Cunliffe David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1429. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Kia ora to the Government. Kia ora to New Zealanders. It is our first day back in this House. It was a bit hard getting my tie on. I do not know about members opposite but it certainly chafes on this neck. I want to say a quick thankyou to all the Kiwis whom I met over the summer break because I had a good long time off. What I rediscovered whether it was from Cape Reinga to the South Island is that New Zealanders are fair decent wonderful people—fair decent wonderful people. They want to do well; they want their neighbour to do well too. One thing they are not though is they are not by and large ideological. They are practical. Kiwis are down-to-earth folks. So they would be scratching their heads if they knew what was behind this bill.Take the charter schools stuff. Imagine a kind of school that has unqualified teachers that does not have to teach the curriculum that is not subject to the normal accountabilities and that gets three times as much money per student. Try explaining that to your average plumber in Timaru. They would go: “Why?”. The member who has just resumed his seat Paul Foster-Bell is trying to dress up this piece of ideology as some sort of social service initiative. Bunkum! It is about the interests of private providers driving a wedge through the public education system. So to the plumber in Timaru: “Mate that is what this is all about—their money not your kids.”In bringing us to the tertiary education bit for a moment I was tempted to think that Steven Joyce had lost his marbles. Exhibit A is a press report that says 1600 submissions to one the public hates this piece of legislation. Steven Joyce the master tactician has put up a piece of legislation so politically stinky that people voted against it in submissions 1600 to one. Why? Why would a smart guy like Mr Joyce do something that dumb? The answer is that this is part of an ongoing ideological agenda. First they take the guts out of student unions by creating a free-rider problem through voluntary student membership. And then they knacker university councils by taking university staff and students off them. What the heck is a university for if not to educate students and to provide employment for staff? Why would you not want them on your council? The answer that the Government has come up with: “Because it’s more efficient.”God you can hear Margaret Thatcher can you not? You can hear Margaret Thatcher from this far distance. Did these Tories learn nothing? I will tell you one lesson they are going to learn again over the next 3 years. It is that New Zealanders have had just about enough of this ideological claptrap and they want to get back to common sense. They want a school system that is about their kids and where everyone gets a fair go. The kid of a miner or a driver and the kid of a doctor can both aspire to be the best they can be. That starts off at preschool. It goes through primary school intermediate and high school and it goes through tertiary education. They want tertiary institutions—universities polys and others—to be responsive. That is why we want students on university councils and staff on university councils not Margaret Thatchers returned to New Zealand education through Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata. Thank you.