Martin TraceyTRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Firstly can I thank the Minister Hekia Parata for her answers to some of the earlier questions. I do want to go back to the Minister's conversation around the lack of need to actually put in the word equity". I think she is referring to Catherine Delahunty's Supplementary Order Paper 301 which Catherine Delahunty referred to in her earlier contribution. I accept what the Minister said with regard to the objective bullet points and I thank her for it. However it would be our view that in the bullet points she is talking to "equity" is the recognition of difference as a different starting point shall we say? I think the Minister has to address it right now with regard to decile funding. The original situation with regard to decile funding was to address different starting points with regard to resources. That is what I think Catherine Delahunty is attempting to address specifically in the particular objectives that the Minister drew out.New Zealand First will be supporting that particular Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 301 because in our view they are slightly different. It is around making sure that we have recognition that there are different starting points and that those starting points must be addressed to at least get our students to the same place before the objectives start to kick in. Possibly the Minister might just take that on for a second and consider that.Perhaps I should declare a conflict of interest. I was one of the members of a board of trustees that participated in the consultation that took place for the 2-year period.I would like to suggest that the Minister make public the consultation documents put together by her officials. That may actually fill a hole—that silence that always means somebody else is going to put a conversation into. When I participated in that consultation process I observed that many things were off the table that have appeared inside this bill. They are in later clauses—for example the ability to appoint a trustee to the board of trustees and make that person the presiding trustee or the chair. We will get on to that later because it is in a different section and a different Supplementary Order Paper.Just to be clear New Zealand First will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 292 and Chris Hipkins' Supplementary Order Paper 304. Catherine Delahunty's Supplementary Order Paper 301 on the inclusion of "and to focus on equity as a key goal for the education system"—I would suggest that there is no harm in including equity as a key goal of the education system Minister. I believe it is something we all want to achieve. We want to make sure that every single one of our young people has the best opportunity and I hear the Minister articulate that all the time. So "Why not?" would be the question and I understand the Minister is pointing to the objectives but perhaps we could go a bit further.With regard to Catherine Delahunty's Supplementary Order Paper 303 the Minister also addressed this and we thank her for that. It is about that commitment of our education system to lifelong intergenerational learning. It would appear somewhat odd considering that all of us have had slogans during election years and have had continual—this piece of language "lifelong learning" is a continual statement inside all educational conversations whether they be political or whether they be with NGOs and so on and so forth. So New Zealand First will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 303 merely to make it clear that there is no end to this and the State does have a responsibility to make sure that all its citizens can continue to advance can continue to upskill and can continue to change.Does that mean we go back to Moroccan cooking classes? No I do not think it does and let us be clear that was never funded by the State to start with. But what it does mean is that we have people continuing to evolve and the State has a responsibility: if we do not want people to fall off the employment pathway we need to keep them on the educational pathway. So we will also be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 303.As I say there is a minimum of 10 Supplementary Order Papers. I would like to talk about Supplementary Order Paper 302. Again this is in the name of Catherine Delahunty and I apologise to my colleague but we cannot support this Supplementary Order Paper. We have a concern about capacity actually more than we have a concern about anything else and we also take on board some of the Minister's comments that she has made leading up to this point.There is a Te Reo Māori curriculum and it will be interesting once the National Education and Learning Priorities and the objectives all get fleshed out to see where the place of the Te Reo Māori curriculum for English-medium schools and Māori-medium schools is. Where is that? Where is that going to be placed in those educational learning priorities? The reality is that when things are placed in the learning priorities there will need to be budgetary items downstream from that and they will need to be funded by the State. That is a natural progression. So if the Te Reo Māori curriculum is finally given some higher status in the learning priorities alongside The New Zealand Curriculum then budget will need to be attached to that.So we would be interested in having downstream conversations about that in terms of how that can be given greater status and how teachers of Māori can be better resourced to deliver support to mainstream English-medium teachers to do what they should be doing which is interweaving Te Reo Māori through everyday classrooms. I know that we talked last night about the code of conduct being developed by the Education Council and how there must be support for our mainstream teaching staff to be able to pronounce children's names. I do not meet many teachers—actually I do not meet any teachers—who deliberately go out of their way to do that. Others may be able to speak to that but I do not. But the teachers whom I do meet are those who are too frightened of getting it wrong and who want some support. While we cannot support Supplementary Order Paper 302 we do believe—we hope—that as the National Education and Learning Priorities get fleshed out the Te Reo Māori curriculum will perhaps be elevated into those themes.I will talk now about Supplementary Order Paper 293 and it is going to be the last one I am going to get to in this contribution. It is my Supplementary Order Paper and it is around shifting the cohort entry age to being after the fifth birthday. I am struggling to understand Minister and I hope you can provide me with some enlightenment on why it is 4 years 10 months. I mean again a void has been there. We were unable to get any explanation of that from the officials at the select committee. We have got a piece of paper where Treasury showed that there would be a predicted $11.3 million saving out of the early childhood education spend. We hesitate to think that that is the driver behind setting an age that is actually lowering the school entry age Minister. We were not provided with any evidence that it was educationally better for students to actually go into school at 4 years 10 months.I recognise and you and I both know Minister that cohort entry had been around for a long time. Boards of trustees have been able to do it. What this is about is it has actually made it so that cohort entry could be made for 4 years 10 months. Previously it had to be after the fifth birthday. It was never written anywhere but children did not start school until after 5 and this now actually implements the truancy process should those children then start to not attend school on a regular basis.So if the Minister could just address that with the question of Supplementary Order Paper 293—would the Minister support making an amendment so that for the cohort entry all other things would remain the same except that the child must enter the cohort after their fifth birthday not at the closest cohort entry at 2 months before their fifth birthday? Thank you."