February 2010

Next week, in my capacity as Minister of Consumer Affairs, I will officially launch Fraud Awareness Week 2010 – an initiative in which private sector, public sector, and community agencies work together to raise awareness of scams in the community.

To kick things off, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs visited Otago University's Orientation Week to run a 'scam' of its own and get the message out.

The Ministry 'scam' involved running a competition in which contestants took turns sitting in a bath tub of cold baked beans – kindly provided free of charge by Heinz-Watties – with the individual who sat in the beans the longest winning a car. The catch, however, is that the 'car' was actually a two-inch toy.

I was visited in my office today by twenty Year 13 students (7th formers for those still operating on the old system) from Kristin School on the North Shore. I attended the Senior School Prizegiving last year and was pleased to return the hospitality today. Kristin is the country's largest Independent School, one of the 97 I have responsibility for with my Associate Education hat on.

The group is visiting Wellington for the week and today was the Parliamentary visit. Unfortunately there was no Question Time (definitely the best time to visit the debating chamber) because the House is still in urgency. Instead the students were treated to the committee stage of the ACC bill. They also visited their local MP, Hon Wayne Mapp and had a tour around the complex.

Parking wardens get a lot of bad press and this week is no exception. On Sunday night the Phoenix game against Perth Glory ran into extra time – a nail biting affair – and Wellington’s seemingly vigilant wardens were out on patrol in Thorndon Quay, issuing 61 tickets to football fans caught out by the game and exceeding the two hour time limit. Wellington City Council has bowed to the understandable outrage and waived the fines, though taking the time to explain that the wardens were simply doing their jobs.

It is always difficult for our soldiers, sailors and airmen and women to be deployed so far from home, to be helping strangers who they, more often than not, have little chance of ever seeing again. Likewise for those aided by our soldiers to be unable to adequately express their thanks. With this in mind I always enjoy reading about those rare occasions when a reunion does occur – in Christchurch last week Colonel John Masters, now 75, was reunited with the Gurkha soldier he rescued on the fields of Borneo 45 years earlier.

Late last year I celebrated the Variety Club’s Kids on Bikes programme and I am pleased to read today that a Hastings man has had a similarly philanthropic idea, gifting a local primary school with 62 new bicycles.

Paul McCardle provided St Mary’s Primary School with the 62 lightweight bicycles, along with 225 helmets, four bike tracks, a bike shed, and a cycle coach as part of an initiative called “Bikes in the School” which aims to give every primary school pupil access to a bicycle and a track. Mr McCardle has recently returned to New Zealand from years spent living in Amsterdam and was taken with the cycling culture that exists in the Netherlands and has launched a number of non-profit projects – of which St Mary’s scheme is one – to encourage New Zealanders to ride bikes more often.

I discovered today that New Zealand has qualified for the knock-out rounds of the 2010 World school debating championships in Qatar and is on its way to defend the title it won in Athens last year.The competition is an annual event first held in 1988. Since then New Zealand has hosted once, in 1994, won four times – 1991, 1992, 1995 and 2009 – and was runner-up in 2008.

Consisting of five secondary school students – from Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, Chilton St James School, Auckland Grammar School, Scots College, and St Cuthbert's College – the team won six of eight preliminary round debates. It beat teams from Slovakia, Estonia, the US, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, and Romania – but lost to Israel and Australia. Tomorrow it will face off against the Netherlands and, if victorious, go on to debate Ireland or Canada in the quarterfinals.

Today – in my capacity as ACT Deputy Leader and Chair of the Inter-Party Working Group (IPWG) on School Choice – I held a media conference with the members of the IPWG to launch a report titled 'Step Change: Success The Only Option.'

It is often said that Education begins in the home and, backed by education expert Professor John Hattie, a few Wellington Schools are doing away with homework, instead encouraging parents to take a more active role in their child’s education.

Karori Normal School Principal, Diane Legett, in a newsletter to parents explaining the initiative, suggested that parents encourage their child's imagination and creativity by turning off the tv/games consoles during the week and allowing them instead to ‘play’. She advocates parents speaking with their children, allowing themselves to be read to, encouraging reading for pleasure, and sharing with their children. She claims that this will do more good than any homework or extra-tuition programme could do.

