Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm pleased to take what will be a short call on the Education (Strengthening Second Language Learning in Primary and Intermediate Schools) Amendment Bill. I say a short call" because it's obvious where this bill is going tonight and that is that it will not proceed. But I would like to start by acknowledging Nikki Kaye and the incredible work she did around this bill and the fact that she started the conversation—through her unique way of doing that she got us all to this point where we are now talking and the Minister of Education is now talking about a national languages strategy. That is something that would not be under way if it wasn't for the very tenacious Nikki Kaye so we owe her a huge debt of gratitude. I was looking back over her first reading speech and she acknowledged in that speech that the bill wasn't perfect. She knew that there were flaws in the bill and she had hoped that some of those things would be able to be ironed out through the select committee process and via working with the Minister. But as it turned out at select committee some of those things were insurmountable and not able to be worked through. In fact I would actually argue that there wasn't much appetite to actually work through those issues collegially. It was very apparent quite early on in fact in the select committee that this bill wasn't going to stand a chance. But in saying that I would like to thank all of the submitters who came. They were incredibly passionate about the languages that they came to represent. My favourite submitter was—I forget his name—the man who came to talk to us about Latin. Never had I wanted to learn Latin so much in my entire life than after listening to that man and his particularly passionate speech about Latin. What this has done though has made us all think about the incredible benefits of learning a second language in terms of brain development cultural competency and economic impact with the business and trade links that open up to us if we speak multiple languages. If you think about every other country in the world or most other countries in the world they offer second languages in fact many countries offer more than one language. And if you look at countries like the UK who have just adopted this within the last decade we are certainly far behind those other countries. We had with this bill I guess a really wonderful opportunity to give our youngest learners—our year 1 to 8s—the opportunity to develop parts of their brains that they wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to do by learning a second language learning about other people's cultures and opening their minds to the world. We heard from the ministry that their view was that the bill wasn't consistent with the Treaty of Waitangi and we did point out that this didn't take away from the things that already exist. School boards have to make best efforts to have te reo Māori and tikanga Māori in their schools—it didn't take away that it just added something extra on top. We have to remember that in reality most schools would have chosen te reo Māori around the country and would have been funded for that. So the fact that we're not passing this bill tonight is really taking away a huge amount of benefit to the Māori language and the fact that it won't be able to be funded in that way and so we go back to what we already have. The bill although it had flaws—and the Minister mentioned some of those and we weren't able to work through those—has returned unchanged. It did have some quite good parts to it in that it required school boards to consult with their communities and to make sure that they selected a priority language that was in keeping with the wishes of their community and their parents. As I said most schools would have chosen te reo Māori I believe. So while we're not progressing with this bill I'd like to reiterate what I said at the start which is that we now are at a much more progressed state than we were before Nikki Kaye fought so hard for this bill. I was encouraged by the Minister's words in his speech about how much he values the learning of a second language for our youngest learners and he fact that he has got the ministry doing work on that is extremely encouraging. I think that if Nikki Kaye is watching or goes back and watches these speeches she will feel encouraged and proud that she started the conversation and that work is under way that would not have been under way and that work would not have been done if it was not for her efforts—incredible efforts—in this area. So Nikki well done and we will keep fighting. Thank you Madam Speaker."