Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill and, at the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 19 August 2019.

This bill delivers on the Government’s commitment to restore the right to a free schooling for all New Zealand students. The Wellbeing Budget reflects our commitment as a Government to break down financial barriers to participation at all levels. Budget 2019 is about reducing child poverty and improving wellbeing.

The Education Act of 1989 provides that every person who is not an international student is entitled to free enrolment and free education at any State school from their fifth birthday until 1 January after their 19th birthday. However, we know that while this is the legal commitment that we have to free schooling in New Zealand, it is not a commitment that has always been delivered on. Many schools are dependent on financial contributions from parents, and that does need to change. The request for donations can place significant financial pressure on parents, and there is often significant pressure to pay what are supposed to be voluntary contributions.

Access to free education is the best way to ensure that every New Zealander has a fair shot at success. This year’s Budget delivers the largest Vote Education increase in 10 years. There are around 1,703 schools in New Zealand who will be eligible for an additional $150 per student if they choose not to ask their parents for donations, if they choose to accept this policy. Boards of trustees who opt in to receive the $150 per student per year will have to agree to certain conditions, the main one being to stop asking for donations from parents. This will be in place from the beginning of the 2020 school year. The scheme will be delivered through a new discretionary grant for decile 1 to 7 schools, and it will result in the largest increase in schooling operations grants for those schools in 10 years. By decreasing the number of schools that request donations, we’ll be reducing the pressure and the widespread expectations that schools need to ask parents for donations.

The Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill amends the Education Act of 1989, and it will support schools’ compliance with the donation scheme. It’s a very simple bill. It creates a new category of grants called “discretionary grants”. Discretionary grants are grants that the Minister of Education may pay to boards, subject to the condition that a board does not solicit voluntary payments from parents. The bill enables the Minister to seek conditions on the payment of this extra funding—primarily, that boards stop soliciting voluntary payments from parents—and if these conditions are breached, the bill enables that funding to be recovered from boards. These changes will give participating schools a strong incentive to understand and comply with the conditions of the donations scheme. It will alleviate the risk of schools double-dipping, and it will ensure that parents are relieved of the pressure.

Schools that opt in to the donations scheme will be able to ask parents and caregivers for payments related to additional activities outside of the curriculum—for example, Saturday morning sports. They’ll also still be able to run general fund-raising activities, like school fairs and galas, and it does not prevent them from seeking donations from sources other than parents—for example, community trusts and other forms of grants. It doesn’t prevent them from receiving unsolicited donations. So, if parents do want to make a donation to the school that hasn’t been asked for, of course they are welcome to continue to do that. It simply prevents the school from asking for it.

This initiative builds on other commitments the Government has made to break down financial barriers to participation in education at every level. Fees-free tertiary education, the scrapping of NCEA fees, the scrapping of scholarship fees—these are significant advances that have already been progressed. This year’s Budget also increases funding for early childhood education to reduce the financial pressure on parents. This bill allows us to take the next step towards a genuinely free schooling system by ending the pressure that many parents face to pay school donations, and I commend it to the House.

I am pleased to take a call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. Firstly, can I just acknowledge that at the heart of this bill, we are having a conversation about how we reduce costs to parents, but I do want to acknowledge the irony that we are in urgency and we have been rushing through a range of taxes that are going to increase the cost of living for many New Zealanders. I take the fuel tax, that will increase the cost for, particularly, disadvantaged New Zealanders and those people on fixed incomes.

National will support this bill through its first reading. However, we have massive concerns, and I want to look to Andrew Little in part of those concerns. If you look at the history around this issue, Labour previously promised that they would scrap school donations. Under Andrew Little as leader, they said that school donations would be gone. What we know is that then Chris Hipkins, effectively, came in and said, “No, we’re not going to scrap school donations. We’re actually going to try and incentivise them to be gone.” So they dialled back their policy, and it became a $150 incentive to try and incentivise people to not charge donations.

The reality is there still is a group of parents out there that believe that because of Labour Party press releases where they said “We’re going to end donations.” that that’s exactly what they would do; instead we got the watered-down version on the eve of the election. However, when they came into Government, just like everything else, we know they’ve had bad priorities—they spent money on planes and trees and a whole lot of other things—and so education has missed out. We know that there are at least 50 broken promises in education, and we know that they’ve got bad priorities.

