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PoliticsMarch 24, 2023

The Winston Peters greatest hits hour

The Bulletin editor

Available wherever records are sold (Image: Tina Tiller)

The New Zealand First leader took to the altar of an East Auckland church today to set out his 2023 election agenda. It was, as Stewart Sowman-Lund found out, pretty much what you’d expect.

Winston Peters rolled into Howick today with a state of the nation speech that, he claimed to media, was all fresh material. “It’s all new,” he told one reporter. “You probably wish you’d written it yourself.”

“New” seems like a stretch. This was undoubtedly a Winston Peters greatest hits show, with a couple of remixes thrown in. A joke that the New Zealand First leader has used a handful of times dating back to at least 2003 got a revival, with Peters suggesting some of our MPs think “manual labour” is the prime minister of Mexico (a search through the official speech shared with the media revealed this was an improvised moment). Then there were the attacks on the media, polling, the woke, the left, the right – no one was safe from a Peters takedown. “Remember that politicians are not your masters, but your servants,” he said several times.

After a relatively quiet start to the year, today was a chance for Peters to remind party faithful that he’s very much on the campaign trail. It was also an attempt to dull any memories of the years between 2017 and 2020 when he propped up the Labour Party. The Howick church was packed; it was a sea of grey or greying hair. Plastic chairs were even filling the foyer to meet demand. Peters reckoned he could have filled a venue twice the size if he’d been given one.

Before Peters even arrived, there was a jubilant atmosphere in the room. Auckland councillor Maurice Williamson was the support act. Earlier in the day, he’d been called out on Twitter by one of his colleagues for failing to turn up to hear from mana whenua on the annual budget. He warmed the crowd up by tackling topics that were always going to get an easy reception in that room: three waters, cycle lanes and rates. Perhaps the biggest laugh was when he mispronounced Waitematā and then, mockingly, corrected himself.

Peters was then introduced, with the moniker he’s worn since 2017: as a “handbrake” on the “runaway government” led by Jacinda Ardern. Waiting in the wings to speak, Peters was seen laughing at the descriptor.

He started his speech by calling out anyone who might have believed Howick had ever been racist. “Forty-five years ago… this town chose someone with a Māori background to be their MP. That was all the evidence that one needs to know that Howick was not racist then, nor now,” he said to cheers from the predominantly Pākehā crowd.

From there, it was a grab bag of topics from the Peters back catalogue, zipping everywhere from GDP to gender identity. Three waters was probably the most glaring omission from his speech, though it briefly cropped up during the Q&A.

Winston Peters addresses a crowd in East Auckland (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

On education, he criticised schools for using children in “some sort of woke social re-engineering programme for vulnerable undeveloped minds”. He was later questioned on whether that meant he supported National’s new education policy announced this week, but avoided giving a straight response. There are some clear similarities, with Peters, like Christopher Luxon, decrying the lack of basic knowledge taught at school. “They would now rather teach a young child ‘virtuous self-identity theory’ than basic maths and English,” said Peters.

There was a brief diversion into Covid territory, though Peters pre-emptively criticised the media for any attempt at calling him anti-vaccination. “I’ve had three,” he said, adding that his issue was purely with mandates. “Under New Zealand First these mandates will end,” he said, to a massive cheer. The mandates Peters was referring to officially ended last September.

Peters also criticised the name of New Zealand’s health agency and pledged to give Te Whatu Ora a new name that “95% of New Zealanders can understand”.

He added: “Under New Zealand First, we will change all of the woke virtue signalling names of every government department back to English – back to what they were before the academics from university sociology departments started this madness a few years ago.”

This wasn’t, said Peters, an attack on the Māori language, but instead an attack on the elite who attempted to use the language for their own gains. Hard-working Māori were not concerned with names but instead with housing, health and incomes. “Some Māori secretly driving this agenda, are of the people but they’re not for the people,” Peters added, again to a large round of applause.

This was ultimately just an entrée to a part of the speech sub-headed “one country, one people”, where Peters condemned the “insidious attempt to change this country’s culture and institutions” and decried a minority who he saw as attempting to silence the majority. “They’re all into minority rights, teaching children gender identity theory and they’re not interested in debate. Anyone who questions them is gaslit, or culturally cancelled, or shouted down,” he said.

“This gaslighting group is a small minority while the mass majority is meant to kowtow to them, and too many political representatives are not prepared to stand up to them.”

Following the speech, Peters took a handful of questions (many of which, despite his best attempts to control the crowd, ended up just being comments) and then briefly faced the media. He only spoke to the press for seven minutes in contrast to his hour-long address, but during that conference it was clear that Peters the parliamentarian has not been lost during three years away from Wellington. He was as combative, defensive and adept at obfuscating as he’s always been. He looked to be loving it.

Winston Peters greets a supporter (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

But the question is where to from now. Peters has previously ruled out working with Labour again, though today appeared slightly less certain of this. “We’re not going with parties that make racist policies,” he said, choosing not to name Labour specifically. Most of the media questions were on potential coalition arrangements or on policies released by other parties and Peters, as usual, made it clear how little he wanted to talk about any of that.

Based on polling, he may want to talk about it more. Most polls from this month placed New Zealand First around the 3% mark – two points shy of the crucial 5% threshold. Nevertheless, at least one reputable poll has the party within arm’s reach of parliament on 4.2%. You can, as the saying goes, never rule out Winston Peters – but if he made it in alone come October it would be the first time in New Zealand First’s parliamentary history where Winston Peters didn’t have at least one friend with him (in 1993 there were two MPs).

