PM Christopher Luxon to deliver speech, education announcement at National Party conference

Education Minister Erica Stanford formed that inquiry in March, pointing to delays and cost overruns in projects previous governments had announced.

Stanford spoke to the conference this morning, setting out the key priority areas to try to lift student achievement – including the curriculum, structured literacy, clearer reporting, assessment and data and evidence.

She ran through the changes already made, such as the cellphone ban, structured literacy and the overhaul of the curriculum.

“We do not have time to waste, student achievement has been in decline in New Zealand.”

Earlier, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith and Police Minister Mark Mitchell held a panel on law and order at the conference – one of National’s main campaign areas.

Goldsmith said he hoped that changes to the three-strikes legislation would be enough to ensure it was not repealed again if there was a change in government.

Goldsmith said the purpose of it was to deal with the most serious repeat offenses “and to keep them out of circulation for longer”. He said in the first iteration of the three strikes – which was repealed by Labor – the offenses that qualified were very broad so the two-year prison term had been set as the criteria in the recent legislation.

He said he was hopeful that changing the criteria so that lower-level offenses did not qualiy for it would be enough to ensure it was not repealed again every time there was a change in government and would be an enduring part of sentencing laws.

Mitchell kicked off his segment by playing a video of police crushing a Comancheros bike.

He told the party members that one of his priorities was trying to make the CBDs of big cities safer – the most recent move of which was getting more police on the beat in the Auckland CBD. He said efforts were still under way to try and get police a physical base downtown, but the increase in the visible presence of the police had helped ease issues.

“(There is) more presence, more reassurance, and we are starting to deal with a lot of the social problems that arise in the CBDs.”

He said he was having monthly meetings with Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, key retail groups, police, Oranga Tamariki and Kāinga Ora to try to resolve social issues in the Auckland CBD.

Mitchell said one of his other priorities was Corrections staff, saying he had suggested they change the marketing campaign and since then there had been 20,000 expressions of interest. He said the recruitment of new Corrections officers was now tracking at 350-400 above attrition.

Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007.