Q + A June 10, 2012

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Hosted by GREG BOYED

In response to LOUISA WALL and COLIN CRAIG interview

GREG Deborah, if I can start with you, what do make of Louisa Wall’s argument?

DEBORAH CODDINGTON - Former ACT MP
Yeah, she's absolutely right. I mean, it’s discriminatory. Same-sex couples can only have a civil union. They can’t have marriage. We can have both. And contrary to what Colin Craig says, marriage is a civil matter. The churches don’t determine who may enter or leave a marriage, the state does. It always has in modern times. So imagine if we had civil unions only for Maori and Pakeha. That would be outrageous and we’d quickly change it. I think her law will go through. In California when they challenged this under the constitution, Judge Walker ruled that under the pursuit of happiness, people had a right to same-sex marriage, and it went through. So I think that this will go through, yes.

GREG Kelvin, do you think that she does have the full support of caucus? Is everyone behind this?

KELVIN DAVIS – Former Labour MP
Well, I wasn’t there in caucus, so I don’t know. But, look, Colin Craig needs to realise that the war against gay and lesbian issues was fought last century and his side lost. You know, the vast majority of New Zealanders really don’t care. I mean, I was more interested in the rugby last night than worrying about this issue. And the word written on a certificate – whether Prue and Louisa have “marriage” on a certificate and I have “marriage” on my marriage certificate, it doesn’t demean my marriage in any way. It has absolutely no effect. And I just think that it’s a matter equal rights and they’re entitled to it.

BRYCE EDWARDS – Political Analyst
But the funny thing is Colin Craig probably agrees with you that he’s lost this war, and that’s the big issue. This is about Colin Craig pushing the Conservative Party, and he’s seen the poll, and those 63% are in favour. It leaves 31% that are against gay marriage. And he did quite well there. I mean, I don’t agree with his stance, but he put it very nicely and clearly and he’s not backing down. And for 31% – he needs 5% to get over the threshold and he’s doing quite well, I think.

GREG We’re getting a fair bit of feedback coming through, I’m told, on the idea of a referendum. Is that a good idea?

DEBORAH Why? What's the point? I mean, it’s non-binding. Does it make--? Maybe it makes people feel better about having their view, but what the point? I just don’t see the point in it.

KELVIN The way I see it, the whole issue is they’ve lost the war on homosexuality, so now this is just rear-guard action trying to, you know, “Let’s attack marriage,” or, “Let’s attack gay adoption.” It’s just a rear-guard action and, really, those people should just go and deal with their gay anxiety and just let the rest of the country get on with life.

DEBORAH I mean, they’re entitled to their view, but this view was probably brought up about undermining marriage when people first started living together in de facto relationships.

GREG Are we not getting tied up in knots about semantics, though? Because we have civil unions. It’s not a million miles off marriage, anyway. Are we worrying too much about the wording here?

DEBORAH No, but you want to call— When I got married... the last time...

(laughter)

GREG What did you call the ones before, Deborah? No, no, carry on.

DEBORAH “Partner” is a horrible word. I wanted to be able to call him my husband. I wanted to be able to say, “This is my husband.” And I can see that with people in civil unions. They want to say, I presume, “This is my wife,” or “This is my husband,” or whatever. It’s not just semantics. It’s about being with someone who you love.

GREG I’m glad you said that, because talking to Ali Mau, actually, before she went on Close Up earlier this week, she said in the circle of friends she has, no one talks about their civil union— They talk about their wife or their husband.

DEBORAH Yeah, it’s so clumsy.

GREG They talk about their marriage.

BRYCE That’s why the civil unions bill was always a bit of a con, really, on Labour’s part, and it’s interesting to see how much Labour’s moved on this, because in the last term, when they were in government, the opposed marriage equality, and they said civil unions, which is essentially a second-class citizenship,...

DEBORAH It is.

BRYCE ...is the answer. And they said it’s semantics as well. They said, “Oh no, it’s the same thing. It doesn’t matter.” But Labour’s now moved quite a lot here, but still they won’t take it on as a party vote. They’ll still give it a conscience vote, which again is a bit of a cop-out. So I think the challenge for Labour is to adopt a party position on this. And Louisa Wall says that Labour went to the last election with a policy in favour of gay equality or marriage equality, but it was pretty muddled, and I think it’s time for them to actually front up and have a clear issue on this.