So, again, what happens? We have the Budget read, and it is dialled back again. I am getting emails in my in-box from principals who are saying, “I want Labour Party members to tell me why they have tens of thousands of dollars less than they expected.” Some schools said to me that they actually relied on those promises. I’ve got schools that are tens of thousands of dollars short. I’ve got a school in a town area that is literally the only school that will not apply to this policy.

So National will support this bill through to its first reading, but we will certainly be pointing out the inequities—the huge inequities—that this Minister of Education is creating with this bill. One of them, as I’ve mentioned, is around these decile 8, decile 9, and decile 10 schools that are excluded. Also, it’s really important to understand that this is on the backdrop of Labour stalling the policy around scrapping deciles and investing additional money into deciles. So I have examples of schools that, again, expected to have a much more fair funding system because National had put in the funding review, but it also argued to scrap decile systems and put additional funding in. So you’ve got schools that are now losing twice. They’re losing because they don’t have that fairness of a new equity funding system with additional cash, and now they’re losing because they’re excluded from a policy where they don’t have to charge donations for an incentive payment. So you’ve got huge inequity that National will be talking to.

The next part is that I’ve just been on the phone to the integrated schools; that is, 90,000 children in New Zealand—330 schools. This is typical of the Minister of Education. He doesn’t care about partnership schools. He doesn’t care about integrated schools. He doesn’t care about private schools. He tries to get rid of partnership schools, which he pretty much successfully did. Integrated schools—you’d think that the Minister’s office would have made a basic phone call to the integrated schools to say, “Hey, you’re in.” or “You’re out.” So there are 90,000 children and 330 schools that don’t know whether they will be part of this policy.

So National will not only be raising the 600-odd schools that have been excluded because Labour ran out of money and spent it on bad things, but we will also be raising the 330 schools that have no clue, no idea, as to whether this legislation applies to them. There are disadvantaged children in decile 8 schools, decile 9 schools, decile 10 schools, and also in integrated schools. So we have some serious, serious issues of equity to deal with. And I do want to acknowledge that this is absolutely on the backdrop of National doing a funding review that said we’ve already got huge inequity in our school system and we need to make changes to the decile system, but to then put on top of that a new donations-type system—that’s going to exclude a whole lot of people.

I want to talk about some very individual stories. So one principal has said to me that their school will be the only school in their town that misses out on this. It is in the order of $100,000. That is so much money. We will certainly be hoping that the select committee process will be robust so that those hundreds of schools can turn up to the Education and Workforce Committee and talk us through their operational grants, their decile funding, and also now this inequitable policy that the Minister has put up.

I want to make some other comments about the cost of education. National has, obviously, said, “Where we can, we want to work across the House on reasonable policy to reduce the cost to parents.” A great example of that was in reducing the NCEA fees. National previously had a different position; we changed our position and we said, “We should scrap NCEA fees.” I want to acknowledge the work of the Minister on that. All political parties are supportive of that policy.

We certainly believe that there are a number of other areas where we do need greater clarity. My message to the Minister is that it’s all very well to have a policy around donations, but he knows as well as I do that there is a lot of grey and there are a lot of conversations going on about what exactly schools can charge for. This issue of whether schools can be charging around curriculum-related activities—there are going to be schools that are going to come to the Education and Workforce Committee and ask those questions. We know that the ministry has, really, had, sort of, what I would call inequitable treatment around some schools in New Zealand about what they can and can’t charge for. So my other plea to the Minister is to say not only have we got an inequitable policy but there are some really serious issues that we need to deal with generally about what parents should or should not be paying for in terms of our school system. So National will certainly be raising a number of those issues.

The other issue that I want to raise in terms of the bill—and, again, I’ve had a range of people contact me in the last 24 hours about this—is that there is a clause in there, and, again, we’ve got to dig deeper to find out what the Minister’s thinking is. It basically indicates that the Minister has maximum discretion to change the payment. So what does that mean? Does that mean that if he sees a board that ends up potentially asking for donations, he can, obviously, say no, he’s not going to enable them to get that grant, or does it mean something else? What some schools are saying to me is that they are deeply concerned that someone could be sitting in the Beehive, or you could have other officials, that could somehow make a decision that schools would get less, depending on their whim of a judgment. So National will certainly be saying, “We need greater clarity in law around exactly what the Minister’s powers are.” Of course we want to reduce costs to parents; that’s why we’re supporting this bill through the first reading. But we absolutely need to have clarity about exactly what the Minister’s powers are.

