Turei Metiria: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 29 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15638. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Where was the inspiration and the hope for our kids in the Prime Minister’s speech? Where was the compassion and the humanity for our kids in the Prime Minister’s speech? It said nothing about making life better for our children; nothing about them deserving a good life or having a fair future. Children just existed in that speech as outcomes and outputs and even more horrifyingly as targets. Children just do not exist for John Key and for the National Party. And if we would like another example of that after that miserable speech from John Key I think we can see it in the answers that he gave to questions in the House today.I note that John Key talked about how he was a child who grew up in poverty and how he was able to escape that poverty because of the support that he got from the State and the great free public education that he received. When I asked him whether he will guarantee that all of today’s children will have access to exactly those same services to secure State housing to a universal benefit—remember the family benefit—and to a free public education he said no. He said no and he sat down because he will deliberately deny today’s children the same opportunities that he had as a child to escape poverty and to do well.That is John Key the Prime Minister. That is the National Party. That is the stark choice that New Zealanders have at this coming election: between John Key and the National Party who say no to children and the Green Party which will put children at the heart of all of our policies and our political decisions. That is how we began this year with the launch of our school hubs plan to put children right at the heart of the education system and to put children right at the heart of the Green policy—to deliverdirectly to families and children on the needs and issues that they have. While National will focus on rewarding a few individuals or as in the tax cuts—they cost $1 billion dollars—rewarding the very wealthy the Green Party will invest in families and children and focus on the needs of many. This is the stark choice.I want to briefly describe the school hubs plan for members and those listening. We have proposed a number of services for all decile 1 to 4 schools that those schools will be eligible for and entitled to as a matter of right. The first is a school hubs coordinator. This is a person employed in that school—paid for not by the operations grant but by new funding—to take the burden of organising and facilitating social services away from the principals and the teachers who currently have it. Instead the school hubs coordinator will engage with their school community on what the issues are that the school community faces and what the solutions are that that school community wants to put in place. That full-time person will have the job of going out and finding the services that meet the solutions that the community itself has decided are right for them.There are lots of examples of this. There are many schools in the country that are providing free food in some way—they have got community gardens or they have got relationships with organisations that surround them—but it is the teachers who are having to do this work; it is the principals who are having to do this work. They cannot do that and concentrate on their core expertise which is teaching our kids educating our kids. So if we provide this resource—it is a full-time person—to these schools that person can take on that responsibility.What are the other services that that person can then bring into the school? Well one very important one is free after-school care and holiday programmes for kids. The expert advisory committee set up by the Children’s Commissioner was very clear that there are serious issues for poorer children who cannot access after-school activities who cannot access holiday care. For after-school activities it is very important because these are the activities that can often best explore their talents—musical talents sporting talents creative talents. If poorer children cannot access those kinds of programmes because they cannot afford it those talents are wasted.We have seen just this very week what happens when a child has access to what they need to explore their talents—what success is possible. That success is an entitlement of every child in this country. Just by doing something as simple as opening up and making freely available after-school care activities to all children in low-decile schools we can have many more of those kinds of success stories.Free holiday care for a maximum of 3 weeks is another proposal. It is particularly important from an educational point of view because it means that kids maintain their standard of education—their standard of reading their standard of maths their standard of engagement in the institutions—over the holiday period. The expert advisory group was very clear in saying that there is a slippage that happens over the school holidays particularly for poorer kids. One of the best ways to prevent that slippage is to provide free holiday programmes for children in decile 1 to 4 schools. The Green Party has heard that. We have heard the evidence. We agree and we will provide it should we be in Government.We have also talked about dedicated school nurses in decile 1 to 4 schools. There is no dedicated school nurse programme operating in this country. We surveyed low-decile schools in New Zealand and we found that most low-decile schools get at best a little under 2 hours of nursing time each week. That is the average—2 hours of nursing time each week. Most of those schools complained that the nursing support that they got would often be called away. National has a national programme for rheumatic fever which is a good idea but it takes away the school nurses. So schools can lose access to their nurse for a month for 2 months. Some said they had not seen a nurse for 6 months.We need dedicated school nurses in the schools so that families and children know they can access the health care that they need so that we know that those children can get to a doctor because there are good quality referrals and so that a nurse can build trust with that family and deal with those continual complaints that every parent knows about whether it is nits scabies school sores skin infections bronchitis or asthma—all of those things that parents have to deal with daily. If they can find their health service and support—their nursing support—at the school where the kids go every day we know that their kids’ health will improve. And if their kids’ health improves their learning improves. That is why we will put dedicated school nurses in the schools.Finally as part of the core service under our school hub there is the school lunch fund. This is a national fund. It will average at about $3 a child per school per week and is based on the average number of children who we understand go to school without sufficient food. That is around 9 percent of the school population. This fund will be available to the schools. They will automatically be entitled. They can use that fund to provide lunch to their students in any way that they see is best for them. This is the job of the school hub coordinator: what is the best way to provide lunch for their schools? There are some great examples where schools have a community garden and what they need is a little bit of money to support some volunteers or maybe employ somebody part-time to come in and gather that food to help with the kids to cook the food with the kids and for the kids then to share the food amongst their school community. It builds a sense of sharing a sense of community within the school. It reduces inequality because all children can access the food if there is enough to go around. And it means that our kids have a decent meal in the middle of the day so that they can learn for the rest of the afternoon. It improves their education.The Green Party will put children at the heart of everything we do. We have shown that with our policies to date. We will continue to do so. This is why I believe that the country will choose the Greens to be part of a great progressive Government in 2014. Thank you.