Ricardo Menendez March and teachers. 

Let me join a couple of dots. And the glue for the dots are standards, or lack of them. 

If you don’t have standards you end up with teachers who can't pass NCEA Level 1, and you end up with people like March using the F-word in Parliament. 

The F-word is not the end of the world, but it is indicative of the modern day outworkings of an institution that, despite whatever your political leanings, had an element of decorum and civility. 

Now it's full of thieves, swear words and cowboy hats. 

No standards. 

When you suggest or infer anyone can teach, what you end up with is what we have got - a system everyone knows and accepts is broken and yet has done nothing about. 

Our son was shown around some houses in London last week. The person who showed him was the same age, a young rental agent. They wore a suit and tie and were dressed for the job because in Britain you dress for the job. Because there is expectation. There are standards. 

The agents we have dealt with here could be agents, or surfers, or just out of bed. Not all of them, but too many. 

No standards. 

Look at poor old David MacLeod last week. It was hardly the crime of the century and if the paperwork had been with the Greens he would have been given the week off on full pay and nothing would have happened. In National he got sacked. 

Luxon is driven by standards. You set them high and keep them high. It leads to better performance, hard work, and it singles out the aspirants from the can't-be-bothered's. 

What holds teaching back, what allows the Genter's, March's and others to behave the way they do, what stops crime dropping, what stops climate protesting kids staying in the classroom, is a lack of standards. 

Dropping standards emboldens bad behaviour. It lets intent fall by the wayside and success become a scarce commodity. We hide by being average, ordinary and lazy amongst the crowd because the easy way out will always attract a crowd. 

That’s the value of leadership and what happens if you don’t have enough of it. When you're surrounded by it, it's normal. 

Otherwise you end up like we have. 

So much of this country these days is what a lack of standards looks like.