So, finally, I just want to raise a few wider issues around education that are very relevant to this bill. The first is that we had the largest education industrial action in our nation’s history, and people have been asking why—and it’s very relevant to this bill around school donations. It cuts to the heart of how much money is left in the pot in terms of education, and that is relevant for a bill that has a price tag of $265 million. We know that there are about 50 promises that haven’t been delivered in education. We know that we’ve got additional strikes coming. So people are asking, “What are the priorities in terms of this Government around education funding?” As I said before, we think that the Government has prioritised planes and trees over education, but we will support this bill to the Education and Workforce Committee, because at the heart of our desire, which we think we share with the Government, is to reduce costs to parents. That’s why we supported the $50 million around getting rid of NCEA fees, and that’s why we fundamentally want to reduce costs to parents.

However, we are only supporting it through this first reading, at this stage, because of the hundreds of schools that have inequitable treatment, and the major issues of clarity that we need to get around schools, like integrated schools, that represent 90,000 children in New Zealand. So National supports this to the first reading, because we support reducing costs to parents, but the Minister needs to resolve all of the holes that are in this bill. I support this bill to the House.

I’m delighted to take a call in the Education (Schools Donations) Amendment Bill. I just think this is an incredible bill that is going to make the biggest difference to education in this country.

I’ve been commenting to a couple of people in the last few days, saying that if I was still in my former job that I would be really, really excited. In fact, this was probably the first Budget in a long, long time that I would have been incredibly excited about. Now, an example of that is how that played out. I can remember, I think it was the 2015 Budget from the previous administration—I think it’s either that or the 2016 Budget—but I remember at the time being so despondent after that Budget. It was probably the Budget that made me feel very, very upset because our school operations grants at the time were frozen, and that made a big difference to my school and to the money that we had to work with.

The previous speaker that just sat down, Nikki Kaye, talked about their funding review at the time, and how they had targeted funding to children. I know in my particular school that 75 percent of my children were actually under the targeted scheme. We were told that that would bring in more funding. Well, it just so happened that the following year my funding went down by $9,000. It was the same amount of children—exactly the same amount of children. With that funding freeze in place, $9,000 was what my operations grant went down by.

Yesterday I spoke to the now principal of my former school, who could not thank me enough for this particular bill coming through. He said to me that this is going to make between $25,000 to $30,000 difference to that school, and that will make a huge difference to those children in that school and what the principal can actually offer. So this bill will make a difference.

I do need to tell one more story. I got another call from a principal yesterday, a local principal, saying “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” It was a decile 5 school, because we often hear about the decile 1s, but let’s hear from the mid-decile schools and how this bill will make a difference to them. A decile 5 school principal said to me, “I can never get my donations in. I’m so excited because this bill will make $85,000 difference to my school.”—an $85,000 difference. I can only imagine, as a former principal, what I could do and the plans that I could be making for next year with that big difference.

So with that, I’m very, very excited about what this bill will mean for the children of this country, and I have no hesitation in commending it to the House.

Thank you for the opportunity to take this call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill.

The first point is that I don’t understand why we are debating the first reading of this bill under urgency. The normal turn-around time for bills is up to five to six months. Yes, there are exceptions, like the euthanasia bill, but to put under urgency the first reading of this bill—I don’t understand what the need for this is, because in this school year, half of the school year has already finished and it’s too late to implement this policy this year. So we will have to wait for this policy to be implemented in the next school year. Normally, schools start in February. For that, there is enough time for this bill to go through the normal process, so I don’t see any need for this first debate to be going through urgency.

I think it is being done under urgency only because last year, the Minister of Education failed to put forward this policy, and now, because of the pressure that we created, a pressure has been put on them to deliver on their election promise. The Minister wants to look like, yes, he is doing something about it, so we have this bill in front of us and we are debating the first reading of this bill under urgency.

