Shearer David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 22 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4633. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 Well that was Maurice Williamson’s long list of excuses as to why this economy is going down the tubes. You know Mr Williamson this country has experienced under this Government the worst economic growth since World War II. More than under any other Government since World War II—Labour or National—it is by far the worst. What we see Mr Williamson is 53000 people every year going to Australia because there is no hope in this country. The figures that came out just 2 days ago show that that rate is still increasing. Just imagine what our unemployment figures would be if we did not have the safety valve of the Tasman crossing. In the last 3 years 150000 people have crossed over. If you added that to our unemployment figures today we would be in triple figures almost in terms of unemployment. This Government does not offer any real hope for New Zealanders and that is why they are leaving. 
As I go around the country and I am speaking to people the one thing that I hear from people talking to me—and it is a recurring thing—is the lack of confidence they have in this Government in education. Our education system in New Zealand is one of the best in the world. You look at the statistics around the globe and we are consistently in the top 10 for reading for numeracy and for science. Yet this Government is determined to undermine that. Let us look at some of the mishaps we have had—if we want to call them that—over the last few weeks. The quality of teachers—actually we agree with the Government on this. Quality of teachers is really important and we have very good quality teachers. But you do not raise classroom sizes just to fund the quality of our teachers or increase the quality of teachers. The amazing thing about that is that this Government still believes that actually raising classroom sizes is a good thing. The reality of this is that it just felt it did not sell it well enough. It is not the fact that the whole proposition is completely wrong; it just did not sell it enough. 
The Government has stripped $60 million out of teacher support and in-service training. It has done that over the last 3 years but we are still not seeing alternative proposals or any sort of policies put up to further its claim that what we need to do is increase the quality of teachers. Instead what we have got is a series of ad hoc gimmicks around the area of education. The latest is charter schools. After we heard from this Government about the quality of teachers charter schools are going to be allowed to exist without teachers having qualifications. They do not actually need qualifications to be in charter schools. They do not need to have any training. It is extraordinary. Now you could have teachers in the “Maharishi Yoga School of”—whatever—“Transcendental Meditation” setting up some sort of school and they do not need to have classroom teachers. They could teach creationism or whatever Mr Banks would love them to teach. They do not have to teach to the curriculum. For God’s sake why do we have a curriculum? But what they can do is they can make a profit. They can take the taxpayers’ money and make a profit out of it. Well is that not just great—a profit-making charter school that does not have to be absolutely accountable to anybody and that is supposed to raise our education standards. 
The other day I went along to one of my local schools and I was speaking to the principal there. The principal said to me: “The number of children who come along to our school who have an English comprehension age of a 3-year-old is overwhelming.” Yet at year 6 when they leave that school they are all up to speed of where they should be. Do you know the interesting thing about that? The interesting thing about that school is that if you measure that school at year 4 it would be a failure under national standards. This is a school that is taking kids and taking them through 8 years in the space of 6 yet it is going to be branded as a failure. Those kids are going to be branded as failures and the teachers are going to be branded as failures yet it is a fantastic school in my electorate. Thank you.