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Insights 28: 2 August 2024
The Australian: Dr Oliver Hartwich on the shake up in Health NZ's leadership
 
Podcast: Dr Michael Johnston responds to education reform criticisms
 
NZ Herald: Nick Clark on rethinking council funding approaches
The conundrum of specialist residential schools
Dr Michael Johnston | Senior Fellow | michael.johnston@nzinitiative.org.nz
Erica Stanford has had a lot on her plate in her first year as a Minister. In her education portfolio, she has set a cracking pace, with work well underway on a knowledge-rich curriculum for primary and secondary schooling. She is also the Minister responsible for the government’s response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

There is an intersection between these two areas of responsibility. The harrowing findings of the Royal Commission included accounts of abuse in residential schools for young people with intellectual, sensory and physical disabilities. Some of the abuse amounted to torture, as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has acknowledged.

Following the Royal Commission report, there have been calls to close New Zealand’s three residential schools.

It is easy to understand those calls. Children with disabilities are amongst the most vulnerable members of society. Most residential school staff are strongly motivated to help children with high needs thrive. However, as the Royal Commission report shows in graphic detail, a few take advantage of the cloistered environments of state institutions to indulge in sadism.

Even so, Minister Stanford is not rushing to close the residential schools. Instead, she has asked the Education Review Office to conduct annual reviews and the Ministry of Education to increase its oversight of them. She has also announced a programme to assess the investment required to better support students with special educational needs. There are two obvious places for such investment.

One is in initial teacher education programmes. The three residential specialist schools are the tip of an iceberg. A further 27 non-residential schools educate around 4,000 students with high needs and there are many more such students in mainstream schools. Teachers must be prepared better to teach young people with neurodiverse conditions. They also need better training in basic classroom management. Neither of these things currently receive much focus in teacher education programmes.

The other is to provide schools with much better access to specialist support. Schools frequently wait months even to get a child assessed for a learning disability. When a diagnosis has been made, the resources schools receive to support neurodiverse students are often woefully inadequate.

Even a well-run institution is not a great place to live, much less to grow up in. But to successfully integrate the young people who live and learn in residential schools, mainstream schools must be equipped to meet their needs.
Repealing speech
Dr James Kierstead | Research Fellow | james.kierstead@nzinitiative.org.nz
For some time now free speech advocates in this country have been enviously following the passage of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act through the UK Parliament. The act gave teeth to the freedom of speech provisions in the 1986 Education Act by allowing students and academics whose free speech rights had been trampled on to seek redress though the courts, and also established a new ‘Free Speech Czar’ for English universities.

That all looks in doubt now, with newly installed Labour Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announcing last Friday that she has ‘stopped further commencement’ of the act ‘in order to consider options, including its repeal’ only a few days before it was to come into force.

Phillipson said that the legislation would have been ‘burdensome’ to universities even though official estimates put compliance costs at less than £5 million a year – an amount that pales in comparison with the £565 million English universities have allocated to ‘access and participation’ this year.

Phillipson also suggested that the act ‘would have exposed higher education providers to costly legal action.’ But that is a risk universities could virtually eliminate simply by not deplatforming speakers or disciplining dissident academics.

Phillipson’s concern that the act might have led to universities being forced to allow Holocaust deniers to speak on English campuses seems similarly misguided. Holocaust denial is not protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (which the UK is still bound by), and the new act would only have protected speech ‘within the law.’

However weak the new Education Secretary’s reasoning, though, the act looks dead in the water. With Labour holding one of the largest majorities in British history, repealing it is easily within the new government’s power.

Many academic freedom advocates in New Zealand had been expecting to be able to point towards the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act as a shining example of how sensible legislation can play a role in fixing our universities.

Bridget Phillipson’s announcement has scotched those hopes. But it may also have opened up an opportunity.

If New Zealand passes academic freedom legislation of its own, that might help our universities gain an edge as a haven for English-speaking academics tired of certain views being shut down.

Granted, that looks a very distant prospect at this point. Paradoxically, though, the UK Education Secretary’s cold feet about the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act may just have brought that possibility a step closer.
The chameleon party
Dr Oliver Hartwich | Executive Director | oliver.hartwich@nzinitiative.org.nz
As Marx once said, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”

Of course, this quote was from Groucho, not Karl. However, Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s interest in utilising the waka-jumping law against former colleague Darleen Tana certainly has something Marxist about it.

That is because the Green Party’s relationship with this particular piece of legislation has been, shall we say, a journey of evolving principles.

Rod Donald, one of the party’s founding co-leaders, once described its 2001 version as “the most draconian, obnoxious, anti-democratic, insulting piece of legislation ever inflicted on this Parliament.”

By 2018, the Greens supported a new version of this law as a condition for joining the government. After all, Winston Peters had demanded it.

Back then, Eugenie Sage referred to the waka-jumping legislation as “a dead rat that we have to swallow.” For a party counting so many vegetarians in its ranks, that must have been a very unpleasant meal indeed.

One wonders if the party had been assured that this particular rat had been ethically sourced, fed organic produce, and allowed to roam free before its ultimate destination in the gullets of Green MPs.

In 2021, with a change in government composition and Winston Peters out of Parliament, the Greens supported a National Party bill to repeal the legislation.

But now, only three years later, the Greens are contemplating waka-jumping Darleen Tana from Parliament. One might be forgiven for experiencing a sense of political whiplash.

Of course, it would be unfair to suggest that political parties should never adapt their positions. The Greens have simply elevated flexibility to an art form. One imagines their yoga instructors must be very proud.

Yet, one cannot help but wonder if there might have been a more straightforward solution to their current predicament. Perhaps a more rigorous candidate selection process might have spared the party this challenge. They may have confused “green” candidates with those who were merely politically “unripe”.

The party now finds itself in a position that brings to mind a certain celebrity frog’s lament about the difficulties of being green.

Whatever course they choose, one thing is certain: they have provided a masterclass in political adaptability. Their commitment to the environment extends to recycling political positions they once discarded.

Perhaps they should consider rebranding themselves as the Chameleon Party. After all, it is not the colour of one’s principles that matters, but how swiftly one can change them to match the political scenery.
 
On The Record
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All Things Considered
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