It was a busy weekend for new policy, with Act, Te Pāti Māori and NZ First (respectively) promising classroom discipline, Māori education reform and tax breaks for having kids, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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‘There are a lot of little shits in classrooms’

The Act Party wants to give teachers the legal power to remove “seriously or persistently disruptive” students from classrooms and send them to a supervised space, as reported by RNZ’s Tuwhenuaroa Natanahira. Announcing the policy in Auckland yesterday, Act candidate Paul Henry didn’t pull punches about the state of classroom behaviour (“Let’s be honest, there are a lot of little shits in classrooms, and we need to address that if we’re going to lift education standards,” he said), arguing the change was needed to  give teachers confidence “the law is actually on their side”.

Henry insisted the plan wasn’t about corporal punishment, but would let staff use “reasonable and proportionate” force in specific circumstances to prevent harm or property damage, clarifying the boundaries already set out in the Education and Training Act. Under the policy, assaulting a teacher or student would trigger immediate removal and a mandatory stand-down or suspension, with serious assaults referred to Police Youth Aid. Parents could face fines up to $3000 for failing to attend meetings about their child’s behaviour or for deliberate property damage.

In the Herald yesterday, Zeb Tupa’i noted the reaction from education leaders was considerably less enthusiastic. Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Chris Abercrombie and Albany Senior High School principal Claire Amos argued increased learning and wellbeing support was the answer, not greater restraint powers, with Abercrombie calling the policy “odd” and pointing out that no teacher he’d spoken to had actually asked for expanded physical restraint powers.

Aspiration not assimilation

Elsewhere in education, yesterday Te Pāti Māori laid out its plan to establish a Māori Education Authority, restoring Māori governance over its education system, according to the party’s own release published on Scoop (which has not yet been reported on, as far as I can see). Te Tai Tonga candidate Lisa Marie Murch unveiled the policy during her debut election debate, framing it around giving every Māori child the chance to succeed on their own terms.

Co-leader Rawiri Waititi argued the current system still reflects the legacy of assimilation rather than genuine Māori aspiration, while co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer described Māori educational leadership as an expression of tino rangatiratanga. The authority sits alongside a broader package that includes expanded school lunches, free public transport for students, free school counselling and making te reo Māori a core curriculum subject through Year 10.

Money for babies

To encourage New Zealanders (citizens, not residents, to be clear) to have more children, NZ First is promising $5000 a year in tax-free payments for each of a family’s first three children, for the first three years of each child’s life, as reported by 1News. Winston Peters (who made the New York Times this weekend for his attack on Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan) framed the “Kiwi Kids Grant” as a response to New Zealand’s falling fertility rate, which has dropped to 1.53 births per woman against a replacement rate of 2.1. He said the policy – expected to cost around $400m a year once fully implemented – was aimed at easing the financial pressure pushing people to delay or decide against having children.

The response from rival parties (including coalition partners) was quick and largely negative, as reported by The Post’s Nick James. National campaign chair Simeon Brown called the policy expensive and unnecessarily complex, arguing existing targeted payments like Working for Families and FamilyBoost already do the job without raising taxes. Labour’s Jan Tinetti was similarly dismissive, saying cash incentives for birth rates haven’t worked overseas and that the payment wouldn’t even cover a year of daycare, while Act’s David Seymour warned the policy risked leaving newborns with “more debt” rather than their parents with less.

A mother who has one child and would ideally want another but doesn’t see the family “having the life that we want to have with a second child” told The Post she was less concerned with parental leave or daycare fees than with the cost of groceries, suggesting the policy may be answering a different problem to the one many New Zealand families (citizens or not) are actually facing.