children deserve better. As we heard at the select committee today there are many reasons why we need scrutiny of these charter schools because we heard today that some charter schools' results when they claim 100 percent achievement turn out under the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand methodology to be 60 percent achievement. It is mickey mouse education if it is reported wrongly.That is about achievement statistics but even more significant is when things go wrong. God knows Whangaruru charter school was a disaster for those students whom everyone on the Government side seems to have forgotten about—a disaster for those kids—and these parents who approach me and ask for help do not have this natural justice this redress that other State schools receiving State funds have. It is just wrong and it is just unfair and I will be very disappointed if this bill is not supported. We need to protect the rights of our children—the most vulnerable—in all of our schools not just the public schools which are open to the OIA and the Ombudsmen Act but particularly the privatised contract-based ones.Dr Jian Yang the previous speaker made an argument about how the contract protects. The contract protects nothing. The contract protects the concept that education is private business that we cannot hold to account. That is shameful. We need to hold all of it to account and we need to support this excellent bill. Kia ora tātou katoa."