Schools would have already sent out letters at the start of this term to all the parents, asking for their voluntary donations. I know that parents would have already made arrangements with their school, if they haven’t been able to pay that full amount, to pay in instalments. It is going to be really messy if schools go back and say that they’re going to return those donations and actually are going to take up this grant. It’s going to actually create a very messy situation for those schools, and I’m sure that schools don’t want to opt for that.

Now, looking at this bill exactly, decile 1 to 7 schools—that is what this bill is targeted at. Why? It’s because the Government’s policy that they campaigned on before the election was to make schools donation-free. They said that they would get rid of all donations. This is not going to get rid of donations from all schools, only for schools that are in deciles 1 to 7. The basis of this policy, as I understand it, should be actually to address the hardship issue—the hardship issue. It’s not like parents don’t want to pay anything for their child’s education, or for the school to be able to deliver on their curricular or extracurricular activities. It’s the hardship issue, and that is not addressed. The Minister has completely failed to address that issue.

Very quickly, without taking too much time, I would like to present two scenarios here. There are families, and it is their choice where they want to live, but they could be a family who, because of their hardship issues, could be living in a low socio-economic area, but they have this desire and they choose to send their child to a school that is in a high-decile area. We know that schools run ballot systems, so they’ll put their child’s name in that ballot to be drawn, and if their child’s name is drawn from that ballot, the child gets admission into that school.

What happens in that situation? That family is in a low socio-economic area because they’re on a low income. They cannot afford to rent in a high socio-economic area, or there are other circumstances, but they’ll have to pay this voluntary donation to their child’s school. So how is this going to address that hardship issue? It doesn’t. No, it doesn’t address that hardship issue. Yes, I’ll repeat that.

Now, let me go on to my second scenario. So this family, if they think that they really want their child to be in that school that they have picked for their child and their name is not drawn from the ballot, the family could push their financial circumstances and move into that area so that they are in that zone, so that their child can get admission to the school that they have picked for their child. Now, this family’s already pushing themselves financially. This is a reality that, yes, rents differ from low socio-economic areas to high socio-economic areas. So this family will be paying a higher rent than what they would be usually paying in a low socio-economic area, and that family will have to pay this voluntary donation for their child. Again, this bill doesn’t help this family that has that hardship issue.

It’s not like parents don’t want to pay. There are parents who contribute to their community, who contribute to their school, not just for their own children but sometimes, if there is any fundraising going on, they make contributions for that too. In this bill, I think what the Minister is doing is creating a lot of inequality amongst people. I’m really disappointed to see that the first line in this bill says, “[It’s] intended to reduce the widespread expectation that parents should pay voluntary contributions”. But their policy was actually to get rid of school donations. So where has that policy gone?

I, quickly, want to finish by saying that we are supporting this bill only in the first reading so that the select committee will have the opportunity to work on this bill during the select committee process. I really hope that Government members will be willing to work on this. I’m on the Education and Workforce Committee, which is a very busy committee, a very hard-working committee. We look forward to receiving this bill, and I hope that we will be able to hear from all schools—that is, schools in different decile areas—from parents, and from students as well on this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

What a negative bunch the National Party over there are. It’s with a growing sense of incredulity that I have witnessed, this sitting block and this bill in particular, the National Party rail against user-pays funding for our much-needed transport infrastructure or charging foreign tourists to come here and use our conservation estate or to build our much-needed facilities in our regions. Won’t those local councils and won’t the conservation department be looking for that funding? Now, to cap it all off, I see them in the House today railing against a measure to take the fees away from our poorest families—$150 a year per student; $265 million over four years, and they are grudgingly saying that they may support it. What a miserable bunch.

This will make a material difference, as Jan Tinetti pointed out before, for our lowest and poorest families in those February months, when they’ve just come out of Christmas, when they’ve got to buy their school uniforms. There they are lumped with these extra charges, and we are taking them away. That is the core of what this Wellbeing Budget is all about. So New Zealand First will be absolutely supporting this measure without any hesitation or grudging, as we’re seeing from over the fence. You need to re-evaluate your values over there, because it’s just not good enough to be railing against this thoroughly sensible measure. New Zealand First supports this bill to the House.

