The BulletinAugust 2, 2024

Is parliament a safe workplace for MPs?

Catherine McGregor

Contributing writer

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The Leader of the House says it’s ‘a rambunctious place’ right now. His Act colleagues allege more serious problems – including bullying and racial harassment, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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‘I’m a minister, but I’m still a person’

The House has always been a fractious place, but tensions are higher than usual right now. The relationship between Te Pāti Māori and Act, never exactly warm, has descended into rancour amid the debate over the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. That law change, which will remove the requirement that the organisation take into account the Treaty of Waitangi, is being shepherded through the House by Karen Chhour, who this week told Jenna Lynch of Stuff’s ThreeNews she felt parliament was an “unsafe workplace” where she was being bullied. “Yes, I’m in a position of being a minister but I’m still a person, I’m still a person. And I feel like I’m getting that stripped away from me day by day in this place and I’ve had enough,” she said through tears.

Chhour to Tova: your questions are ‘revolting’

Chhour’s distress stems from criticism directed at her by Te Pāti Māori, who are campaigning hard against section 7A’s repeal. In a post on social media in May, the party said Chhour, who is wahine Māori, had “a disconnection and disdain for her… people” because she was raised in a Pākehā environment. Around the same time, Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, speaking to the House in te reo, said Chhour had been made a “puppet by her party”. The Herald’s Audrey Young (paywalled) says the comments were out of line. The Speaker “needs to use any influence he has with Te Pāti Māori to get them to lay off Chhour and apologise … She’s tough, but even titanium has a breaking point.”

Chhour is one of the ministers currently embroiled in the controversy over the government’s boot camp programme. In an interview on Wednesday with Tova O’Brien about the risk of abuse to children in the care of a boot camp, Chhour told O’Brien some of her questions were “revolting”. Presented with a number of hypothetical situations in which abuse could occur, Chhour said she was “horrified that you think I could do that to children”, before abruptly ending the interview. Labour leader Chris Hipkins says Chhour’s ethnicity and past experience in state care aren’t at issue. “I think they should be kept well out of it – but her actions as a minister show that she is not coping with the job.”

A green light to racial harassment’

Back in the House, Act leader David Seymour has accused the Speaker of giving “a green light to racial harassment” by refusing to take action on an incident involving Act’s Laura Trask. Act says the MP was left feeling “shaken, saddened and angry” after TPM and Green MPs opposed her chairing a sub committee on the repeal of section 7AA. “She was told by other members that it would be better if it was someone who was Māori or Pasifika because submitters, quote, ‘could not see themselves in her’. In no workplace in New Zealand is that acceptable,” Seymour told the House. Committee member Carmel Sepuloni (Labour) said the allegation about what happened to Trask was a “disappointing and actually quite ridiculous misrepresentation” and the Act MP had actually been deemed unsuitable due to the “sensitive nature of the submissions”. The raw feelings over Trask fed into Wednesday’s stoush over lapel pins, which Act MPs wore in protest against what they believe is unfair treatment by the Speaker.

Not just Act

As Stuff’s Glenn McConnell writes, “The question about the standards of Parliament is a hot topic in Wellington”. Leader of the House Chris Bishop told RNZ that tensions are riding high and the influx of new MPs had contributed to the febrile atmosphere. “[I]t’s quite a youthful Parliament in the sense of experience… so it’s quite a rambunctious place at the moment.” It’s not only newbie MPs who are causing headaches for their leaders, however. Green MP Julie Anne Genter has been found in contempt of Parliament for her intimidating behaviour towards National’s Matt Doocey in early May. She will face censure in parliament later this month.

Meanwhile Labour MP Ingrid Leary has apologised in the House to NZ First MP Tanya Unkovich for comments made at the health committee last month. Leary reportedly said that Unkovich was “a known anti-trans activist”, to which Unkovich took offence. Unkovich is the MP behind a Member’s Bill which would fine “anyone who uses a single-sex toilet and is not of the sex for which that toilet has been designated”. Rounding out our apology series is National’s Todd McLay, who this week apologised to Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March for telling him “you’re not in Mexico now, we don’t do things like that here”, a comment Menéndez March called “a really overt and disgusting form of racism and xenophobia”.

The BulletinAugust 1, 2024

The charter school debate rages on

Catherine McGregor

Contributing writer

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It just received a deluge of opposing submissions, but Seymour’s plan to reintroduce charter schools looks unstoppable, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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Much of education community unites in opposition

The return of charter schools to New Zealand’s educational landscape took another step closer on Monday, when submissions closed on the education bill that will reintroduce the publicly-funded private schools. All but one of the submissions made to the education and workforce committee opposed the bill, notes The Post’s Hanna McCallum (paywalled). The submitters included teachers, principals and other educators, teachers unions and parents. “Their concerns included a lack of research – both nationally and internationally – to show charter schools resulted in overall better education outcomes, the limited ability for teachers to bargain collectively, the lack of transparency required as they would not be subject to OIA requests, the ability to make profit and the lack of requirement to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” McCallum adds that a number of submitters “asked MPs if they would feel comfortable sending their children to an unregistered or unqualified doctor, pointing to the lack of requirement for charter schools to employ trained or registered teachers”.

What Seymour is planning

Charter schools were first introduced under the name “partnership schools” in 2014, the result of a National-Act coalition agreement signed in 2011. “By the time the Labour government ended the charter schools scheme in 2018, there were 12 charter schools in operation,” reports The Spinoff’s Shanti Mathias. At one point there were 23 around the country, mostly in Northland and Auckland, with many of them focused on Māori and Pasifika students.

In 2023, charter schools were again included in the National-Act coalition agreement. Associate education minister David Seymour, an enthusiastic charter school supporter, says the government plans to open 50 of the schools, around two-thirds of which would be converted state schools. He hopes to have the first charter schools up and running next year. Expressions of interest for potential school operators close on August 9 and while Seymour won’t reveal how many have been received, the application pack has been downloaded more than 140 times, McCallum reports.

Charter schools: the case for

Submissions on the new bill might have been overwhelmingly opposed, but charter schools have many fans. “Former students of charter schools have described their positive impact, and former charter school principals have praised the flexibility and lack of bureaucratic hurdles involved in running a charter school,” writes Mathias. In 2017, a year before the scheme was disestablished by Labour, then charter school principal Alwyn Poole wrote about what his school did differently: “We have 15 students per class and 60 per ‘Villa’ (mini-school within a school). We run a very hard-working academic morning and an effective arts and activities-based afternoon… We provide all uniforms, stationery and IT. We pay our staff salaries at least 5% above state levels, provide other benefits for them and pay them directly for the development of some resources.”

Announcing $153m in funding for the new version of the schools, Seymour said “the idea that there’s a no-holds-barred curriculum is not a fair assessment of what charter schools will be”. The schools will be required to teach a curriculum that is “as good or better than the New Zealand curriculum” and any school that doesn’t measure up will have their funding cut or be shut down, he said.

What the critics say

Opponents, meanwhile, argue that charter schools will do serious damage to the broader educational landscape, Mathias writes. “They say that if you’re worried about educational outcomes, funding for a small number of schools doesn’t lift standards or achievement across the board; even if charter schools succeed, the majority of students will still miss out. Instead, they say, it’s better to increase funding to all schools.”

Opposition parties are highly critical of the new scheme. “Funnelling millions into what is essentially a pet project for David Seymour, at a time when teachers are crying out for more resourcing for our public schools, is morally bankrupt and incredibly irresponsible,” said Green Party education spokesperson Lawrence Xu-Nan. Said Labour’s Jan Tinetti: “There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids.”