Tertiary Education Reforms Long Overdue

The greatest legacy parents can leave their children is to prepare them to succeed in the world they will inherit - a world characterised by rapid continuous change, and increasing complexity and ambiguity. The successful citizen not only needs a broad range of skills, knowledge and experience but also well-refined tools for continuous self-learning.

The New Zealand school year kicked off to a rather tense start last week, with the introduction of the controversial National Standards dominating the media and most dinnertime discussion. I think it's safe to say that if you didn't have an opinion on the standards three weeks ago, you will certainly have one now.

While it is common knowledge that Denmark recently played host to the international Climate Conference, most people are only dimly aware of just what went on - or that, despite a massive turnout of representatives from different governments and organisations, the entire affair was largely unsuccessful.

After ACT's first year as a support Party of the Government, and mine as a Minister of the Crown, it is worth reflecting on the year that was. If you would like to receive this weekly email publication please email me at heather.roy@parliament.govt.nz. The Diary will be taking a break over the summer and will resume in February.

Members' Bills - known as Private Members' Bills until 1996 - are often the only avenue that back bench MPs have to put legislation forward. Members' Bills go into a ballot, which is drawn when space becomes available on the Parliamentary Order Paper. The drawn Bill is set down for debate on the next Members' Day - every alternate Wednesday when the House is sitting. This week we had a Members' Day and two Bills were debated.

When ACT was negotiating our Confidence & Supply Agreement with the National Party after the 2008 Election, our basis of the Agreement was closing the income gap with Australia by 2025.

This evening I will be at Ohakea Air Force Base in the Manawatu to welcome home the New Zealand Defence Force personnel of Op Rata II, who are returning to New Zealand from a rotation in the Solomon Islands.

Food prices came under scrutiny this week after a New South Wales Associate Professor, having analysed figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), said that grocery prices in Australia and New Zealand had risen 41 percent and 42.5 percent respectively since the start of 2000.

This week another compelling argument was raised against the need for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), this time in a New Zealand Institute of Economic Research Inc (NZIER) report titled 'Sustainable Development: Have We Got Our Priorities Right?'