Today on NewsHub Nation ` as the Me Too movement gains momentum in New Zealand, we look at the problem of workplace sexual harassment and bullying. And we reveal some startling new research about the extent of the problem in the legal profession. Plus, we talk to a leading education expert to find out why he thinks our education system is failing. Copyright Able 2018 Kia ora, good morning. I'm Lisa Owen. Welcome to NewsHub Nation. Well, by now, most New Zealanders will be aware of the Me Too movement. Originally it was started by an American civil rights activist. It rose to prominence last year when actor Alyssa Milano encouraged victims of sexual assault or harassment to use the phrase on social media. Within weeks, the 'MeToo' hashtag had been used millions of times. Stories started to pour out of sexual aggression and abuses of power in Hollywood and beyond. Even international charities weren't immune. Here, our Human Rights Commission, the organisation tasked with protecting New Zealanders, was caught up in its own sexual harassment controversy. And the Prime Minister has been forced to defend her party's poor handling of sexual assault allegations at a summer camp run by its youth wing. But much of the focus has been on the legal profession, with a growing number of people talking about a culture of harassment and bullying. Well, to discuss the problem, I'm joined by Human Rights Commissioner Jackie Blue, Elizabeth Hall from the Criminal Bar Association, former lawyer Olivia Wensley, and Kathryn Beck, president of the New Zealand Law Society. Thank you all for joining me this morning. Jackie, if I can start with you. Let's address the elephant in the room, eh? The Human Rights Commission has come under fire for the poor handling of a sexual misconduct complaint within its own ranks. How can New Zealanders trust what you say today and trust you to protect their rights when you couldn't protect a vulnerable person? It's really disappointing what's happened to the commission, and I know it's been incredibly tough on the amazing staff we have. Rest assured, we absolutely should be modelling best practice, and you can be absolutely guaranteed that we will listen to those recommendations when the review is finally finished in April, and absolutely make right the situation. But, Lisa, the review is about our internal processes. It's got nothing to do with our external complaints and inquiries or mediation services, which are world class, in my opinion. Elizabeth Hall, nobody seems to know what the size of the problem is, but the Criminal Bar Association has done a survey on about 300 of its members, isn't it? That's right. So how many of them said that they had experienced or witnessed harassment or bullying? 88%, so that indicates that there is a real problem. I should be clear that the survey was of the criminal bar, so criminal practitioners, both prosecution and defence, but also bearing in mind that many criminal practitioners work within either small firms or as sole practitioners, as barristers or employed barristers. And so there's often not the hierarchical support structure of an HR department or colleagues that are superior to the person that's maybe causing the problem. And so that's why the Criminal Bar Association was really supportive of the survey that I rolled out, because it is quite a close examination of what's happening for criminal law particularly. And what sort of things did they tell you about? Look, it's insulting, mocking-type behaviour. 70% of people who responded said that that was an issue. Criticism which is unjustified or baseless. Shouting at people. And, of course, you know, hot on the table today, unwelcome sexual attention. 28% of the people that responded said that they had witnessed or experienced that in the last four years. Jackie, are you surprised by those numbers? No, I'm not, and in actual fact, I went over the last five years, and we have evidence in New Zealand that we have a problem with culture in the workplaces. Public Service Association in 2012 surveyed 10,000 of their women members. 43% had been bullied. 33% discriminated. State Services Commission in 2013 did their own survey. 25% reported bullying by managers and co-workers. Of course, in 2014 we had the Roger Sutton case. 2015, New Zealand medical students were calling for an inquiry. So it's a litany of bad behaviour. Absolutely. Kathryn, I'm wondering, has the type of behaviour that's just been detailed by Elizabeth in this survey, has it been an open secret in your industry, as some people claim? I think that the type of behaviour that you're hearing, we've heard about it before. I suppose that the thing that we're really hearing now and we're listening to very strongly is it's not just the odd case here and there. This is a major problem. It's far more prevalent than I think anyone anticipated. And the snapshot that Elizabeth has done of the criminal bar, and, of course, that's a specific part of the profession, gives us a very good indication of what's happening there. What we're also going to be doing is our own survey of all lawyers, so that's all 13,600 of them. But people would say, 'Why has it taken so long?' Because you must have heard the whispers. Well, listen, in hindsight, we could always say we could've done this sooner. I think probably wrongly we had thought that we had systems in place that people knew how to do the right thing; that some of the stuff was happening, but that it would resolve itself. I think what was happening within law firms in particular was that people were thinking of these as employment problems or Human Rights Commission problems, and that's the way in which they would be channelled. And not their problem? And not a professional problem. And yet what we know and what we see very clearly now is that this is an issue of professional conduct. This should not be happening. We should not be treating each other like this as colleagues, as employers, as judiciary or anybody within the system. We should be treating each other with respect. OK, Olivia, you have experienced harassment in this profession. You actually left it as a consequence. Do you think enough has been done by organisations like the Law Society to identify the extent of the problem and address it? To date, absolutely not. I mean, there's a good start. I'm glad that we've got this dialogue going and now we're starting to talk about it, which is great. But in my profession, which spanned almost 10 years, I'd never been asked ` I'd never been asked if I'd experienced sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is not a word. I mean, Kathryn, you've said yourself that in the complaints that have been made, it's called 'discourtesy' under, you know... We're not calling it as it is. No, we need to call a spade a spade. It is sexual harassment. I mean, under the current legislation, rape is considered discourtesy, treating another