Good evening everyone. Thank you all for being here.

So, as we all know this Saturday is the General Election, and I am here today to talk about the Labour Party's policies. More specifically, our education policies. Our manifesto explains our policies in this area quite well, however I wish to go more into details about why we support these policies, and how they will bring us a more inclusive society.

Let's start off at the top:

Labour will extend the mandate of the Education Review Office to include teacher education providers, ensuring the quality of these institutions. We will also instruct the Education Council to raise the standard of entry into the teaching profession.

Of course, we believe our children deserve the highest quality of education. They are the future of our nation after all! There are a lot of things we can change about the education system to improve the quality, but ultimately a lot of it comes down to the teachers. By extending the Education Review Office's mandate, we can ensure the training teachers receive is of the highest quality as well, which, together with the raised standard of entry, will ensure our children receive only the highest quality of education.

Next, we have:

The system of charter schools implemented by the past National Government is unaccountable and there is no evidence that it improves results. We will abolish all charter schools while ensuring that schools with special character are able to retain those attributes.

We believe that charter schools are a regressive system of schooling, and that we should stop the privatisation of schools altogether. The problem with charter schools is that they are private schools with public funding, which means that regardless of the quality of education they will still receive funding. We should also not be spending public money on private companies as we have no control over where the money is spent. Of course, we should take Te Tiriti in account as well, which is why we will ensure that special character schools are able to keep existing, despite abolishing charter schools.

Then, our third policy:

In Government, Labour has improved access to childcare by delivering a boost to OSCAR programs. We will build on this by expanding the ECE subsidy for parents as it has been stagnant since 2011.

We believe all children deserve the right to high quality childcare. We have increased funding for OSCAR programmes through the OSCAR subsidy in the past budget, which has significantly improved childcare in New Zealand. We will do the same to the ECE subsidy to further increase the quality of childcare in our country, which will bring it more in line with the OSCAR subsidy and help both children and parents. Cuts to childcare subsidies in the past have significantly decreased the amount of parents receiving them, despite low incomes, and we are here to reverse those cuts and ensure all children have access to high quality childcare while parents are not expected to pay money they cannot afford.

And finally:

We will adjust regulation of the profession in line with international best practice to allow more qualified carers into the profession, driving costs down for families.

In other nations trained professionals have a greater ability to structure their activities, while here in New Zealand we apply the same standards regardless of training. We want to change this to allow greater freedom for trained professionals, which will encourage more people to enter the profession, which in turn will drive down costs and ensure our children are kept safe.

Anyway, that is all I have for you today. We believe these policies will create a more equal New Zealand where all children have access to childcare, all parents are able to afford education and childcare for their children, one where teachers are of the highest quality and are properly held accountable. I thank you all for your time!