Harawira Hone: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:664;Page:12338] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare. The end of the Government’s financial year sits uncomfortably close to te Matariki. It is the dawning of the Maori New Year; a time to reflect on the past and to look to the future. 
The essence of this bill on education is that it is as critical to our past and essential to our future as anything else that might arise over the next century. Just over 100 years ago at the Maori Congress in 1908 Hone Heke Ngapua the MP from Tai Tokerau argued for the teaching of Maori in native schools and for Maori to be recognised as a subject for university entrance. Eighty years later the Matawaia Declaration called for the establishment of a fully autonomous and independent Maori education authority to secure Maori control over Maori philosophies and educational practices. Just 9 years ago Tuwharetoa chief Tumu te Heuheu called a Hui Taumata Matauranga to bring together proposals for a separate tino rangatiratanga Maori education authority a new Maori Education Act and a Minister of Maori Education. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No he didn’t. That’s just not true. He rejected it. Pita Sharples put it up and the chief said no. I was there. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Central to all of these themes is our desire to give our kids a good start in life. Mr Mallard should open his ears. At no time did I say he approved it; I just said it was to bring together proposals. If Mr Mallard would just keep his mouth shut and his ears open he might hear and he might understand. 
We want to give kids a range of options for their future within an environment where schools engage with whanau to develop models of success and innovation. In order to ensure that Maori needs are genuinely met we want to see more Maori language teachers in all schools as well. So this bill raised a few hopes given that it targets early childhood secondary and tertiary programmes private schools and international students. But the reality is that every year  
Nga Haeata Matauranga - Annual Report on Maori Education 
 says that most schools are still struggling to meet the educational needs of Maori students. 
The first proposal in this bill is about early education. That is OK because 76 percent of all Maori kids are in mainstream early education centres. A few weeks back the Education Review Office report  
Success for Maori Children in Early Childhood Services 
 noted that only a third of services were helping Maori children to achieve. In other words two-thirds simply did not have effective processes in place to help Maori kids grow or even identify whether what they were doing for Maori kids was any good. So I was disappointed to note that the proposal in this bill was focused more on care arrangements in shopping malls and gyms than on education. We are OK with exempting these short-stop centres from full licensing standards as long as they still meet all the health and safety standards and have proper management in place but it is hardly the change we are looking for to help Maori children to learn. 
The second proposal to provide more opportunities for secondary school students to spend time learning in a tertiary environment or in the workplace is a great idea and one that many wharekura and secondary schools are already embracing. In fact it was the feature story in the 2007-08 nga haeata matauranga. One of Ngapuhi’s boys Sam Henare was head boy of Aotea College out in Porirua and also involved in Youth Apprenticeships. According to Sam the scheme gave him the real-life experience he needed to pursue an electrical apprenticeship—a combination of school the employer and the ElectroTechnology Industry Training Organisation. 
The third proposal is about establishing a fit and proper person requirement for managers of private schools—to make sure that they are not crooked crock or bankrupt. Again it is hardly a seismic shift in educational thinking. Sure some 1500 Maori kids are in private schools and them and their mates deserve to have decent people looking after them. But private schools are doing pretty well actually particularly given the $35 million doled out to them by the Government in 2009. 
The fourth proposal is to refund course fees for international students who leave their courses before they are completed. Good on them but it does not do anything to enhance Maori education. 
The $7 million spent on He Kakano to provide new forms of teaching and learning to lift Maori student achievement is great but teaching Pakeha teachers that they can get more out of their Maori students if they understand them better through Te Kotahitanga programme is a great idea as well. But there is a whole heap more we would like to see too: more commitment to kura kaupapa such as matching the $35 million for private schools in next year’s Budget; a dedicated and successful Maori language teachers recruitment strategy; the development of curriculum based around local hapu and iwi; more structured and positive engagement with whanau; and strong mentoring programmes to increase Maori participation and success in tertiary education to name just a few areas. 
This morning I chaired the Maori Affairs Committee inquiry into the tobacco industry. Two rangatahi spoke to our committee and I invited them to come and sit alongside us during the presentation from Philip Morris (New Zealand). The young man had a wonderful name made famous by the Jim Croce song “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and he gave a very strong and stirring presentation about the impact of the tobacco industry on him his parents’ generation and his grandparents’ generation. The young woman Mahinaarangi Torrey was also an excellent example of what can be achieved when Maori students are encouraged to believe that their Maoriness really is something special. She was well-educated well-presented well-spoken—a beautiful speaker in both English and Maori—and a credit to her school her whanau her hapu and her iwi. She is an example of what positive education for Maori can mean. 
Although we will be supporting this bill we would have liked to see more emphasis on excellence than on logistics. I would like to close by telling a little story about a Minister of Education who came to Mangamuka marae some years ago and who stood up to talk about schools and Maori education. Maori principals had been there for some hours before he had arrived and their talk had been really positive; it was a great experience. Then the Minister came. He talked about Maori education and he was getting everybody really really depressed. I leaned across to a principal and I said: “How come he’s talking like that?”. He leaned over to me and said: “That’s what they call the deficit model.” 
So when I got a chance to talk I stood up and I said to him: “Minister please don’t ever come to my school because we don’t operate our school on the deficit model. We operate on the basis that excellence should be normal and that everything we do should be aimed towards achieving that not teaching kids that you are dumb because your parents are dumb you’re probably going to be a thief because some of your cousins might have been thieves.” That kind of thinking is very destructive thinking. I am not a principal but my wife was so I was able to sit in and listen to the korero and how depressing that guy was when it came to talking about Maori education. I sincerely hope that we never ever get a Minister of Education like that again. 
Louise Upston 
: Who was it? 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: That Minister’s name was Trevor Mallard. Kia ora tatou.