colleague with discourtesy, another member of the bar. It's just... We really need to change something here and actually start calling a spade a spade. Kathryn? Obviously rape is not treated as discourtesy. There is nothing in our current legislation that describes that this type of particular behaviour would be misconduct ` clearly, that sort of behaviour would clearly be misconduct ` or unsatisfactory conduct, which are the two phrases that we tend to use. Where someone is convicted of a criminal offence, which obviously rape is, then that comes within the misconduct sphere. That would normally be dealt with by our disciplinary tribunal. So we haven't tended to label particular behaviour, but what we're hearing` Should you? Well, yes, maybe we should, and that's what we've got a regulatory working group looking at ` at our current system, but not just the regulatory framework; at actually how our processes and practices work within that. Dame Silvia Cartwright will be chairing it, and she will be looking at one, how we receive and deal with complaints, how we support victims when they've made a complaint, and then secondly, the action that we can take within that. Right. And I want to talk about that a bit later on, but I also want to get back to Elizabeth, because you've got some more numbers that we want to have a look at. So despite the high numbers of people who said they had experienced or witnessed sexual harassment or bullying, less than about 20% of them reported it. So why do you think that was the case? That's right. So about 16% of people who had experienced in the last four years have reported it. The survey also asked people, 'If you didn't report it, why not?' And some of the responses were that they were worried about how they'd be perceived if they reported something, that they themselves would become the focus or the target. And particularly in criminal law, where practitioners and advocates, we are expected to be strong, robust, firm characters that don't put up with rubbish. And so to come along and say, 'Actually, someone's treating me in a way that I don't like,' the perception that you're weak in some way or making yourself vulnerable in some way, that's causing a large number of people not to report. Also, there's a perception that it won't make any difference. This is a cultural thing. This is an ingrained way of treating people. If I complain, that person's not going to change. And what about professional repercussions? Were they worried about that? Absolutely. And also we talk about defining harassment, but a number of the people who responded said that it's difficult to define, it's difficult to explain. And a lot of the times, they'd go back and talk to people and say, 'Well, you kind of had to be there. On paper, it's not what it seems.' And then they start to devalue and, 'Maybe it is me, and maybe I did read the situation wrong.' And that's where sometimes, arguably, you need someone to stand up for you as well or beside you. So, Kathryn, there is a statutory obligation for lawyers to report the misconduct of other lawyers. But it seems like not many are reporting this kind of behaviour. So do they just not know the rules, or are they complicit in covering it up? I think there's a couple of things that have been happening here. Firstly, as I say, people haven't thought about it in that professional context. They've thought about it as either an employment or potentially we go through the Human Rights Commission. They haven't applied that professional lens. And also, in terms of misconduct, as Olivia had said, lawyers tend to go, 'Is this 'misconduct? Is this unsatisfactory conduct?' Misconduct, you have to report, right? Unsatisfactory conduct` If you see something that you would identify, as the survey has, as bullying or harassing behaviour, isn't that enough to say, 'OK, I have to report it'? I think that's a good question. What we need to help people understand is that this is unacceptable behaviour, and what we don't want them trying to do is second-guess themselves as to whether this is and which level is this. Is it unsatisfactory? Is it misconduct? The rules are different. How do we handle that? Olivia? Yeah, I think, come on, they're lawyers; they do know. Russell McVeagh never reported. How is what happened there not professional misconduct? And how was it not reported to the Law Society? Of course, lawyers know. They know, of course. There's a real problem in this. So complicit in turning a blind eye? Yes, yes, and using NDAs to cover this behaviour. So non-disclosure agreements, for people who aren't lawyers. Yes, non-disclosure agreements. So they sweep it under the carpet. Of course, why wouldn't they? They're not being watched. There's no mandatory reporting obligations. There should be, and they should be made` Well, there is. It should be made very clear. It needs to be made patently clear exactly what they must report. So, in other countries, there's regulators that actually keep an eye on this kind of thing. In New Zealand, the main problem is the legal profession here is small, everyone knows each other, and there are grave career implications if you speak out. Jackie, do you agree with that? Yes, I do. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. One way or the other, you leave the workplace because it's just too hard. I think the Australian Human Rights Commission has done a huge amount of work on sexual harassment in their workplaces. They've done four surveys since 2003. They're in the field at the moment with the fourth one. The third one, 2012, showed that one in four and one in six men over the previous five years had been sexually harassed. Generally, women were far more likely to be harassed by a boss. Huge gap in understanding what sexual harassment was all about. Unfortunate increase in negative impacts of reporting sexual harassment, but there was an improvement in bystander intervention, which everyone agrees is so important. We've got to go to a break. We're going to be back shortly, and we're going to carry on this conversation, Welcome back. We're talking workplace bullying and sexual harassment with our panel, Jackie Blue, Elizabeth Hall, Olivia Wensley and Kathryn Beck. If I can come to you, Elizabeth. Bullying is often about power. So what did your members tell you about who is doing the bullying and the harassing? Well, the people that responded to the survey said that on 65% of the occasions, it was judges; colleagues or groups of colleagues 43% of the time; and opposing counsel 33% of the time. Judges? Judges? 