GREG Is marriage a religious or is it a civil institution? Which way does it need to be looked at?

KELVIN I think it’s a civil institution, but we have the religious ties around it all. I got married in a church, and it’s wonderful. But, you know, I just think it’s a storm in a teacup, and, without being disrespectful to Louisa and her partner, I just really don’t mind. It’s not going to affect me in any way. Just go for it. They’re free adults. Just go and do it.

GREG If this does go through and it does get passed and we are allow gay marriage, how much easier, or is it going to make any difference at all to the gay adoption aspect of things, or is that a whole other kettle of fish?

DEBORAH I think from what she was saying, it will make it easier, and I think that’s a good thing. I mean, she's right. There are a lot of people who are a man and a woman who are parents who should not be anywhere near children. We know that in New Zealand for sure. And there are probably gay parents who shouldn’t be parents either. Doesn’t make any difference.

GREG We will have to leave it there. Thank you to all three of you.

In response to CHRISTOPHER BISHOP interview

GREG Is he right? Are we dreaming to think that we can have cigarettes gone by 2025?

DEBORAH CODDINGTON – Former ACT MP
We won’t have cigarettes gone by 2025, no, no. And it worries me that we’re trying to, because it interferes with people’s right to smoke.

GREG What about people’s right to be healthy and not have that option there? I’d love to ride around in my car at 200km/h. I’d look great, it’d be huge fun and I’d get everywhere really quickly, but it’s a bad idea and I’m not allowed to.

DEBORAH That’s a different issue.

GREG Why?

DEBORAH Because you are... It’s proven that you could smash into someone and kill them, but if you’re smoking and you’re damaging your own health— And, listen, I don’t like smoking, but the other thing that worries me about this, you know, getting rid of smoking is that the people who— Let’s say we do get rid of smoking. The people who are targeting smokers have already trained their guns on sugar – and you’ve got a programme on tonight and I’ve seen the promos for it – people saying sugar is evil, it should be banned. And we’ve seen in the States they want to put hamburgers in plain wrappers. And you talked about kids starting smoking, and he said that it wouldn’t make any difference if it’s in plain wrappers. Look at all the kids, the teenagers that smoke marijuana, cannabis. Hone Harawira goes on about targeting tobacco. We don’t hear a peep from him about all the kids up in the Far North that are smoking cannabis and the harm that does, and I suspect – I might be wrong – but I suspect this is because there's not some evil corporate for him to target.

GREG Bryce, that’s your patch of the world. Has Deborah got a good point?

DEBORAH Kelvin.

GREG Kelvin, sorry.

KELVIN DAVIS – Former Labour MP
Look, if Chris came here looking for love, sympathy and understanding from me, well, he came looking to the wrong person. You know, I’ve got no empathy, no concerns about doing what we can to get rid of tobacco from New Zealand by 2025 and running guys like him out of town. It kills our people – Maori, I’m talking about – at a great rate of knots. I think that even though it’s a legal product, the law doesn’t say we need to make it easy for these companies to prosper and thrive. I think we shouldn’t go down the garden path of worrying about sugar, hamburgers and all that sort of stuff. Let’s focus on tobacco and let’s deal with this issue and get rid of them, and then we can focus on whatever else we want to. But this is a product that, if used as directed, is going to kill you, and that shouldn’t be allowed in New Zealand.

GREG Bryce, as we all know, though, the tax take off cigarettes is huge. It’s hundreds of millions of dollars are year. That’s going to go as well.

DR BRYCE EDWARDS – Political Analyst
Oh, absolutely, and smokers do pay their way. We’ve seen studies to show that they’re paying more than their health costs are, and sometimes I feel a bit sorry for smokers. No one stands up for them. And that’s why it was quite good having Christopher Bishop on today, because, well, he didn’t seem to have horns or anything. It’s good to actually see a smoking representative putting forward— And he was kind of bending over backwards being quite reasonable in some respects. But where are the politicians on this standing up for the 20% of smokers? Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for them and think, well, perhaps I should take up smoking, show some solidarity. Because Deborah’s raised some good points about it being mostly a victimless crime, and the challenge for someone like Kelvin and the government wanting to ban it is certainly the question about other products – what comes next? Gambling, beer?

