O'Connor Simon: General DebateText is subject to correctionO'Connor Simon: General Debate[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15247. Text is subject to correction.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Well that was all rather jejune really. A little bit boring.Hon Shane Jones: Turgid?SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes. You have to look it up actually. It is a quality of a good education and most of my life has actually been under a National education. As a great fan ofsesquipedalianism I am very happy to be here today.There is one word that I am not allowed to use today. So I want instead to use the word “irony” or the word “duplicity”. Thank goodness there is not an international ranking of Opposition parties that makes sense because that lot across there would be in a lot of trouble. Consider the logic that we have heard today. Consider the rhetoric and the logic that we have heard today. The Opposition is incredibly happy to compare us with international standards but is not willing to allow national standards.Let us just sit with that again.Chris Auchinvole: Say that again?SIMON O’CONNOR: Those members have been sitting with the Programme for International Student Assessment things today Chris. They have been saying: “Oh look at all these Programme for International Student Assessment standards. We are going to use them to try to clobber the Government.” Yet of course then they are against national standards. There seems to be a certain irony here. Today National is pleased toknow how New Zealand is doing compared with the rest of the world but Labour seems to be talking a lot about that today too. Where we differ—Hon Shane Jones: Which planet? Uranus?SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh terrible! Here is a man who is attempting to be scientific by knowing about the planets. He probably still thinks that there are nine planets in the solar system.Anyway where we differ on this whole standards issue is that we believe that New Zealand parents should have the same access to the knowledge about how their children are doing as everyone else. But here we have heard again from Labour from the Greens and from New Zealand First: “Oh we are very happy to accept international standards and understand where New Zealand stands there but parents you should not know about how your children are doing. That would be terrible.” In fact Chris Hipkins whom I have got a lot of time for basically was saying that the next Labour Government—whenever that might happen God forbid—would scrap national standards. But it does not seem entirely committed to that.Labour tells us that it would like a scheme to track student progress against the national curriculum.Chris Auchinvole: Oh!SIMON O’CONNOR: Chris says: “We think that”—another Chris the Mr Hipkins one—“parents deserve quality information about how their kids are doing.” But I am not sure exactly what that means when you look at what we have already got with national standards. Maybe Labour the Greens and others want some sort of holistic feel-good assessment in which juggling basket weaving and tree hugging are ranked alongside secondary concerns like reading writing and arithmetic. It is very depressing that the major aim of this Labour Party is to deny parents and the Government straightforward information on how their children and their schools are doing. That has been the irony of the debate throughout today—this huge desire to use the international standards of Programme for International Student Assessment to attack the national standards.Hon Shane Jones: What about astrology?SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh no! You do not want to do astrology. It is astronomy.Hon Shane Jones: That’s what your coalition partner’s into—astrology.SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh no no! That is your group down here actually. You want to go and look at some of theHansard debates from the Greens in particular with their sort of Gaia worship and other things.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Have you ever met Catherine Delahunty?SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely—indeed. I think my colleague Minister Finlayson points it out very well.In fact that is one of the other ironies today. We have all this talk of science from the Opposition saying that it is all about democracy. Well it is only democracy to the Opposition if it gets its way.Tim Macindoe: “Do it our way.”SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely. We saw what happened with the Greens when one of their party members dared to challenge the leadership. Was he allowed a democratic manner? Definitely not.Tim Macindoe: That was democratic wasn’t it?SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely. Democracy. Absolutely perfect.And science—oh they are all about science. Well let us talk about the science of genetic engineering. Let us talk about the science of genetic modification. Let us talk about the science around drug use. But oh no! The Greens and Labour are not so much interested in that. They are very very selective.We are a Government committed to education. I see that firsthand in my own electorate ofTāmaki. Almost 89 percent of young people inTāmaki have achieved National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2. They are achieving over the target that this Government has set. They are achieving not only because of what the Government is driving but because we have excellent teachers. I think that amongst all the debate today is an element of thanks that is required still to our teachers who do an enormous effort going around and visiting the various principals and teachers of my schools—secondary and primary. They do an amazing job for our kids. I think most of them—teachers in Auckland and New Zealand—are not afraid to have some standards and have some tests. If we want to help our children we need to know how they are operating. Thank you very much.