65% of the time? OLIVIA: Judges are terrible! They are. Yeah, but, look, if you took this survey 20 years ago, that result would have been 100%, quite frankly. The way that judges and modern judging is happening is far more progressive than it was. And what I think that result demonstrates is a couple of things one, that judges have come up through that system themselves, have been treated like that, of part of that culture, and then have made a conscious decision not to judge like that and not to be like that. But also the pressures on the judiciary are immense. They have an incredibly stressful job. I can see your face. But that's not an excuse is it, Jackie? No. No, but if you want to stop the behaviour, you've got to understand why the behaviour's happening. It's not enough just to hang people out to dry, vilify them, name and shame. That's not going to do it. We want a productive conversation about this. And Justice Kirby in Australia ` the former president of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales and a former High Court judge started talking about this in the late '90s. And produced a number of literature articles about it talking specifically about this topic of judge bullying, because no one really wants to talk about it. OK. Well, Kathryn, I want to pick up on this point, because Andrew Little has said the problem with the Law Society is that it's dominated by law firms and senior practitioners. So is the society an old boys club that's protecting itself? Well, no, I don't think I'm an old boy. But, listen, the nature of the Law Society is that often senior people have the more front-facing roles, if you like. But it is an organisation that looks after all levels of the legal profession, if you want to talk about it in those terms. We've got a lot of young lawyers groups; we do a lot of work with the young lawyers groups; we work with the law firms. If that's the case, though... I just want to pick up on something Olivia said. If that is the case, then why did no one ` say, in the example of Russell McVeagh ` apparently no one reported it to the Law Society. Is that correct? Well, someone did come to the Law Society, of course. One of the people affected did come and meet with our executive director. And somebody else also met with the regulatory people to work out whether they wanted to make a complaint. A victim? Yes. OLIVIA: But when? It was covered for years. It was. I mean, they came within the same year. Does it surprise you that no one from the profession came forward? What surprises me is, I suppose, the level of the problem that we're hearing about. And the fact that we haven't had any complaints of the sexual harassment nature, in particular in the employment environment, within our system, we know is a problem. That's a significant problem. If they're not thinking of us as a place to come, that is a problem for us, and that's something we're working on and taking seriously. It's a huge problem. There's so many vulnerable people ` I used to be one of them ` in this profession who cannot speak out. You get moved on. You get moved on very quickly if you rock the boat. Lawyers are replaceable. There's an endless supply of graduates. Law schools are producing too many graduates. You can be out the door within seconds if you dare upset anything, so you have to put up and shut up. It's like it everywhere. Can I also say, sorry? Yes? I think also, part of the problem is that the Law Society framework is quite rigid. You either don't complain, or you complain and be prepared to name yourself, name the person that's been doing it, provide a formal statement, and really go, basically, after the jugular of the other person, right? And oftentimes, people don't want that. They just want the behaviour to stop. They want a way of other people knowing about it, the situation being redressed, but without necessarily ending the career of the person that's doing it. There needs to be a more modern way of looking at it. The structure is not right in New Zealand. In other countries there's independent regulators that actually prevent this happening. I don't think that it's right that the Law Society that is responsible for issuing practising certificates is also the same society monitoring it. I'm sorry, there's a huge conflict there. Even overseas, though, we are not alone. Even some of the organisations that are entirely independent, such as UK, England and Wales, they have only, I think, over a period of four years, got 27 complaints of sexual harassment. Now, they're a massive profession. So that's significant ` as Jackie has said ` significant underreporting. So it's not so much a question of regulation, although, absolutely, we can get that better. Of course it is. No, it's a question of culture. We need to change the culture of our profession. Change the culture through regulation and by having action and by having consequences, because at the moment there are no consequences. I want to talk about consequences in a second, but let's just bring Jackie in here. So, Olivia has raised the concern that the fox is in charge of the hen house, basically. So, the Justice Minister has reserved the right to step in and have an independent inquiry into the Law Society. Have we passed that point? Does there need to be an independent inquiry? Possibly. You need someone looking from the outside in at what's happening. It's a huge issue, and you're all very much a part of it and very embroiled in it for different reasons. And so, yeah, there could be a very real place for an independent review, and that wouldn't be a bad thing to happen. Just to make a comment about the reporting. I think the Law Society could take a leaf out of the New Zealand Defence Forces, what they're doing. Operation Respect was launched in 2016 as a result of sexual assault and sexual violence and inappropriate behaviours. Apart from doing sexual ethics and healthy-relations training to all the personnel, which they've reached 9000 out of 14-or-so thousand, they have instituted a way of reporting. People can either do restricted reporting, which means they've wanted to say, 'This is what happened to me, but I don't want to take it any further, thanks very much.' 'We just want you to know.' Yeah. And the other one is unrestricted, they want to go the whole hog, 'I want to make a formal complaint.' If they follow the Australian Defence Force, who've done this type of reporting, the unrestricted reportings will increase as people get confidence in the process. That's exactly what we're looking at. And in fact, Defence Project Respect, we've been speaking to people that are doing that. So part of what the regulatory group will be looking at is looking at our systems. You can make a confidential report at the moment. The question is then ` where do we go with that if, in fact, someone completely denies it? But the confidential reporting, that pathway that you're talking about, means that the person can make a report, can be fully supported. We hold the information. The extent to which we can deal with it is in the complainant's hands often. But you can see a pattern of behaviour if you keep things like that well. Exactly. And that's exactly what we're looking at is whether we can bring in some systems