KELVIN But how can you say it’s a victimless crime, though, when all the families, all the bereaved people – they’re victims of somebody else’s behaviour.

BRYCE You can make the same arguments about alcohol, gambling—

KELVIN Yeah, but tobacco is not a victimless—

DEBORAH Oh, well, what about obesity, you know? Obesity-related—

KELVIN You’re going down that same path and diverting things—

DEBORAH That relates to sugar, and Tariana Turia—

KELVIN Let’s deal with the tobacco companies.

DEBORAH Tariana Turia has said, “Look, let’s toot at everybody who’s smoking in a car.” Now, she had a stomach-stapling operation, which I don’t disagree with, because to do with her health and being overweight. Now, how would she feel if we went around tooting at everybody who was overweight? That is a very mean and shaming horrible thing to do. But obesity costs the health system far more than people who smoke, because they contribute through their taxes.

KELVIN And I think we should deal with obesity, but not now. We’re trying to target Philip Morris and—

DEBORAH Well, it’s the same issue—

GREG Taihoa for a second. If we say— Putting aside your right to have a smoke and do whatever, let’s say we ban smoking and no one in New Zealand smokes. OK? Let’s just say that hypothetically. Where's the bad bit of that? Putting the rights aside.

DEBORAH At the moment, you’re allowed to grow 15kg of tobacco in Motueka for your own use, and that’s already on the black market. They call it chop-chop. It’s roll-your-own. And he’s absolutely right – it’ll go into the hands of the gangs, just like marijuana does now, just like cannabis does, and it will be— You know, this is the law of unintended consequences, I think. Before we charge down this road, we should think very carefully about whether we will be creating more crime.

GREG But at this stage, we’re not talking about making it a criminal offence to smoke. There's a difference there. It’s not like marijuana, a class C drug.

DEBORAH But it’ll be a criminal offence to sell it.

GREG No, it’ll be a criminal offence to sell it, but it’s not a criminal offence to smoke it. If you want to grow it yourself and smoke it yourself, at this stage anyway, it’s not a criminal offence.

KELVIN Look, there’ll be no sweeteners, no additives, no nicotine in home-grown tobacco.

GREG No one will want to smoke it.

DEBORAH But they already do supply it.

KELVIN You may as well smoke a teabag for all the joy it’ll give you.

GREG What about the prisons? What do we make of that? Because, as we said, it’s a very isolated example and it’s not all of New Zealand, but it’s worked OK.

BRYCE Yeah, and you make a very good point about that, and I think the tobacco companies do have a challenge in answering that. And Christopher Bishop I don’t think was able to answer that very well, because it shows that getting rid of smoking does have a good effect. So we should have a debate about it, absolutely. But the challenge is, and it might sound ridiculous banning packaging for beer and so forth, but it will come if we go down this slippery slope. And there's no discernible logical principled difference between banning plain packaging for tobacco or beer. So that’s the challenge for the banners.

DEBORAH I’m not saying that it’s better to smoke than not to smoke, but I’m just saying that if people want to ruin their own bodies, against all the education that says that they shouldn’t, well, then, I don’t think that banning smoking altogether...

BRYCE And it’s good to have that libertarian perspective put forward, I think.

GREG What about the timeframe? Because that’s still a long way off, and we appear to be going... Irrespective of if you agree with it or not, is the government going too softly-softly on actually doing this? I mean, why 2025? It’s still a long way off. It’s not going to take people 13 years to give up cigarettes.

KELVIN Look, what’s his name, Chris said there's multi-causal reasons why people start. We need to have a multi-causal or multi-pronged approach to actually eliminating smoking so that people just don’t want to. You know, they hook people young and they hook them for life. All it takes— They don’t need to worry about plain packaging and fonts on cigarette packets. All they need to do is get a 14-year-old to smoke about a half a dozen cigarettes and they’re hooked for life.

BRYCE Kelvin’s right about the multi-causal thing and approach – multi-pronged approach. But at the moment, the government’s very much about the stick rather than the carrot. I mean, we should have all the available smoke-free quitting programmes, but there seems to be a strong emphasis on putting up the price, whacking smokers.

GREG Very hard to smoke a carrot, though.

In response to JOHN HATTIE interview

GREG Welcome to the panel this morning: Dr Bryce Edwards from Otago University; Deborah Coddington, former ACT MP; and Kelvin Davis, former school principal and former Labour MP on his Q+A panel debut. Good morning to you all. We’ll start with you. Was this a very bad selling job on not a bad idea?

