Davis Kelvin; Williams PotoHon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)): Tēnā rā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tuatahi māku e hiahia ana ki te mihi atu ki ōku hoa minita arā ko Te Hon Chris Hipkins rāua ko Te Minita mō Ngā Take Mātauranga me Te Hon Jenny Salesa Te Minita Tuarua; nā rāua i kōkirihia tēnei pire ki roto i Te Whare. Kua hanga mīharo ana ahau. Kua hanga mīharo ahau kia rongo ai neke atu i te 2000 ngā kaitono i tukuna mai ō rātou whakaaro mō tēnei pire. He mea pai tērā i te mea he tini ngā tāngata e tukuna ana ō rātou whakaaro hei whakapakari ake whakapakari ai i tēnei pire.[Greetings to the Speaker. Firstly I would like to greet my ministerial colleagues the Hon Chris Hipkins the Minister for Education and the Hon Jenny Salesa the Associate Minister; they have led this bill in the House. I am amazed. I am amazed to hear that nearly 2000 submitters submitted their thoughts on this bill. That is great because many people are submitting their thoughts to strengthen to strengthen this bill.]First of all I'd just like to acknowledge the work done by the Hon Chris Hipkins the Minister of Education and the Hon Jenny Salesa for bringing this bill through the House and getting it here to its third reading stage. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the number of submissions—over 2000 submitters—who added their thoughts and gave their opinions to strengthen this bill. We of course welcome people when they contribute to democracy. So I welcome the amendments proposed in the bill as they will support better educational outcomes for our tauira—that is our students—and overall fairer treatment in the tertiary system. As my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa has expressed the bill aims to improve accountability strengthen monitoring of tertiary providers strengthen equitable treatment of tertiary education providers and broaden the student protection arrangements. So this Government wants to remove unnecessary elements and barriers and ensure that we have an education system that delivers for all students. The changes proposed in this bill are a reflection of this Government's priority for greater accountability in the education system and more equitable opportunities for all parts of the education system. It's also a reflection of this Government's priority to listen to Māori about what Māori aspirations are for education and how we can help them to reach those aspirations. As we know there is a gap between Māori achievement and non-Māori achievement. Our Government sincerely tries—and I'm sure the Opposition when they were in Government sincerely tried—to make sure that Māori achievement is as good as if not better than any other achievement of any other sectors of society. This Government is about supporting Māori to succeed as Māori. I particularly want to draw attention to the current treatment of our wānanga. So for those who don't know there are three wānanga: Te Wānanga o Aotearoa Te Wānanga o Raukawa and Te Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. I just want to he tuku atu ōku mihi ki a rātou mō ngā mahi e mahi ana rātou hei whakapakaria he whakahāpaitia i te mātauranga o ō tātou tauira Māori nā reira e tika ana kia mihi atu ki a rātou mō ā rātou mahi e whakapau ana ō rātou kaha kia tukuna ai Ngāi Māori mā kia angitū ai ki roto i tēnei ao hei Māori [express my acknowledgments to them for the work they carry out to strengthen to promote the education of our Māori students therefore it is right that I acknowledge them for their work the energy they expend so that Māori can be successful in this world as Māori].So it's important to acknowledge the work that those wānanga do: striving to allow our students to achieve academically but as Māori. I'd just like to acknowledge the work they do. At the moment private training establishments are able to apply to use protected terms such as university" or "polytechnic" but wānanga cannot. This isn't a level playing field. It's particularly unfair given that there is nothing stopping universities from using the word "wānanga" in their name—so Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau the University of Auckland—but a wānanga couldn't use the word "university". So there wasn't a level playing field and it's unfair given there's nothing stopping universities or polytechs using the term "wānanga" in their Māori names. A key shift in this bill is to allow wānanga to apply to use protected terms. This shift will provide wānanga with an avenue to pursue their aspirations and to be recognised as high-quality education institutions. Any tertiary education provider wanting to use protected terms already requires ministerial approval—a process that includes consultation with institutions and organisations deemed appropriate by the Minister. But for wānanga this bill also requires consultation with experts in Māori education who are knowledgable in āhuatanga Māori—that is in Māori tradition—according to tikanga Māori which is Māori custom within a kaupapa Māori pedagogy. This will give the Minister a fuller understanding of the wānanga in a Māori tertiary education context and it adds balance to the consultation process. This kind of consultation reflects the Government's wider focus on genuine and meaningful engagement with Māori and this is also the reason we have created the Crown-Māori relations portfolio. I'm pleased and proud to say that both as Associate Minister of Education and as the Minister for Crown/Māori Relations I've been able to engage with wānanga around their aspirations. In fact there's one wānanga that has had an issue that's been floating around for many years in fact and they were getting nowhere to the point that they decided to take their issue to the Waitangi Tribunal. Myself and Minister Hipkins visited this wānanga and in one meeting engaging with them personably and face to face we were able to basically say "Do we think we can sort out this issue within a matter of months? It's been going for a number of years. We think we can sort this out in a matter of months." Just by engaging with the wānanaga in both an educational sense but also in the Crown-Māori sense we were able to get what we believe is going to be a fine outcome for that wānanga. Just on that I said to them "I can engage with you as a Minister of the Crown and you as Māori or we can engage whanaunga to whanaunga." I think they appreciated that change of approach and I think it's going to reap rewards. So we want to reset the relationship between the Crown and Māori which has been less than ideal for the last 178 years. Like our broader work with Māori the changes in the bill recognise the importance of Māori having more say in education that impacts Māori. One possible reason why a wānanga might want to describe itself using a protected term is to help explain the institution to international partners and potential students and in fact for the wānanga that we engaged with that was indeed one of their aims. They wanted to be recognised as providing courses—internationally recognisable acceptable courses—and to be able to attract people from overseas because they are providing those high-quality courses. The term "wānanga" is not well-known or understood outside of New Zealand. For them being able to use the term "university" will help them. So as I said I recently met with one of the wānanga and they expressed that with this change they hope to open their doors to the world and market themselves as a world-leading indigenous university. That's how they want to be known and we believe—well we don't believe; we support that aspiration. The Ministry of Education hasn't received any evidence of reputational harm to universities or even to wānanga about this change. Although we've got a long way to go to address inequities in our education system we should be proud of the indigenous education system we have and that goes from kōhanga reo right through to kura kaupapa to wharekura and to our wānanga. Many indigenous communities from around the world look to Aotearoa as models of what can be done to grow and nurture indigenous language and knowledge systems. Growing Māori-medium education sector from kōhanga through to wānanga is a key priority for this Government. The change through this bill is one of the steps that we intend to take to improve and better support our wānanga and it is part of a wider goal to grow mātauranga Māori and support Māori succeeding as Māori. So more generally the bill is about increasing accountability in the tertiary sector. The bill supports better outcomes for students in the tertiary system by providing better tools to identify and manage questionable practices in tertiary education providers imposing higher consequences where contract breaches or legal activities are confirmed and by broadening protection arrangements for students starting—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the honourable Minister. His time has elapsed. Thank you."