like that. Olivia, you've raised some questions about reporting and recording incidents. Do you think we should have a mandatory system where companies over a certain size have to declare how many confirmed cases of sexual harassment? Of course. Yes, I do. I do. And it should be treated like health and safety is. There's mandatory reporting obligations. So available to the public? I can look up your company and see how many cases? Yes, transparency is good, right? Jackie, would you agree with that? Getting the data is difficult, because it's spread among MBIE, Human Rights Commission has data, ACC will have people who are actually off on ACC through sexual harassment. Isn't that the problem? We just don't have a central collection? No, we don't have a repository, but I think it's like the Defence Force; they thought, 'Should we have a survey and work out how bad it is?' They thought, 'No, we just need to get on with it now and do something about it.' So data's good, absolutely. We can see trends. It's going to be hard to get all that data in one repository. We can try. The quickest way to change this cultural problem is to actually have repercussions and name and shame. The offenders if there's a misconduct upheld? Yes. And the firms that are covering. There are firms that are hiding these perpetrators, who are practising today. Look, can I say, I think that's one way of doing it, and it's good that we're talking about options and ways that we handle it. But from a changing of a culture perspective, my concern is that if you make a very strict way of very stern consequences, then you may get underreporting, which is what's already happening. That's true as well, yes. And what the results reveal is that 92% of respondents talked about it with colleagues. So they're not staying silent; they are talking about it. They're just not reporting it. And so we need to work in with, perhaps, a different way of looking at confidential reporting, anonymity, training and looking at the cause of why people are doing it. They can't be reporting to the society that their bread and butter comes from. I'm telling you now, that is the fear. I have been contacted by hundreds of women and men, and they cannot speak out because of their career repercussions. They are afraid. So that is a power imbalance. Jackie, how do we address the power imbalance and give the power back to the victims? I think it comes down to some practical things ` ensuring that the workplace has health and safety, and that means clear communication from the top; acting on a complaint or investigating immediately; having pamphlets and material around what sexual harassment is; having a sexual harassment policy which is accessible` That's enforced. ...it gives examples. Like, you were saying there was difficulty knowing what was what. But you give examples of what sexual harassment is. And, of course, sexual harassment training. Start with the people in power and then roll it out to the rest of them. OK, here's the thing, then. Olivia has raised the issue that some people are repeat offenders, and she feels that they're not being punished to a high enough level. How many strikes before you get the boot? Well, I mean, it depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? So if somebody is guilty of misconduct, it goes to our tribunal, and that tribunal will decide whether that is someone that should be suspended or struck off. Criminal convictions, for example, sexual assault ` of course. We often see strikings-off for that. But you've said on public record that there's been no complaints of this. And I've acknowledged that, and so we've` Well, except if there was a criminal conviction, of course. But how can they be struck off if they're not complaining? We acknowledge that we have a problem with under-reporting significantly in this area ` in particular in the workplace situation. Not so much in the colleague to colleague. I think that we do get some reporting, not enough. And lawyer to client, we get reporting there. Probably under-reporting as well, as there is in all of these issues. What we're looking at doing is rolling out an education programme. Obviously, we've got this regulatory working group. We've got a seminar. So we're trying to start some education. We will be having some meetings across the country too and get some panels. I can hear Olivia sighing here. I'm sorry. Education. Education. Consequences ` hit these people in the pocket. If you hit firms and offenders in the pocket, you're going to see real change. Big fines. Can we talk about this Eichelbaum decision that's come out? So, he got fined $10,000, and the decision that was published, it doesn't even closely reflect the complaint. I've read the original complaint. I've read correspondence from him that is depraved, and I cannot even repeat it on national television. It's terrible, and the official reporting on it didn't even touch the surface. It was very sanitised. So you're saying slap across the wrist with a wet bus ticket? It was the equivalent of 10 hours' work for him, and he spent two years` We're almost out, but I feel you need a right of reply to that, Kathryn. Very quickly. We have a standards committee that would've looked at all of this ` what's in the complaint and then what's in the decision might be different things. Our standards committees, I think, take their obligations very seriously. A censure, you have to notify your insurer, $10,000 fine isn't insignificant. Neither is costs. Publication of his name, which, of course, he attempted to stop at one point. But again` Right, so publicly outing him. He had name suppression for two years while she was getting harassed. Can I just say as well, this problem didn't arise overnight. It's been brewing for decades. We're not going to solve it overnight, but the first step is what we're doing, right? We are talking about it, and we're complaining to the Law Society about it, and we're airing our dirty linen. We know that people will now come to us. We know that. That is a good place to leave it. OLIVIA: I disagree. I thank you all for joining us this morning. Now, if you have got something to say about what you have seen on our show, let us know. We are on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you can email us at nation@mediaworks.co.nz. Up next ` Justice Undersecretary Jan Logie on what the government can do to tackle sexual harassment in the workplace. Plus, a leading education expert tells us why creativity is as valuable as literacy when it comes to learning. Welcome back. I'm with Undersecretary Jan Logie. So, Andrew Little has said he will wade in if things with the Law Society are not dealt with as he thinks is proper. So can we take from that that this is being taken seriously? Or is it just going to be some more window dressing. No. Absolutely this is being taken seriously right across government, and I've got a real