KELVIN DAVIS – Former Labour MP
Well, let’s cut to the chase – this has been a massive balls-up from the government. They’ve really mangled this whole policy. But I have to agree with the minister and with John Hattie that teacher quality is the most important factor in raising student achievement. But if the minister believes that sacking teachers and packing kids into classrooms is a way to increase student achievement, well, then, she’s deluded. I think that she's gone down the right path in getting a forum together involving the sector. I think that they need to decide on the factors that are immovable that teaching and education needs so that they’re oblivious to the swings of governments, left or right. I think that they need to review all the initiatives that they have that don’t impact on student achievement and ditch them, then they’ll find money that way. But one of the big points is that the minister can’t talk about using the research around class sizes and around teacher quality when she ignores the research around things such as charter schools, which are way down there in terms of their effectiveness in raising student achievement, and that is the obvious pot of money that they could use to find the money that they need for the initiatives.

GREG Deborah, a point John Hattie made as well is we were never really clearly told why it was happening, where the money was going to, what the benefits were. We were sold the bad stuff and we weren’t really sold the good bit.

DEBORAH CODDINGTON – Former ACT MP
That’s right. It was too airy-fairy, in other words. The positive side was too airy-fairy and that was the mistake, and the mistake also was buying a fight with the teacher unions when they had actually won the fight on national standards. But I think the time now, as Steve Hansen would say, you know, flush the dunny and move on, and I don’t think for Hekia Parata, as the Opposition is saying, that she should resign. She's not a quitter. I mean, she's Ngati Porou, for goodness sake. She's tough, and I think she will still be... Education is where good careers go to die, but I don’t think she will. The politics of this – they have been kind to her. They have extended the olive branch. They have said, “Let’s talk.” They have not said they reject investment – as you said, Kelvin, is right – in improvement in teacher education and teacher standards. That is where raising education lies and Hattie is right. And I think that where she would gain more favour is jettisoning charter schools, because I’ve done a lot of research on that, and in a small population like New Zealand, that will only make a difference to a very very small number of students.

GREG Bryce, having said that about Hekia Parata and her career aspirations from here on out, it all came down on her head. John Key – he’s not even here yet. I think he’s here later this morning. Hekia Parata and John Key wouldn’t speak to us on this. It’s all come down onto Hekia Parata’s head. Politically, the implications going forward are what?

DR BRYCE EDWARDS – Political Analyst
Oh, this government’s going to take a hit from this issue. This has been the biggest backdown, the biggest stuff-up, as Kelvin said, by this government in the four years it’s been in power. I think this will resonate with people. It shows the government as being weak, and it shows it as taking a poor public policy process in that they had no mandate for this, they had no real proper logic for it, in fact. This whole idea of this trade-off between increased class sizes and quality teaching was always a con. There was no logic in it. It’s a false dichotomy, if you like. And we had a hint of that in the interview with Professor Hattie before. He’d shown that he hadn’t necessarily swallowed the Treasury Kool-Aid on this. He was saying that it was a mistake to go down that path, because it’s a stupid one. We can have increased quality teaching and the same class sizes, and it’s silly trade-off that the government was talking about.

GREG Where's the line on this, though, Kelvin? I’m interested, because on one side you can say, “We are the government. We listened here. We backed down.” Yet on the other side you just look a bit weak and wet, don’t you?

KELVIN Well, they need to follow the courage of their convictions. If they believe that teacher quality is the most important thing, they shouldn’t have backed down. And that just shows that the courage of their convictions is only as strong as polling. But one this is I don’t believe that Hekia should resign or be stepped down. I think she was hung out to dry by people above her. I think that she needs to realise, as the minister of education, it is her responsibility to create the conditions where quality teachers can weave their magic, and that’s what's missing in this debate is that, you know, larger class sizes, less teachers – those aren’t conditions where quality teachers can actually weave their magic.

BRYCE Parata’s performance has been woeful on this issue. I think she’ll be gone as minister of education in the next reshuffle, because her relationship with the sector is now terrible. People are making the right messages about working together now going forward, but no one in the education sector – the teachers won’t believe that she's backed down because they’ve listened to her. They’ve listened public opinion.