Over the last week, I was part of a parliamentary delegation which visited European parliaments in London (Goff only), Copenhagen, Stockholm and Brussels as well as the European Parliament itself.

As well as to promote New Zealand interests, the purpose of the visit was to reassure Europe of our commitment to a strong on-going relationship after the Government has cut representation in our embassies there.  At a time when Europe is suffering from economic downturn, New Zealand must not create the impression that because we have increasing interests in Asia we are not maintaining old friendships and relationships with Europe.  We share values and interests with Europe including commitment to democracy and human rights.  We have in the past shared environmental concerns and worked with them on areas like climate change.  Europe also remains our third largest market for exports and the world’s single largest economic bloc.

We discussed trade, and I addressed a 120-strong meeting of the European Parliament Committee on International Trade.  We promoted the negotiation of a treaty level framework agreement with Europe that we hope will lead to a comprehensive free trade agreement.  We have diversified our markets and Europe has no need to protect itself from us by imposing high tariffs on our exports.  New Zealand poses no threat to Europe.   Only 8 per cent of our dairy exports for example today go there.  As it is, our unsubsidized exports have to compete with European agricultural production which is subsidized under a Common Agriculture Policy which consumes 40 per cent of the European Union budget.  We have a strong argument that Europe should reciprocate our readiness to allow its exports into New Zealand without tariff, quota or behind the border barriers.

We discussed foreign policy and defence, including the Middle East, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.

We discussed the Euro crisis and future directions for Europe.  The European Union’s achievements are substantial.  It has brought peace to Europe after two devastating world wars in the 20^th Century.  It has achieved unprecedented cooperation between member nations and has given former Eastern European bloc countries greater assurance of security.  But with serious economic problems within the Union, questions are being raised about where it will go from here.

Only two thirds of its countries have adopted the Euro, and one of the lessons of Greece, Portugal and Spain is that currency union needs to be backed by wider common fiscal and monetary policies to ensure economic success.   Providing a credit card without rules surrounding its use is not sensible.

The future of Greece in the Euro and, in the view of many Europeans, of Britain in the European Union is under question.

At the end of the visit we marked the weekend of Armistice Day 11 November, with visits to the battle sites and commemorative ceremonies in Ypres, Passchendaele, Messines and Le Quesnoy.

To stand at the graves of some of the more than 18,000 New Zealanders who perished in the war was a moving experience and a sobering reminder of their sacrifice and the need to work constantly to ensure a peaceful world.

I accompanied our Ambassador to France and her team to commemorate the last action of New Zealanders in the Great War, the liberation of the small French town of Le Quesnoy.

Rather than destroy the town and its historic sixteenth century fortifications, the New Zealanders used scaling ladders to climb the ramparts and took the town by storm, capturing over 700 German soldiers but losing 80 New Zealanders in the battle.

Tragically, they died within a week of the war’s end.  Families home in New Zealand would have celebrated the end of war and then learned of the deaths of their sons and husbands in its final days.

Today the town still celebrates their liberation by the New Zealanders every year.  Place names like Place des All Blacks, Avenue des Néo Zélandais, Rue Aotearoa and Rue Helene Clark show their on-going gratitude to and regard for New Zealand.

And, as an interesting point of coincidence, our current Ambassador to France, Rosemary Banks, was delivered as a baby by a doctor by the name of Lieutenant Leslie Averill who was the first New Zealander over the ramparts in Le Quesnoy and after whom the town’s primary school is named.

E nga mana, e nga reo, e ngā hau e whā, tenakoutou katoa.

They came from the uttermost ends of the earth – young men from a young country far away.

There were 100,000 New Zealanders – ten per cent of the country’s entire population and nearly half of the young men of fighting age.

By the end of the war, nearly 60,000 were casualties and over 18,000 now lie in the places where they fought and died.

It was a huge price to pay for a small country.  No town and almost no family was left untouched.

They came as soldiers of the British Empire.  Those who returned did so as New Zealanders.

They came to fight for King and Country but most often they fought and died bravely because they did not want to let their mates down.

Well over 18 million died in the Great War which supposedly was the war to end all wars.  But 21 years later Europe was again at war with itself.

The greatest achievement of the European Union has been 60 years of peace.

For the first time in three generations, my generation did not have to come to Europe to fight a war.

Memorials eulogise the glorious dead.  But we know that the manner of their deaths, cut down by shell blasts, gas and machine gun fire was anything but.

We are here to commemorate the dead and honour their sacrifice, not to glorify war.

Eighty of our dead lie here in Le Quesnoy, killed tragically in the final week of the war.  Their families celebrated the end of the war before they learned that their sons had died on its final days.  We mourn the dead but we are proud that they liberated your town from four years of occupation and helped protect it from destruction.

Today we renew the bond between us, forged by their efforts and sacrifice, which has endured over the generations.

This year, as every year, we pay tribute to the men who fought and died, who gave up their lives for New Zealand, to liberate France and Le Quesnoy.

In New Zealand our veterans recite the Ode:

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.

            Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.

            At the going down of the sun and in the morning

            We will remember them.

Nous les souvenirons!

Monday, 1 October marks the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of the Office of Ombudsman in New Zealand.