The locals are talking about two things in Southland today:

1. John Key visited yesterday to open the new drying room (for milk powder) at the Fonterra milk factory at Edendale. While in Southland he also attended the Waimumu Field Days – the Southern version of Mystery Creek - and was given a pair of Skellerup gumboots. A photo of the PM looking at his new gumboots made it into the Southland Times.

2. Thursday’s announcement that the Southland District Health Board voted 7-3 to merge with the Otago DHB is being widely discussed and was the subject of the cartoon in the Southland Times.

Opinions are divided over the decision. My own often expressed view is that New Zealand is too small to have 21 District Heatlh Boards and it is wise to look at rationalising the provision of services to gain efficiencies, particularly at some of the smaller boards.

A branch of The Economist Magazine - The Economist Intelligence Unit – has recently published a survey highlighting the standard of living in 140 cities hosting international sporting events and there are two New Zealand cities in the top 25. Auckland is ranked at number 10 with Wellington following 13 places behind at number 23.

The EIU survey ranked the 140 cities on 30 factors, from healthcare, culture and environment, to education, surveying resident experts and utilising its own analysts. I am pleased to note that Wellington scored perfectly in the education category! However Wellington scored lower than Auckland and the Australian cities listed in most other categories.

ACT campaigned on growing the economic "cake" so as to catch up with Australia by 2025.

It is surprising to see Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bolland saying it can't be done and talking about gratefully taking the "crumbs" from the Australian table, and of God "sprinkling" minerals over Australia.

ACT certainly doesn't agree that New Zealand has to always lag behind our trans-Tasman neighbour and we believe with the right political decisions we do have a chance of catching Australia by 2025.

The new school year got underway last week with 9,900 new entrants starting their first day of school with brand new backpacks, shiny shoes, and freshly sharpened pencils. I am sure it was a mixture of nerves and excitement for parents and students alike. The new entrants are joining 754,000 other students who will be attending schools around the country this year.

The new school year has seen several changes from 2009 in the number of students enrolled and the diversity in our classrooms. Birth rates, migration rates, and the current economic climate are all factors that affect the makeup of New Zealand school rolls.

Yesterday I took my teenage boys to view the original Treaty of Waitangi documents at Archives New Zealand (National Archives) in Wellington. They don’t normally open at the weekend, but did yesterday to mark the 170th anniversary of the signing. The Treaty, after restoration from damage caused by age, rats and water damage, is displayed in glass cabinets in a vault – the Constitution Room - and has subdued lighting to protect the parchment and paper of the nine documents that form the written Treaty. To my surprise the boys were as interested in the original Treaty as I was and they clearly enjoyed telling me the odd fact or two that I hadn’t been previously aware of!

Also housed in the vault were a number of other precious historical documents including the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition.

In the late 1970s and '80s New Zealand was caught in the grip of anti-nuclear fever – nuclear-powered warships the USS Truxtun and the USS Long Beach drew protests when they visited in 1976, and there were anti-nuclear rallies in Auckland when the USS Texas visited.

Elected in July 1984 the Lange Labour Government, partly picking up on the mood of some of the population but mostly manoeurved by the 'left' of the party, made it clear that it would establish New Zealand as nuclear-free. this proved popular with 40 towns and boroughs declaring themselves nuclear-free. Lange also announced its decision to ban nuclear-powered and/or armed ships – a stand that was soon put to the test.

This morning I had the pleasure of launching the discussion document for the Special Education Review at Evans Bay Intermediate School (EBIS) in Wellington. The launch marks the beginning of government consultation with the community about what the future of special education should look like.

Evans Bay Intermediate was a very fitting place to hold the launch as they are about to start building the Kimi Ora Special School satellite unit on their grounds. Principal Wendy Esera, the board of trustees, and the students are looking forward to the upcoming addition to their school. The unit will accommodate students with high physical needs while also including them in the mainstream school setting. It is these types of initiatives that I want to encourage.

Each year, throughout the country, hundreds of children and young people experience the age-old and inevitable side-effect of starting a new school: first day jitters.

Teachers are always on hand to help ease those nerves and today, at the Corelli School of the Arts in Auckland’s Browns Bay, so was I.

I had been invited to visit the school to take part in the making of a documentary that Corelli is producing. The documentary follows a number of students through the first six months of their journey to becoming international performers. I have to admit that making a documentary is a very fitting project for a school that provides a focus on drama, music, dance and the visual arts.