Jackson WillieHon WILLIE JACKSON (Labour): What a load of nonsense from the previous speaker Nikki Kaye. As the only person in this House who has set up a charter school I think I come from a much more informed base. What a load of nonsense in terms of the Māori leadership and what they're trying to do at the moment—Māori leadership who are very close to myself: Sir Toby Curtis my wife's uncle; Whaea Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi someone we love very much particularly Māori members in this House; and Lance O'Sullivan who doesn't know what political party to join and is disoriented most of the time sadly.When you talk about Māori independence when you talk about tino rangatiratanga try to come from an informed base because that member is not coming from an informed base at all. Māori tried the system out—the system that the National Party allocated 0.1 percent of their funding to. That was their commitment to charter schools. They weren't interested in charter schools. My whanaunga Hekia Parata was involved in it. They were not interested. I know this because Mr Seymour told me. So I know that for an absolute fact. Now they're interested because it serves their political purposes. Now they are the great advocates for Māori. Now they're worried about what's happening. At the end of nine years—Nuk Korako: Fifty-nine Treaty settlements.Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —we found out and that Māori member should know—34 percent of Māori leave school without qualifications.Nicola Willis: So what are you doing about it?Hon WILLIE JACKSON: What we're doing about it is we're going to get a mainstream right to incorporate the values and the principles we learnt.I know you see because we set up a school and we set up a school because it was going to be set up less than one kilometre from our marae—less than one kilometre from our marae. And when we heard that we felt at the Manukau Urban Māori Authority that we should give this a shot. It wasn't about embracing the free market model that Nikki Kaye and the National Party and David Seymour want to promote. It wasn't about embracing that; it was about embracing our tamariki. It was about embracing our kids giving our children opportunity. And in our organisation we dealt with prisoners who had to go back into the community. We dealt with disorientated youth. We dealt with domestic violence. We dealt with every aspect of Te Ao Māori. So we decided to give the charter school a crack—and why not? We put up my wife as the principal—my wife who's been a long-time educator. And we had people like Barbara Ala'alatoa and others who were advisers and supporters. We gave it a crack. Why wouldn't we give it a crack when your kids are failing? We gave it a crack and our kids came through the system and did well. There's no doubt about that.But through that process there were a lot of anomalies that appeared in terms of our school—the compliance and the reportage were just ridiculous. My wife was working until one o'clock in the morning every night trying to get reportage back to maintain that school. It's ridiculous. Mr Seymour knows this. He acknowledged this. We had compliance costs on my—I would say today if I supported charter schools I would not be standing for the Labour Party now. But we saw at the coalface when a board was meeting every night when the principal was working till one o'clock in the morning when a small community organisation had to foot every cost because the National Party only wanted to give 0.1 percent to the charter schools that it was a flawed model—a flawed model.Simeon Brown: How did the children do at your school?Hon WILLIE JACKSON: The student achievements at charter schools were expected to be—some schools were at least meant to be 20 percent higher than mainstream. And we were dealing with students who were excluded from mainstream that had already been given up on. So stop trying to promote something that clearly clearly wasn't working for us.Brett Hudson: The member said it did work.Hon WILLIE JACKSON: You make things work—you make things work within the system. You know you can change as you go through. We would try anything to turn around our kids—anything. And the reality is that just because we embraced the model for a little while it did not mean that mainstream shouldn't work. As our Minister of Education said today mainstream should allow and embrace all kids. Mainstream should embrace all kids. We need to learn the lessons in terms of the charter schools—learn the lessons in terms of tikanga Māori in terms of whānau ora in terms of looking after prisoners when they come back into the society. A quarter of our kids' fathers were in jail. Should mainstream still be looking after those kids? Of course they should—of course they should. These are the things we did under charter schools. We should be able to do them under mainstream. There is acknowledgment from everyone that that could and should happen. So we have become converts; we challenged mainstream. We said This is what we do. Can we embrace? Can we change? Can we do things?" The answer is yes yes yes yes. And you can do it in a character school; you can do it in an integrated school—[Interruption]. You can. You don't know—you weren't involved. You're not involved. All you're interested in putting down this side. You have no experience.Our people who have worked at the coalface—people you appointed like Barbara Ala'alatoa worked on my board. They were our advisers; they were our supporters and now they're saying mainstream must adopt and embrace what we have learnt within the charter school system. Stop waffling on about stuff you don't know. And Māori here stop trying to challenge us about what we are doing. In terms of our Māori leadership they are a leadership who I have the utmost respect for in terms of things they've done through their lives. But on this particular kaupapa they are being used by the National Party and by the ACT Party.Nicola Willis: Shame on you.Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Shame on you—I've told them to their faces. I tell them to their faces. These are people who I've worked with who wouldn't even know if you walked across and met them—wouldn't even know who they were. We are being used. Iwi leadership who come to the party here I asked them today to relook at what's happening here. We know that mainstream has not delivered at times in the past but people like Jan Tinetti and others in this Whare today have learnt the lessons have put the challenges are putting the challenges to our Minister of Education who has been terrific in accepting some of those challenges and saying to mainstream "Mainstream should be for everyone."And the charter school model for us failed. David Seymour would say the same thing if he was being completely honest. He knows the type of support he got from the National Party which was absolutely minimal—absolutely minimal. They didn't care at all about what he was talking about. They just wanted to tick a box.So I say today: congratulations to our party for listening to everyone for accepting criticism for understanding the Māori position. And myself Peeni Henare and Kelvin Davis stand by our schools who have gone through quite a process. We reject some of the lies that have come in the Facebook posts and the madness that has come from some of the people who keep waffling on about these schools being closed. Not one school has been closed—not one school has been closed. And even Alwyn Poole has become a convert and has said stop the rubbish and stop the lies. They have Alwyn Poole: the biggest critic of us early on is now a convert—is now a convert. So the Opposition must understand that they have lost badly.Nuk Korako: Is that all you've got? PR work.Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Stop trying to use Māori. Stop trying to promote something that is not true. A free market model Nuk will never ever ever resonate with our people. We must make mainstream understand our side of things in terms of tikanga Māori. Mainstream is doing that right across the spectrum and we should be able to do it in health and housing and we're doing it now in education. And you have an obligation Nuk Korako to stand up today and support what we're doing instead of constantly putting out the waffle and nonsense that your right-wing—anyway I won't carry on—party waffles on about. Nō reira tēnei te mihi ki a koutou tēnā koutou katoa."