The Office provides Parliament and the New Zealand public with an independent and impartial check on the quality, fairness and integrity of administrative practices in the state sector.

We can proudly say that we were the first English speaking country to set up such an office, albeit long after the concept was first developed in Sweden in the nineteenth century.

It is a critical mechanism for ensuring the accountability of elected and non-elected public officials to the broader public.

Since 1962 its role has been extended to cover Local Government; the provision of official information on the principle that this should be publically disclosed unless there is a good reason specified for withholding it; and support for whistle-blowers who follow a specified procedure.

The Ombudsman’s Office has undoubtedly enhanced the quality of our democracy, and traditionally has received bipartisan support.

Sadly, on its 50^th Anniversary, the office has more recently come under threat from a Government which has deliberately set out to limit and undermine its effectiveness.

A partisan statement?

No. Concern about Government actions come from the Chief Ombudsman, Dame Beverly Wakem, herself.

Dame Beverley is a formidable woman, determinedly independent and with an impressive track record.

Most recently, she warned of “highly dangerous” moves by the Government to keep information secret by drafting laws to avoid the Official Information Act (OIA).

She highlighted “reprehensible” attempts to remove from the Act state assets where there are partial share sales, charter schools and change to mining permits.

Earlier this year, Dame Beverly told a Parliamentary Select Committee that the Office was “in crisis.”  An inadequate budget was incapable of meeting the Ombudsman’s work load, justice was being denied, and starving her Office of funding prevented the Office from ensuring that government spending was of high quality.

One reason for the Office’s excessive work load is the increasing arrogance of power by Ministers who deliberately ignore the legal requirements on them to disclose information under the OIA, and the Ombudsman has to be called in to put pressure on them.

Murray McCully is a prime culprit.  The Auditor General revealed that he failed to meet the deadline for OIA requests on over 50% of the requests.

I have in front of him a number of requests that remain unanswered months after he was legally obliged to do so.

He was the only Minister to withhold Treasury budget information on his Ministerial portfolio and withheld two thirds of the briefing to him as an incoming Minister.

It’s absolute arrogance from a Minister who is a control freak who refuses to subject his performance to scrutiny and to be held accountable.

Little wonder when you consider the botched job he did on restructuring his Ministry.

Last night’s debate on Charter Schools at May Road School, organised by the Mt Roskill Labour Party, lived up to expectations.

Over 100 local people turned up, many directly involved in our local schools.  The audience, to its credit, respected my request as Chair to let speakers, in particular former Act President, Catherine Isaac, be heard without interruption.

Ms Isaac as Chair of the Government’s Working Group on Charter Schools, argued her case for the change, but persuaded nobody that there was an evidence based case for diverting public education funding into groups to provide alternative education which would be profit or ideology motivated.

Firstly people understand this is about politics, not education.

Charter Schools were not put to people in the election campaign and have no mandate.  It was a deal stitched up between John Banks and National as part of the post-election supply and confidence deal.

John Banks is in Parliament solely because National gifted him a seat.  The Kim Dot.com debacle has left him with zero public credibility.  John Banks wants to teach that the world was created in seven days, and for the public to fund organisations who will do that.

Three countries have experimented with Charter Schools over the last decade – the US, England and Sweden.  All rank below New Zealand on the OECD PISA comparisons on educational achievement, and those countries are continuing to slide down the international rankings.

Interestingly the consistently top country in OECD rankings in education, Finland, disparaged by an ignorant Gerry Brownlee, has taken the opposite approach.  It doesn’t have private schools, let alone, charter schools.  It emphasises equity through all children having equal opportunity.  It resources education properly and holds teaching as a profession in high regard.

Even with the advantages Charter Schools may have of private sponsorship and biased selection of pupils from more ambitious families, results from evaluations such as Stanford University, show that Charter Schools are not the answer to lifting overall educational achievement.

Charter schools, unlike Tomorrow’s Schools in New Zealand, exclude parents and the community from having a role.  The Charter Schools are solely a deal between the Government, and organisations like the Destiny Church or for profit businesses.

No one last night was persuaded that having non-registered unqualified teachers which Charter Schools can employ will lift the quality of teachers.  The Ministry of Education was blunt in telling the Government that was a dumb idea but the Government still intends to persist with it.

And not teaching to the widely approved and respected New Zealand curriculum, which becomes simply an option for Charter Schools, is an equally stupid idea if we want to ensure all of our students are equally prepared for the 21^st century as workers and citizens.

Last but not least, Catherine Isaac persuaded no one that underachievement by the bottom 7-14 per cent of students was caused by poor teaching and poor schools in the public sector which is the implicit reason for having Charter Schools.  To the contrary, our local low decile Mt Roskill schools have dedicated and capable teachers and principals who do a good job.

What we need to address is how the poverty and background of too many children mean that they start from behind, and schools are working to provide catch-up for those who begin life in a disadvantaged position.

We need great schools and excellent teachers and the emphasis should be on ensuring that is exactly what every child in New Zealand gets as well as tackling the social and economic causes of disadvantage.

We don’t need our children to become guinea pigs in some right-wing experiment with Charter Schools which have left countries which have trialled them below New Zealand in international education rankings, even though far more is spent in those countries on education than we spend in New Zealand.