Contrary to the remarks of the previous speaker, Mark Patterson, National does commend reductions in costs to parents. We think efforts to reduce costs to New Zealanders across the board are a good idea and we do commend efforts to give schools certainty of funding, but it is our role, as the Opposition, to hold the Government to account for their policies and to ask the questions that New Zealanders are asking about this policy.

I just want to highlight the reality of the way the decile exclusions in this policy will come into effect, and I want to take the example of Wellington Central. I am a list MP. I am based in Wellington Central, and in that electorate there are only three schools that will be eligible for this policy. What that means is that there will be 8,192 students who will not be eligible for assistance from this policy at all, because they attend schools that are decile 8, 9, and 10.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: It’s a decision by the school.

Now, you can argue, Mr Little, that there are no families in Wellington who lack the material income, who lack the ability to pay donations, but you would be wrong, because, in fact, the decile system is a very rough and ready reckoner. In all parts of the Wellington Central electorate—whether you’re looking in Karori, whether you’re looking in Mount Cook, whether you’re looking in central Wellington—there are families who earn below the median income and struggle with the costs each week. They are not eligible for this policy. Mr O’Connor there, he should be aware too that in Ōhāriu there are only two schools that will be eligible for this policy—6,952 students will not benefit from this policy. So we here on the Opposition ask the simple question, which is why is that fair? Why is that equitable? Why is that the right way to divvy up the pie? We will look forward to examining that question at select committee.

We ask other questions too: what is the impact on integrated schools? Again, here in Wellington Central, St Teresa’s School, St Bernard’s College, Cardinal McKeefry School—they want to know, does the policy apply to them? We want to know what is the definition of the donation? In the bill it suggests that it’s something that is not legally obligated to be made, but then we have the Prime Minister out there saying this will mean that “children no longer miss out on extra activities just because parents can’t afford voluntary donations”. Well, what is an extra activity versus what is an optional activity? These are questions that are already live in our school system, and we need to know how it will apply.

Finally, I just want to point to the example of what will be excluded from this policy. I want to give you the example of Wellington College. It’s a decile 10 school, and I can guarantee to members of this House that there are students who attend that school who are from lower-income families. At Wellington College, to attend that school the voluntary donations that are requested are a $90 general curriculum donation, $170 for school development projects, $330 technology donation, $190 extra curriculum activities donation—a $780 donation. So the question that I then ask is how is it that these higher decile schools will be able to cover these costs?

Finally, I say: what is the monitoring regime going to be for this policy so that it is applied fairly? How will we ensure that it works? These are the questions we will examine at the select committee. So, as I said, National commends efforts to reduce costs to parents, but when we do it we need to make sure it’s effective and we need to make sure it’s fair. That’s why at the select committee we will examine those questions. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

One of the most delightful parts of this morning’s debates was when the Hon Nikki Kaye tried to stand up and outline how the Labour Party was not doing a good enough job in education, promptly followed by the wonderful Ms Jan Tinetti, former principal of Merivale School in Tauranga, who said, “As a principal, I can tell you exactly how much nine long years of National did to cut out”—the school that the member comes from in the community that the member came from is one of those struggling very much.

The Greens are very proud to see this policy in place. We have always said that we want to see State schools funded to a level that means they are not dependent on the collection of fees or donations. I am advised that this policy ensures that integrated schools are indeed eligible for this initiative. So I’m very pleased to hear that this Government is taking a whole approach to making sure that operational funding, which stood shamefully stagnant under National, is actually getting some love. What this bill actually does is that boards can either ask for voluntary donations from parents, or they can opt in to receive $150 per student under this bill. The bill wants to make sure that there is no double-dipping, and so it reserves the ability to recover funds that did not adhere to the criteria of this discretionary grant, alongside operational funding.

I just thought immediately back to before I became an MP, as a single mum having three children to pay school fees for, and what incredible stress that did, yes, to the budget, of course, but also to the shame and the guilt of wanting to make the best contribution I could for my children and their school, who were wanting to do their best for our low-decile community. Understanding that in other schools—and hearing stories about what some other schools were doing to try and recover those fees when they were genuinely struggling, and some of the guilt and shame associated with not being able to pay those fees. I remember some schools were also having to take up penalising tactics to try and encourage parents, and we should never ever be doing that. This policy will ensure that we don’t have to put any child or family into that predicament.