commitment for dealing with this in the detail and the complexity of it. There are a lot of things that we need to look at right across our system. So we need good workaround prevention and education, and we need to make sure our policies are kind to people making complaints and victims, and we need to look at the fact that the foxes in the hen house and need to look at what are our options for external accountability and investigation. One of the suggestions this morning was making companies of a certain size report the numbers of upheld complaints. How do you feel about that? I think you need to look at that in detail. We don't want to create an environment that discourages people from making complaints because they're seen to penalise their employer who they are wanting to stay in the employment of. OK. So, the Criminal Bar Association survey found that 65% of respondents said the person bullying or harassing them or what they witnessed was by a judge. Now, they're employed by the Crown through your ministry. What can you do about that? Well, there's a constitutional separation of power. I've got to say I'm deeply worried by that survey result, and in the context of a 1% conviction rate for sexual violence in our country at the moment, I think we have to look at this in more detail. And part of my job is dealing with that context of sexual violence and improving our justice system. So what are you saying there when you talk about the 1% conviction rate and the fact that a large number of people are identifying judges as having harassing behaviour? Well, I think it's deeply worrying, and we know there are lots of barriers` Are you saying you might not be able to see it in other people? Well, I'm saying that that's potentially an issue, and what are the barriers for people reporting to the police and going through that court process if they look and see that the judges are complicit in bullying or sexual harassment? That's not building confidence and it is a problem. So is that something you will take up with the minister? So, we are looking at the workarounds sexual violence and improving our justice system, and so this information, clearly the minister's going to be looking at it. OK, well, the government is the country's biggest employer, isn't it? So change, they say, has to come from the top. So what are you going to do within those organisations? Because you have the power to change the ministry and other large employers. So what specifically? Well, I don't want to jump to the specifics too quickly because we need to work out the detail of that. You take from the conversation this morning it's not simple. But I would say some work was done in the wake of Roger Sutton to bring all the guidelines in relation to sexual harassment across the public service together. I don't have evidence that anybody's done anything with that or that those guidelines are being followed at the moment. So you're going to make sure that they are followed and enforced. One thing that has come up during these conversations is this idea of anonymous references, where victims can be obviously re-victimised by people giving them a bad reference anonymously. Why don't you say that government departments and ministries won't accept anonymous references? Well, I think that's something that we need to look at is that anonymous process without consequences but notification, and it's also going back to making sure that employers, regardless of whether somebody's taking a complaint, take their job and their legal obligation to provide a safe duty, a safe workplace, seriously. And this could be a tool to help them with that. OK. A quiet concern with it, though, is that I don't want all our effort to go into that and saying that, OK, we know our system doesn't work, so we're just going to accept that it doesn't work and set up an anonymous system. We need to make sure our system works. All right. Thank you so much for joining me this morning. That's Jan Logie. Sir Ken Robinson wants a radical rethink of our school system. The best-selling author says there are many different types of intelligence, and educators should nurture them all. He says creativity should be valued more highly, and an obsession with testing and high grades is quashing children's potential. Mike Wesley-Smith spoke with Ken Robinson and began by asking what it means to be educated. (CHUCKLES) Well, basically, being educated is a funny term, isn't it? It means different things to different people. I mean, there was a time when being educated meant that you'd studied the Classics and you could speak Greek and Latin and quote the scriptures, and then there was a time when being educated meant that you went to college and had a university degree. I'm trying to get people to think differently about what being educated means. What do you see it as meaning? It means two things, really. One is discovering and developing the talents that we have within us naturally. It's a very important part of my argument, this, that all children are different. But it illustrates a broader point which is our talents are very diverse and multifarious, and for historical reasons, in part, our education systems have become rather fixated on a particular type of intellectual ability. We call it academic work. Now we've come to confuse academic ability with intelligence in general, and I think it's something we need to really revisit. So being educated is, in part, giving people access to their natural capacities and abilities and helping to cultivate them. But also being educated means understanding the world around you as well as the world within you and being literate in a cultural sense, understanding something of the history and the values and traditions of how the world got to be the way it is and why it works the way it does and what the possibilities for change are. Obviously a big part of New Zealand's debate around education has been this removing of National Standards. You know, a standardised way of education. What are your thoughts on that as an education approach? Most countries around the world are working to improve their education systems. I think, for the most part, they're going about it the wrong way in a couple of ways. One is that the tendency has been to focus on particular aspects of the school curriculum. So there's been a big focus on science, technology, maths. Very important disciplines, but the consequence of that has been that equally important disciplines, like humanities, physical education, the arts, practical vocational activities have been squeezed out of many systems. That's a big mistake. And the second is that governments around the world have been trying to make schools accountable through a system of testing ` constant standardisation. So, on the one hand we're getting the curriculum being standardised and on the other hand we're getting a lot of standardised testing. And the evidence