Peters teased that the party had a strong line-up of both new and returning talent that would be on the ballot, but wouldn’t be drawn on who that talent was.

So for now, as we ready for what is set to be a close election, New Zealand First remains the Winston Peters machine. The party faithful love it, but can he claw his way back up the charts without some new material? We’ve got six months to find out.

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Calum Henderson
— Production editor

Image: Tina Tiller

OPINIONPoliticsMarch 24, 2023

KPIs are for businesses and boardrooms, not children and schools

Sarah Aiono

Guest writer

Image: Tina Tiller

National’s education policy reinforces an old-fashioned and hierarchical curriculum that does lasting harm to many students, writes educational specialist Dr Sarah Aiono.

Announcing the National Party’s new education policy this week, leader Christopher Luxon cited a recent NCEA pilot in which two-thirds of students were unable to meet the minimum standard in reading, writing, and maths.

Why is no one connecting the dots between the 15 and 16-year-olds completing this pilot and the same children being at the receiving end of the National-led government’s National Standards policy in its last term?

National Standards were held up as the answer to failing literacy and numeracy levels back in 2007-2008. By the time they were implemented and our curriculum narrowed, the teacher workforce was exhausted, and we were supposedly meant to have world-leading achievement in literacy and numeracy. The same students who started school then are now producing failing NCEA results.

Luxon mentions “knowledge” and ensuring children master the basics so that they can succeed in high school and beyond. International education research, however, stresses that it is not just “basic knowledge” that children need, but dispositions and executive functioning skills that will ensure their future success.

Yes, literacy and numeracy are important as foundation skills – but if we solely focus on these as a measure of a successful education sector we will be setting the bar too low when it comes to addressing the needs of our children.

National leader Chris Luxon announced his party’s education policy on Thursday. (Photo of Luxon speaking in January by Kerry Marshall/Getty Images)

A competencies-based curriculum – like the one we currently have – will ensure that children have the thinking skills and resilience to deal with an ever-changing world.

Countries considered world-leading, like Finland and other Nordic nations, have moved away from a “basics” approach and instead support an integrated, dispositional approach to learning.

If we instead model our education system on American and UK policies, we will develop narrow thinking and stressed students focused on sitting tests and exams (demonstrating knowledge). We will not have confident, self-assured learners.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’

Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

If students are taught to think through a narrow curriculum lens (such as the one Luxon is proposing) we won’t have the “out-of-the-box” thinkers we need to address the world’s mounting problems.

Luxon says that under National, the New Zealand curriculum will be rewritten to detail the non-negotiable knowledge and skills that primary and intermediate schools must cover each year in reading, writing, maths and science.

Education is not a business. You cannot create KPIs for children. Trying to do so would fly in the face of everything decades of research tells us about how children learn and develop.

‘Education is not a business. You cannot create KPIs for children.’ (Photo: Enzo Giordani/ Design: Tina Tiller)

The refreshed curriculum currently under construction is the most aligned with developmentally appropriate practice and neuroscience of any curriculum so far. It recognises that children do not make linear progress year on year, but rather stop, start, accelerate, rest, move two steps forward and one to the side – but always in an incrementally forward-moving progression.

Identifying yearly targets would simply narrow the ability of a teacher to respond to children’s unique developmental needs and stifle talents and strengths that sit outside of these “KPIs”.

Yes, you will get children who will shine in the areas that are identified as “non-negotiable” – if those areas are their strengths. But we also know the incredible damage it will do to children who do not shine in those areas if they do not have the time or permission to explore what they are good at. They will leave school disillusioned and with a sense of failure. These students will often have unrealised brilliant minds and abilities, thanks to a school system that doesn’t celebrate all areas of learning.

Luxon’s approach would only reinforce the antiquated hierarchy of subjects that has existed since the creation of the school system. This hierarchy serves to increase, not decrease, the social divide. It assumes that science and mathematics are the most important subjects, followed by literacy and places other subjects, such as the humanities and the arts at the bottom of this pyramid of learning.

This often means that students who have talents and abilities in these areas do not get time to explore these because they are not deemed as important as the basics to which Luxon refers. Indigenous knowledge (mātauranga Māori) is also placed at the bottom as a novelty, rather than being seen as an important part of a New Zealand curriculum.

The last three years have seen teachers manage lockdowns and online learning and shifts to hybrid learning, while managing the isolation requirements of both their students and their own families. Then throw in weather events. All while navigating a nearly six-year curriculum-refresh process under the current government.

Our teachers are navigating the cost of living crisis and living in some parts of the country on the equivalent of the minimum wage, while working 60-70 hours a week.

This year, the current government is shifting into the implementation of the refreshed curriculum, requiring ongoing professional development be undertaken to ensure the new curriculum is understood and implemented as intended.

Luxon wants to do this all again if National gets in? Read the room. Teachers are spent.

Teachers need the time to be able to teach as they know how to do. They need time to spend with their kids engaged in quality teaching and learning. They need time (ie, the human resources and financial support) to address the enormous social inequities in their classrooms that spill over into their ability to teach. They need time to spend with their families, to rest and recuperate, so they can be the best professionals in front of the kids every day, every week. And, they need money to do this too! They don’t need to be in a line to collect food from the food bank, or worry about mortgage payments – which many are now doing.

In countries that are considered world-leading in education, teachers are paid well, recognised as the professionals they are, and trusted to do their jobs.

Don’t change the playing field. Just adequately resource our teachers to do what they know needs doing.