Yes, I am open to the conversation of seeing how we can, in the future, look at supporting low-income families from schools outside the decile 1 to 7 range. But why on earth would you bash the whole of this proposal to highlight that that’s just a further question to be continued?

We’re very pleased with the leadership that has been shown finally—finally. We should always see the right to education as an obligation and responsibility for the State and for the Government to ensure that everyone achieves, because it’s a good thing to do for our future, for our present, and for building communities and connections—ensuring that all of our children are well equipped for a modern world and for the thinking that is going to be required to address the biggest challenges before us of climate change, and inequality, and connecting ourselves back to each other and to our planet.

So we’re very pleased with the leadership and the inspiration shown in this. We look forward to having more conversations about how we can absolutely make sure that all families who are struggling do not need to share this burden on education. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. At least this bill is going to select committee—that’s my opening line. We want to reduce costs to parents, and we want to examine this in select committee, and we will look forward to the chance to do so. It’s important that we do so. This is a very big topic and it is partially delivering on a promise from this Government.

It has been delivered—partially delivered, I would say—in a very erratic fashion, and here’s why: they’re using an outdated system to deliver this. By their own admission, it’s time for the decile system to be relooked at. What we have here is using, on the one hand, a lot of debate against our own team. Erica Stanford had a member’s bill to relook at the decile system. There is an arm’s-length approach to the work that the Hon Nikki Kaye has undertaken. And, by their own admission, the Government is using a Tomorrow’s Schools review to review the decile system. Yet they are using this mechanism, the decile system, to deliver on a partial promise to “scrap donations” to everyone—not to some, to everyone; that’s what we were promised. So this bill will create confusion for the parents who thought that they’d all be captured by the campaign promise. Struggling parents in decile 8, 9, and 10—and yes, there are some struggling parents in decile 8, 9, and 10, and to say otherwise would be completely disingenuous. There’s also going to be massive variable take up in deciles 5, 6, and 7, and I know that the Minister can’t argue with that. I spoke to two colleges, both decile 6, they have clearly said to me that they will not benefit from this policy—two colleges, decile 6. By the way, they’re not in my area. Integrated schools—are they going to be covered? We don’t know.

I would like to give a final say to a principal of a decile 3 college, and he said, “Financially, Denise, it’ll be likely quite good for us. However, in my opinion, the money should go towards teachers and settling the strikes. The greatest need and thing that makes the most difference is high-quality teachers.” We’ve had the largest education industrial action undertaken in history—thousands of teachers taking to the streets in protest. The Budget’s underwhelming. We’ve got cuts in the Investing in Educational Success initiative—that programme, which will, ironically, see fewer salary payments to teachers. That is very ironic, given the industrial action that we’re in the middle of right now.

We support this to select committee, but we want to hear from parents, integrated schools, and educators on how they see the priority spend of this Government. They’re using an outdated decile system to partially deliver their promise.

Yet again we’ve seen another example of the National Party trying to make noises and a song and a dance and carrying on about something that makes sense and the profession actually wants. We’ve had speakers like Jan Tinetti stand up and give real examples from real teachers and real principals in charge of real schools telling them that this policy is going to make a real difference. And I say to the National Party that their approach throughout this debate, where you’ve got some speakers saying one thing, saying that this is a bad idea, and then you’ve got other speakers saying that this doesn’t go far enough—they’ve got to forget the gun and grab the cannoli and stop being distracted.

The thing is that here we are in a debate about the Budget, and the National Party are thinking that there is always money in the banana stand—that they can stand up and they can speak in opposition to absolutely everything. The rest of the country is looking at them—particularly in this instance, on this bill, which is a good idea and is hugely popular—and they’re saying, “They don’t represent us.” This Government is standing up for what matters for this country.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would just like to start my contribution by making it very clear that on this side of the House, we support reducing education costs for families and for parents, and we will support this bill through first reading, but we have many concerns. Let’s not dress this up as anything other than what it actually is, and that is a massive broken promise by this Government and this Minister, and we will hold them to account for this. At the 2017 election, Minister Hipkins came out and he said, “We will end school donations for all parents and for all students.”, and parents were swayed by that. They put their trust in this Minister. They believed what he said, and he is now reneging on that, because what is happening is not all students and all families. In fact, parents have been waiting, and nothing has happened for 18 months. Parents have now paid two lots of school donations. So out of their three-year term—which I’m sure is all it will be—in two out of the three years, families are not getting what they believed they were getting because they believed the Minister’s word. And they, Jan Tinetti, are very despondent about that.