everywhere is that it doesn't work. Not in the way it's intended. And we pay a heavy price for it. Kids are under an awful lot of pressure these days at school, more so than we were at school. Teachers and families are under a lot of pressure. It's all about competition and grades, and it's become a kind of dreary steeplechase. And along the way, we've lost a sense of the vitality of how education ought to work. And so if you're an advocate of personalised education for each student, for a teacher that, say, might have 30 students, is that feasible for them? Well, there are a couple of things with this. It depends what we mean by personalise. From some points of view, it seems to me absolutely axiomatic. Education is a human business. We're not manufacturing sprockets. These are people we're talking about ` young people ` whose education has a bearing on the life they lead and how they discover or not the possibilities that lie inside them and how they can manoeuvre in the world around them. It is personal. It's personal for their parents, it's personal for their kids, it's personal for everybody. It's a relationship, and there's no alternative to having a personalised system of education. It's about how well we do it and what we really mean by it. It doesn't, to me, mean that everyone can just follow an entirely idiosyncratic curriculum that has no relationship to anything else. The reason I say that is because there are some things that I think we can agree people need to learn in common. And there is a good case for having in schools a broadly agreed framework for the curriculum. I mean, I think it's important that everybody practises the sciences in a creative and inquisitive way. I think it's equally important they practise the arts in a disciplined and creative way. And I'd rather that was not left to chance and we had some way of making that available. What personalisation really means, in this case, is making sure that teaching is differentiated to the talents and interests and rates of learning of individual kids. It's what families do with their children and great teachers have always done that. Teaching isn't just a process of transmission; it's a relationship. It's as much a process of coaching and mentoring and inspiring. Great teachers have always done that. So, yes, it has to be personalised in that sense. Can teachers do it in a class of 30? Absolutely they can. And often people think that to be a good teacher you just need a degree in the subject in question. It's a total myth. There are plenty of people who are very well qualified in a particular field who are hopeless at teaching it. Teaching is 50% that ` knowing what you're doing. It's also at least half knowing how to engage with people and how to energise and interest them in the work they're doing. That's why you remember your teachers from school. They're the ones who turned you on and the ones who also turned you off. So you can't make education teacher-proof. You shouldn't try to either. You should celebrate and empower teachers to do their job properly, and if you do that, that is how you personalise education. Who was you teacher that made the difference? I fell into the hands of a teacher called Miss York, who was an absolute tartar. Very demanding and rigorous. But in between it all, you could tell she really cared. And she used to push us hard. But for her and two or three teachers along the way, I wouldn't be doing what I do now. But it illustrates the point that sometimes you're drawn to teachers because of their passion for the discipline or just you've got a respect for their approach to you or because you find them interesting as personalities. It's often the case that people are drawn into a particular discipline because of the teacher they had. Do you feel like if you walked around a modern classroom, you'll see kids increasingly having replaced books with computers. Do you think there's a risk that you lose the potential influence a teacher can have if kids are increasingly taking their education to a screen? There is. Yes, the short answer is yes. I think there's a risk. It's worth remembering, though, that virtually every technology that came along has had people throwing their arms up in despair, saying it's the end of civilisation as we know it. In the 18th century where books became widespread, people thought, well, this is the end of everything, that the idea of the portable library, people seemed to think we've sold our soul at this point. And now we take that for granted. Television was going to be the end of everything. Films were going to be the end of everything. Rock 'n' roll ` mind you, that was the end of everything, so that's fair enough. (LAUGHS) No, the thing is that the tools we have now, the technologies, are sensational compared to any of those available to any previous generation. So I'd be the last person to say that these are not fantastic resources for education. They just are. But there's a downside, which is they can be a terrible distraction. There's a lot of evidence that kids who spend too much time on social media are suffering more anxiety as a consequence. I've always thought social media was an ironic title, because they're not social. They're antisocial in some respects, aren't they? You know, when I was at school, when you went home for the day, that was it. I mean, you could watch the television or hang out with your family, but the dramas of school were kind of gone. But now it's constant and it's obsessive. So there is a downside. Good parents know this. It's almost one of the definitions. The role of a parent is to set some boundaries, and I think we do need to set some boundaries to help our kids to kind of tune out. Because, of course, there is a lot of enriching material to be found online. Absolutely. Including your TED Talk, which, of course, has launched you into another stratosphere. Listen, I'm not suggesting anybody turns that off. My contention is that creativity now is as is important in education as literacy. And we should treat it with the same status. (APPLAUSE) Thank you. That was it, by the way, thank you. (LAUGHTER) Meanwhile, that talk has been seen online 50 million times. It's been seen probably by 10 times that number of people. So you must be just below Justin Bieber on the YouTube` Little bit below Justin. Just a bit above Miley Cyrus. But then I don't twerk. Fair enough, yes. I mean, I could if encouraged. What's the most poignant reaction you've heard as a result of that talk? I was talking to these kids afterwards, and there's a lad holding back. He's about 17, 18, with somebody who I realised was his dad. He came over at the end and he said, 'I just wanted to say thank you.' I said, 'For what?' He said, 'Well, for the talk you gave because it's really helped me and my dad.' I said, 'How has it helped?' And he said, 'Well, I've always had this thing about design, drawing and art 'and I want to go to art college, but my dad said I couldn't go. 