Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I thought I'd take a little bit of a different angle to this speech. My colleague Jan Logie just spoke about the fact that it was so hard for her as an adult to learn a second language and I can completely appreciate it. Having grown up in Holland there's no other way that you could have grown up speaking another language because if you grow up in a country where English is not the first language you will automatically pick up another one to be able to cope outside of your country. So I was born in the Netherlands and my first language is Dutch. But funnily enough that wasn't the first language I spoke because in the Netherlands they don't dub movies and they don't dub TV programmes and the first programme I watched was Sesame Street or as they say in Germany Sesamstrasse. So I could count to 10 in German before I could even count to 10 in Dutch and that was the way that you grew up—it was similar. So I didn't learn a lot of the different languages at school. I just picked it up from TV and programmes. Having said that I did take six languages at school because that was my strength and I'd like to think that somehow it does boost brain power when you learn a different language. My son Max grew up bilingual and I would like to tell a little story about that in Dutch. I will translate it into English afterwards. Vanaf het moment dat Max geboren werd sprak ik Nederlands tegen hem. In feite deed ik dat al voordat hij geboren werd. En hoewel zijn vader een Kiwi is had hij ook Nederlands geleerd terwijl wij in Nederland woonden. Dus het was heel makkelijk voor ons gezin om samen Nederlands te praten. Maar in het begin dacht ik altijd dat het géén goed idee was. Hij haalde de woorden door elkaar en sprak altijd zijn eigen taaltje. Maar zodra hij 5 jaar oud was viel het allemaal op zijn plek en sprak hij allebei de talen vloeiend. En dat is hartstikke leuk want nu kan hij met zijn familie zijn opa en oma in Nederland praten. Ik heb ook gemerkt dat hij makkelijk andere talen oppakt—Spaans Te Reo Māori—en we weten dat uit onderzoek een tweede taal spreken is zeker heeft zeker veel voordelen.So basically translated I said that I spoke Dutch to my son Max before he was even born and I continued to do that all through his growing up. It was easy for me to do that because his dad when we lived in Holland also learnt to speak Dutch and the contrast is quite significant because my son picked it up from being a small child and just learning it very easily—automatically it just basically got into his system—whereas for my husband it was a much more difficult process as an adult to try and learn this language. Actually I want to say to parents who are bringing up their child bilingual: don't be scared to continue on with it. It may seem for a while that the child seems quite confused. As my colleague Jo Luxton said they start mixing up the different words with a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you think Oh my goodness what have I done? Have I brought this child up the wrong way?" but at some stage it will fall into place. They'll know exactly what to use when and you'll see that they pick up other languages much more easily. So my son picked up some Spanish when they had that at primary school and Te Reo Māori. It all became really easy for him and the great advantage for him of course is that he has a really good link to his heritage and to his identity and he can speak to his family in the Netherlands and he makes those connections with his grandparents for example. Now the fact is that he picks up the other languages quickly because as they say speaking one language makes it easier to speak another but we do know from research that speaking a language can improve brain functions like problem solving multitasking and decision making. It could even be said that speaking another language can help you make more rational decisions but I think I'd leave the door wide open for other people to dispute that so I won't be going on to that. I'm really looking forward to looking into the research and to investigating this matter when it comes to our select committee. It will be great to find out whether or not all this research will add to the benefits that we're hoping it might. On a very different note in the 52nd Parliament six MPs at the time chose to repeat our Oath of Allegiance in different languages with them being Hindi Tongan Samoan Dutch Korean and Mandarin and that is a real testament to New Zealand being an inclusive and diverse country. I think having us looking at this particular topic is a really positive thing and I'm looking forward to it coming to our select committee. So I too support the bill and I commend it to the House to go to select committee. Thank you Madam Speaker."