Boscawen John: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Boscawen John: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9580] 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 This bill the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill as Kelvin Davis so eloquently explained is to amend the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Act 1910 to remove difficulties in administering property vested in the college where the intended purposes have now been made redundant. I listened to Te Ururoa Flavell’s speech very carefully and he spoke very proudly of his time at St Stephen’s College and that of Shane Jones and Hone Harawira. 
Kelvin Davis 
: Stick to the bill. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: I will get to the bill and I will get to it faster than did Te Ururoa Flavell. But I can also speak very proudly of my school because it actually has some relevance to this issue. In my maiden speech I made the mistake of saying I joined David Lange as the second MP from Otahuhu College in this Parliament. It was pointed out to me subsequently that I was wrong; Warren Freer preceded David Lange and now there are three MPs who went to Otahuhu College: Warren Freer David Lange and me. 
The reason I say that that has some relevance is that my father the late Owen Boscawen was a principal of Otahuhu College and following the 1981 school reunion a sum of money was left over. With that sum of money he established the Otahuhu College Foundation. That foundation was set up to administer the scholarships and bequests given to Otahuhu College. Some 30 years after he established that trust I today sit as a trustee on that foundation and I can appreciate the problems that Christ’s College has. Some of the money that was bequeathed to Otahuhu College goes back to the 1940s and 1950s—sums of £100 and £200 that were designed to provide scholarships ad infinitum. Of course the challenges for the trustees of Otahuhu College Foundation are exactly the same sort of challenges that the trustees of Christ’s College have—that is that circumstances change inflation does it work and money that is bequeathed certainly in pounds shillings and pence over time is devalued. So I think there is clearly a need for this bill. 
I was not intending to take a long call but I would like to comment on the speech made by Kelvin Davis. He asked why private schools should be granted the flexibility as to whether they implement national standards. That was the question: why should private schools have that flexibility as to whether they should have to implement national standards? I think that Kelvin Davis asked a very good question. I would like to ask the House what I think is a more important question: why can ordinary New Zealand pupils not have the flexibility to decide what school they go to? Why can they not have that flexibility to choose between a State school and a private school? My party the ACT Party recently led an inter-party working group on school choice and it was a recommendation of the Maori Party the ACT Party and the National Party members on that working party that the bottom 20 percent of students should in actual fact have that choice. The flexibility should not be only for those at private schools but the unanimous recommendation was that all students—certainly the bottom 20 percent—should have that choice. 
The ACT Party will be supporting the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill. From my own personal experience as a trustee of a school foundation a school trust I understand the need for flexibility and this party will be supporting the bill. Thank you.