'He said I needed to go to university and do, like, a real degree.' That's how he put it. His dad's standing there nodding. And he said, 'We've had a terrible time for the past couple of years. 'I've been angry and upset and we weren't talking and Dad's been getting angry with me.' And he said, 'It's awful.' And his dad's nodding. And he said, 'A couple of months ago I saw your talk, 'and I asked my dad to come and sit and watch it with me. And he did. 'He didn't say anything and he put his arm around me and said, ''You've got to go to art college, haven't you?'' He said, 'And I'm going to art college, and I want to say thank you.' And his dad said ` to me as well ` he shook my hand and said, 'You've given me my son back.' Well, you know, you can't plan that stuff. You don't think that's going to happen. But the point I'm making is that it is about people. This is a human process. Education is not some industrial thing that's all about data points and league tables, and politicians make a big mistake when they think it is. You have to recognise the human dimension to it, and this kid will go on, no doubt, to achieve very high standards because he's doing what he wants to do in the place he wants to do it, and he's got family support. Thank you so much for your time. I think my final question would be what would Miss York think of you if she could see you now? Well, I hope she'd be pleased with what I'm doing, but she'd probably tell me I'm not doing it well enough. (LAUGHS) Stay with us. We're back after the break with our panel ` Jenna Raeburn from Barton Deakin; a government relations firm, former cabinet minister Laila Harre; and Duncan Greive from The Spinoff. Welcome back. I'm joined now by our panel, former National Party adviser turned political lobbyist Jenna Raeburn; former MP Laila Harre; and The Spinoff manager editor Duncan Greive. Good morning to you all. We've been talking about Me Too and sexual misconduct in the workplace and harassment. We heard for the first time a Criminal Bar Association survey there saying that 65% of the people who responded said that judges were the ones doing the bullying and acting in disrespectful ways. Were you surprised by that? I was surprised that they were the single group that was most frequently singled out. Though, I guess, to a certain extent, the fact that it's a Criminal Bar survey would put them there. But it is quite frightening because judges are` you know, the way that we perceive them as a society is that they are kind of supposed to be above the fray. So to have them leading it is deeply troubling, right? Yeah, when change is supposed to come from the top, Jenna, where does that leave us if some of the people at the top are implicated in the behaviour? Yeah, and as Jan Logie said, it makes it quite difficult for victims to show up in court if they don't trust the personalities of the judges who are making those really big decisions and presiding over the courtroom. Um, so there is some difficulty there. It is important not to conflate the two, though, um, between sexual harassment` No, absolutely. ...and I suspect most of that 65% is the bullying end of the spectrum. Absolutely. Which I don't think would surprise many people who have appeared in court day to day. Mm. Laila, it seems the conversation there was a lot about whether it's cultural change or we need to come down with some tougher penalties for people who are behaving badly. What's your view? Oh, I mean, clearly cultural change has to occur, but it's how you catalyse that. And it seems to me that there is, at the moment, a very low level of incentive for people to change the culture within professions like the legal profession. I mean, what irony that we're left with the women of the profession like Kathryn Beck and the Criminal Bar Association chair` Elizabeth Hall, yeah. ...and Jackie Blue, who isn't a lawyer but is investigating these issues through the Human Rights Commission to do the clean-up work for the profession. And the only tools they have to do that, because they're not the guys who are perpetrating this disgusting behaviour, is the rules and regulations that they can apply. So I'm with Olivia on this. I think that there needs to be, to a degree, a punitive approach taken to drive some of that, to provide some incentive for culture change. I feel like I've lived through three major explosions around this issue in my adult life. The first was with Mervyn Thompson and the universities having to respond to widespread harassment. They were forced to adopt policies and procedures. They were forced to put people in place who, in a sense, sat above the academic establishment and the powers that be and could call out sexual harassment in the institutions. But, Jenna, do you think that fining someone more money or naming and shaming them is going to bring about the cultural change that's required? It's really difficult, I think, because if you name and shame a handful of people, then everyone else sort of breathes a sigh of relief and you treat it as a problem with those individuals rather than a big cultural problem. And you see that even on the law firm level. Like, Russell McVeagh is in the spotlight. All the other firms are breathing big sighs of relief. And the legal profession is in the spotlight. Every other profession is sort of going, 'Oh, well, we got away with that.' You know, the medical profession, the public service, financial services. Everywhere that boys clubs exist this kind of behaviour exists. So I think you need to be careful to` we need to be careful to look at it as a very widespread cultural issue rather than just fingering a couple of people. But what other tools do we have? I mean, for 30 years-plus, this has been a well-understood issue. The law profession, as an example, is a majority female profession. Women have risen to the top of the administrative bureaucratic side of the profession, but there are still senior men driving this culture within the day-to-day experience of women in the profession. So what other tools do we have? True, but the best tool that we have is conversation, and that was the point that was made on the panel. We're talking about it. That hasn't happened over the last 30 years. But 92%... (OVERLAPPING CONVERSATION) ...had talked to their colleagues about these instances. Let's give Duncan the last word. So, Laila identified three times in her lifetime where she feels that there's been a real movement towards dealing with sexual harassment and misconduct. How do we keep the momentum without it going down the rabbit hole and everybody forgetting about it tomorrow? I think the thing that might be different from those previous instances is there's sort of democratisation of access to media that we've seen through the social media era. Obviously Facebook and Twitter and so on are not without their problems, but