Cam Slater: A Speech We Should Take Note Of

Richard Prebble takes a good hard look at Christopher Luxon’s speech to the National Party conference and finds there is much to admire.

Richard Prebble says we should take notice of Christopher Luxon’s speech to the National Party conference.

Party conferences, once the forum for policy debates, are now conventions where parties give campaign speeches full of poll driven sound bites.

The National Party worries that Luxon is not as popular as Sir John Key used to be. This speech will not help his polling, but it should.

Speeches can tell us a great deal. If you want to know what motivates an MP, read their maiden speech.

We felt we knew Key. I am not sure that we did. We worry that we do not know Luxon. Why is he in politics?

NZ Herald

Prebs is right: speeches do give you a good indication, but actions are better than mere words. The government has acted to intercede in education because the statistics are not good reading.

Now we do know. Luxon’s politics is motivated by a desire to lift education achievement.

The PM revealed “shocking new data on student achievement in maths last year. Looking at kids who are about to go to high school, this data shows that just 22% of students are at the expected standard for maths at year eight”.

“And it gets worse: three out of five are more than a year behind… there will be 50,000 more next year, if nothing changes.”

Luxon said that schools by using “broad multi-year bands” for reporting meant that “many parents were being told that their children are doing just fine when the reality is they could be years behind”.

“I’m standing before you as Prime Minister and my promise to you today is that it’s time for change.

“So, for every kid walking into school tomorrow morning, backpack on, ready to take on the world, my message is simple. I cannot change the choices you make, or the home you were born into, but I will move heaven and earth to give you the best possible start in life with an outstanding education.”

Luxon did not have to give this speech. He could have given a rip-roaring campaign speech blaming Labour. Instead, he said “politically gratifying as it would be to blame the other lot… this issue is bigger than politics”.

NZ Herald

I’ll be frank. I was surprised when the first post-election conference focussed on education. But, then again, it had to because the numbers coming out were so dreadful.

Naturally the teachers’ unions, their proxies inside Labour like Jan ‘1080’ Tinetti and former education minister Chris Hipkins came out against everything Luxon said. Of course the media neglect to mention the teachers’ unions remain one of Labour’s biggest donors. Funny how they miss that out when they attack other ministers for supposedly doing the bidding of donors.

Prebs notes this opposition:

This did not stop former education minister Chris Hipkins blaming National. Hipkins said that last year’s year eights’ poor maths results were because seven years ago they “started school with national standards”.

We should be pleased that we have a Prime Minister who realises “we won’t be the world leader in agriscience, or advanced aviation, or artificial intelligence, if our kids can’t do maths”.

NZ Herald

I think we can all safely ignore anything Labour has to say on the issue. Hipkins is complaining about how things are measured (national standards), rather than addressing the elephant in the room: that he had six years to change that (if it was the problem) and didn’t. So that means that he was perfectly happy with national standards when he was minister of education.

I’m glad that the government is bearding the teachers’ unions. They’ve exclusively held sway over every aspect of the education system and, now the results are too bad to be swept under the carpet, they can hardly complain when the steely eye of conservatives lines them up for taking the majority of the blame.

Labour, though, are out of ideas. They screwed the education system at every level, including the ill-conceived and failed merger of polytechnics. They are in thrall to the unions and the litany of educational failure rests squarely on their shoulders.

Labour’s insistence that school choice (charter schools) will be abolished under their policies, condemning yet more kids to failure in the union-dominated education system, shows just how cruel they are. The real reason Labour hates charter schools is because they challenge the hegemony of the teachers’ unions.

L is for Labour, and L is for Losers, which kids will be, in any model that continues to reward lazy or ineffective teachers by paying them the same as brilliant teachers. We need to break that dominance of the also-rans and set up a system that rewards education and diligence.

Life is tough enough as it is without condemning kids to a poor education.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the GoodOil - where this article was sourced.