Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
Moroney Sue: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise and speak in the first reading debate on the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). I was very excited when I saw this bill tabled in Parliament just last week because I thought that maybe the Government was about to do something about the shambles it had created in education. Maybe I thought this was the time when it would introduce legislation to reverse the funding cuts it meted out to the early childhood education sector at the last Budget in May 2010. I thought that maybe that was what the Government was amending in the Education Act 1989 but I was disappointed to find that that was not the case. Perhaps it was the Government’s opportunity to realise that it had made an absolute shambles of the national standards in the primary school sector. Maybe the amendment to the Act would address that critical issue in the country but I was disappointed on that front as well. 
Perhaps the Minister had realised that it was not OK to try to resolve the very serious bullying issues that are going on in our schools at the moment simply by sending a letter to schools. Perhaps the Minister had been all along working on a legislative approach to that very big problem that our secondary schools in particular are facing at the moment but that is not to be addressed either. 
I wondered whether in fact this bill might retrospectively show a realisation on the Government benches that cutting funding for adult and community education was a big mistake as well but the bill did not recognise that issue. I thought in a last-ditch attempt that maybe—just maybe—this Government had realised that recessionary times were the very best time to allow New Zealanders wanting to get that step-up in their lives to access a tertiary education if they had not had the opportunity to do that at any other time and that the Government could do that by lifting the cap on tertiary institutions and investing in skills development for this country’s future but I was to be disappointed on that front as well. This is very much a lost opportunity. The Education Amendment Bill (No 4) could have addressed the significant issues at the heart of this country’s problems as we go forward into the future. That is what education is all about. It is the best opportunity for this country to build its future and sadly this bill does not address any of those issues. 
But what more can we expect from a Government whose goal it seems is to lower wages in this country—as a strategy. Bill English is now telling this country that he is deliberate about having wages 30 percent lower in New Zealand than they are in Australia. He thinks that having lower wages will give us a competitive advantage. Well that is not the vision on this side of the House; I can inform listeners to this debate of that very fact. That is why I was worried but not surprised to see that the Government had once again failed to take an opportunity by introducing an education amendment bill that would do something to make a difference in terms of lifting living standards in this country and lifting people’s opportunities to get the very best education. The Government has missed the opportunity in this bill to address those very substantial issues. 
However on the issues that are in front of us in this amendment bill I will say that Labour is prepared to support the bill to select committee so that we can hear how the public responds to it. I am pleased to say that we will get to hear from the public this time. We never ever heard from the public on national standards and look at the shambles that has turned out to be. Not one parent teacher student or board of trustees member got to come to this Parliament and say what they thought about the concept principle or legislation on national standards. They never got that opportunity and therefore we have the shambles that is in front of us now. National standards are a complete and utter shambles and it started from that process. Just this weekend 750 principals voted no confidence in the Government’s education policy. 
Jo Goodhew 
: They did not. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Oh yes they did I say to Mrs Goodhew. They absolutely did. 
Jo Goodhew 
: I read the press release. That’s not what it said. 
SUE MORONEY 
: They voted no confidence in the education policy of the Government and they voted no confidence in the leadership given by the Minister over the introduction of national standards. If the Government has not heard that and if it is in denial about that it does not listen and it is completely out of touch with what is happening in the education sector. The Government does not want to hear from the leaders of the school communities the principals up and down the country—750 of them. It is unprecedented. For the first time ever the Principals Federation voted no confidence in the Government’s education policy. I think it is a great shame that Government members opposite are shaking their heads because they have not heard it or they do not care. That is how out of touch they are with the current issues facing the education sector. 
This bill however introduces some positive changes. They are not the changes that we really need to see made to our education system none the less there is a little bit of tinkering around the edges which is what this Government tends to do. We would like to hear the views of the sector on those changes. We support the creation of a new Crown agency to cover export education because that is a vital part of our economy and it needs to be properly managed and fostered. 
We approve of the introduction of stricter rules on the registration of private training establishments. That is also welcome to Labour but we are keen to hear what the sector has to say on that. I say “the sector” and my definition of the sector includes those who work in the industry and those who use it so we want to hear from the students the families of the students and the training providers. The private training industry is an important part of the tertiary sector and cases of qualification-selling and falsifying results do harm to that sector to students and to New Zealand’s reputation so we look forward to supporting the aspects of this bill that will help to resolve that problem and tidy it up. 
Here is the real doozy to do with this bill: student levies. This Government now wants to pretend that it wants to sort out the huge increase in student levies that has happened under its watch in tertiary institutions up and down the country. Here is the real joke: the right hand does not know what the right foot is doing. Another bill that came from the ACT Party but was supported by the Government is making institutions pick up more and more student services by getting rid of the student unions that provide those services now. The Government wants those student unions to go down the tubes. The student support services the unions provide will go with them and the institutions will be left to pick up that problem but this bill comes in to say the institutions should not even think about increasing levies on students as a result. We know that institutions will not get any increased funding from the Government so what are they to do? Student services will decrease and students will be the poorer for it.