Hui Taumata

Thank you to Tumu and Tuwharetoa for hosting us here.

I have personally found the follow up process from the February hui very useful and very worthwhile. I know it has already helped guide us in some policy work and I know that will continue. I think we all know there is a long way to go. No Minister of Education will ever stand in front of a forum like this and say there is no more work to do. But I hope that in the future, the work we need to do will not be so daunting.

I think that once again, it has been a successful hui from both an organisational perspective` and from what we have been able to achieve.

Thank you all for giving up your time to be here this weekend. There are a variety of backgrounds and a variety of views in this room. But there is little doubt that everybody is passionate in their quest for Maori educational achievement and that we all want to move in the same direction.

I want to thank my Ministerial colleagues for being here. Parekura, who I have worked with closely over the last few months developing our response to the February recommendations. Steve and Marian who are also associate education Ministers and who both strongly believe in the ability of all people to achieve in education. And Tariana, who was here on Friday and who is a tireless advocate, within the executive, of self determination for Maori.

I want to thank Mason Durie - both for his address this morning and for the inspiration and the guidance that he gave us at the February hui.

Mason is one of those fortunate people who have the ability to talk about their visions and ideas in a way that makes it all seem so possible and so do-able.

At the same time, he, like all of us, knows that there is no easy solution. In all aspects of education, there are no silver bullets, but especially in Maori education. There is, however, a matrix of ideas that will lead to improvement.

I’ve been really excited by some of the programmes that I’ve seen around the country this year that are making a real difference to Maori.
I would bet that every single person in this room knows an education initiative that has excited them and that they see as having positive potential.

We need to knit those initiatives together - to work smarter and better utilise the good things that are already happening. We need to share our knowledge, our resources, and our ideas. A major part of the successful work in Otara and Mangere that I spoke of yesterday is a better link between what children learn in early childhood and the first year at school. This is coupled with the requirement for teachers to have high expectations of each child’s ability and to adapt their teaching to suit the background, experiences, and knowledge base of their children. It has had stunning results in just 18 months. It will continue to benefit generations of children – most of whom are Maori and Pacific.

The work is further affirmation that we are right to push for quality early childhood education. I want to acknowledge the value that this hui has placed on early childhood education and the need you see for more support for ece and whanau.

I want to pick up on one of Mason’s points, which I know many of you also picked up on – that is the need for government agencies to work more closely together. I want to endorse his view – not only in my role as Minister of Education – but more importantly in my role as Minister of State Services. The fragmentation of the state sector is an issue that I also worry about. I believe it stems from a model that for years pitted government agencies against each other. We are trying to encourage a more collaborative approach to both policy development and operational delivery. Because, when you get to the guts of it, people on the streets do not care which government department serves them, as long as they get served.

So I have high hopes that we are successfully addressing the poor integration that Mason referred to. There will be benefits from that for all New Zealanders – for it is not just an issue of concern to Maori. Already in the sports area, I have been working with the Minister of Health and agency chief executives from education, health and sports to develop better synergies so that as a nation we can reap the health and social benefits from a fitter and more active population. There are certainly lots of other areas where there is potential for government agencies to have better shared outcomes to make some real and measurable differences.

We have identified five platforms to advance Maori educational achievement – educational policies, social and economic policies, a strong Maori and Crown relationship, Maori synergy, and Maori leadership. I have sensed general support in this room to those platforms. What is important now, is how we continue to advance them.

We are already using the philosophy that props up those platforms as a benchmark for work we have started. We will continue to do that. As I said in February, there is a need to get a balance between the recognition that we must act urgently and move quickly, and the need for us to accept that we are in for the long haul. If there was a clear-cut, quick solution to all the issues that confront us, somebody would have done it by now.

That is why I am happy to accept Tumu’s plan to create a navigation chart within the next 15 months that maps out the pathway in Mason’s paper.

I agree to continue to work through the February recommendations. The Government will lend our support as Maori lead the way on discussion to try and reach a clear position in respect of the authority and partnership recommendations.

Ministers will continue to work on these tasks directly with Tuwharetoa and others who are so willing to give their time and expertise. We will also do our bit to involve our Ministerial colleagues more as we all work towards creating a better inter-sectoral approach.

At the same time, I hope that you will be supportive of initiatives we have already started - some of which have already made a positive difference and others which we will not reap benefits from for several years.

I hope that you will understand that we too are human, that our capabilities are limited, and that our finances do not come from a bottomless pit.

I hope that we will have the combined strength to recognise when our ideas and initiatives are not working and the willingness to channel our energies and resources into other areas.

I have confidence that together we can make a difference.