so many of these stories have originated with people just, sort of, welling up and then just going direct to an audience that way. The media's played its role as well. We published a long investigation this week on The Spinoff about sexual harassment in the fashion industry. Yep, so a public voice. The weight of a public voice. I think that that's different now. That might not have been the case in the '80s and '90s when these things occurred. Jenna, one of the other big stories this week was Shane Jones' criticism of Air New Zealand. He was calling for resignations and for people to basically zip it and get out of the political arena. Did he overstep the mark, do you think? It's not bad politics for Shane Jones, because everyone in Kapiti and the East Coast and Northland basically agrees with him, and I think the interesting thing is New Zealand First is utterly unafraid to be told off by the Prime Minister or to overstep the mark a little bit or to differentiate themselves. And meanwhile you have the Green Party who have given up on even asking robust Parliamentary questions to the Labour Party. There is a bit of a disconnect there. New Zealand First is right in the coalition and cabinet, but they're the party that's not afraid to step their toe out of line a little bit. Do you think Jacinda Ardern would've been expecting this? The two politicians that have caused her problems in the last couple of weeks ` Winston Peters and Shane Jones. Winston Peters over Russia. So this rebuke ` was her heart in it? Or was it a little slap across the wrist? It felt a little performative, as far as the rebuke goes. It was almost like this episode could've been choreographed to an extent ` 'We'll let Shane go and have a run, his little moment, I'll tell him off.' That was the sense I got from it. I personally feel like Shane went a bit far, but that's kind of Shane doing what he does, right? Was he talking to his voters, Laila? Well, he was, and I think there's a couple of issues here, but one of the important ones is how does a government actually explore ideas that are transformative? Because taking some control of the Air New Zealand Board, changing the incentives, which they have the power to do through the remuneration policy, for example, so that there is sustained regional service, is an important and potentially transformative approach to running the airline as the main shareholder. Others would just say it's just plain meddling, though. You know, the other side of the coin. Meddling on behalf of the communities that the government is elected to represent, but, I mean, the point I want to make here is I think there are a whole bunch of issues where you're getting the feeling that there hasn't been an open enough opportunity for people to discuss their concerns within the government. So I think the same issue arose this week with Jacinda Ardern's slightly confusing approach to the oil and gas drilling issue. So she comes out from Parliament, accepts the petition of 5000 signatures. And then goes on to explain her position. But I think the important thing is where are the government having these sort of more open-ended future-oriented conversations about how to address some of these issues? Because if they're restricting themselves just to cabinet committees, issue-by-issue cabinet papers, I think they're going to keep landing themselves in some of these sort of difficult political management areas. Jenna, do you actually think there is any tension between New Zealand First in the Labour Party or is New Zealand First just wanting to say, 'Hey, remember, we're still here'? I think there are definitely conversations that are going on behind the scenes, and almost certainly on the Greenpeace petition as well. That's probably playing into a little bit of the confusion about what message the government is sending. The Prime Minister is probably getting told very strong words by New Zealand First about the policy that that party supports. Hey, I want to move on to another story this week ` Cambridge Analytica. So this is the company that's hoovering up all the details from your Facebook page. Are you on Facebook, Duncan? I am. Did that worry you? Or is it just time to accept that that's what elections are going to be about in the future? That they're going to stalk you online, get all the information, then tailor ads directly to you? No, it did worry me, because I think we've seen in multiple episodes the power of this information and what it can do, and I've long felt that Facebook, Google, Amazon and so on, the fact that they have managed to infiltrate our societies, they do some extraordinary things for us, but their power is near limitless within their specific spheres. We have never really had any conversation about regulating them and trying to make them subject to some of the kind of limits that exist for this media company. And I think that the Safe Harbour laws, a lot of the sort of original architecture of the web that enabled the social web, it's time that we had a reassessment, because these things ` they're almost God-like with their power of some of these organisations. Jenna, we did a quick call around the parties. New Zealand political parties say that they don't use Cambridge Analytica. Can we assume that similar companies wouldn't be used? Or is it a strategy that they adopt? Yeah, I would assume that no one is out there mining New Zealanders' Facebook information to use for electionary purposes. There is all sorts of data that goes into every political party's database. A lot of that is based on their own interactions with voters, some of it's based on publically available data points, so, yeah, all political parties use data, but where Cambridge Analytica has stepped over the line is really mining people's personal preferences in what they think is their private Facebook page. Are you on Facebook, Laila? Yeah, I am. Step too far there? I think that every political party would be using all the data that they can access at whatever the cost is that they can afford. I think this is a hugely serious issue, and it really worries me, for example, that we've gone into the TPP and signed up to the E-Commerce provisions which capture many of these kind of issues without our politicians, our general sort of policy establishment, our media, any of us really understanding what the implications of this are and what we're locking ourselves in to long term, in terms of reducing our ability to regulate. We really shouldn't be making international rules around data until we understand how this system is working and how we need to regulate it. OK, we've got to leave it there. That's all from us this week. If you didn't catch all of the show, you can watch it now on Three Plus One. We're off next week for Easter, but we'll see you again the week after that. Thanks for joining us this morning. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018