So many times, when we reminded Mr Hipkins of his broken promise—I love this; it’s always my favourite saying from Mr Hipkins—he said that it was a promise yet to be delivered—not a broken promise but a promise yet to be delivered. And today his language follows on from that. He calls this a “next step along the way”, and says many parents will benefit—backtracking language, because he knows it is a promise that he is breaking. Mr Hipkins has let parents down, and now is further letting them down, because only decile 1 to 7 students will be eligible if the school takes it up. So, firstly, it was a broken promise because it’s not all kids, and now, secondly, it’s only decile 1 to 7.

I pointed out earlier last year, on my member’s bill, the Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill, that the decile system is a terrible way of figuring out where need sits, because not all parents and families in need are in low-decile schools. It is a poor way of allocating need. I argued that, the Tomorrow’s Schools report argues that, and the Minister well knows it and his department knows it, because he’s working on a bill to get rid of the decile system. We know that, and yet here we are delivering to parents in need through the decile system, an outdated method.

Just to wrap up, I want to talk about my electorate. In all decile 10 schools, or almost all, in fact, we have struggling families. We have the single parents, like Marama Davidson, who have multiple children, who are struggling, and they will get nothing. They put their trust in this Minister, and they will get nothing. It was originally a promise that they have yet to deliver on, and today it is a partially fulfilled promise. Although we will support this at first reading, we will be strenuously looking at this bill in the select committee stage to make sure that these guys are being held to account and that they fulfil their promises and that this is actually fair and what parents were promised.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I think everybody that ever comes to this House, of whatever hue, wants to actually make a difference. We want to make a better society, and when we actually sit down and start thinking about whether we could do this, or whether we could actually implement something that’s going to make life better generally, we’ll go back down to education—educate, educate, educate. The gap that’s opened in our society between the haves and the have-nots, the alienation that results—so much of it arises out of a lack of education and a lack of opportunity.

So what better way, when we sit down to fix that which ails this country, than to look at those at the bottom end, those who find it hardest to pay the bills. I’ve actually had the experience of sitting down with police officers, who are reasonably well paid, and pulling apart and dissecting their spending, and it was these sorts of costs that really just did add up. These are the ones that really put on the pressure. It was the cash you had to find for something like this that did cost the shoes, that did cost the ability to play in a sports club. Those things actually alienate those from the lowest socio-economic schools or lower-decile schools from those for whom paying $100 or $150 isn’t really an issue.

So when you look at it, it makes so much sense to do this. It makes so much sense in so many ways that this is another impost that parents won’t have. This actually will mean a little more cash. It’s not the fact that there’ll be more cash left over; it’s just trying to find that money. It’s when the uninsured car gets stolen, it’s when the car breaks down and there’s no money—these are things where probably many in this House don’t understand just what an impost that is, or how impossible it is when there is no money to fix those little things.

So this is one of those things we can do. By itself, it won’t fix all that ails us. It won’t by itself create a fairer society, but it will be part of those necessary strategies that will help us go a long way towards it. So I commend this bill.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

I move that the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 19 August. This is a very simple bill. It has five clauses. It puts into law a very straightforward idea, which is that if schools don’t comply with the requirements, then the money should be able to be recovered. The shortened time frame is required so that schools will have certainty when the new regime is introduced and when they’re setting their budgets for next year.

💬 SPEAKER: I just want the member to put the motion again. He omitted to say which year.

Oh, did I? OK. I move, That the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 19 August 2019.

As I understand it, this is the first that we have heard on the Opposition bench that there’d be an early report-back for this—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Can I just say that the Minister of Education, when he introduced the bill, quite properly gave notice of that.

Well, we here on this side of the House cannot see why the report-back needs to be so early. We think that a full select committee process is warranted. Already in our first reading speeches, we have raised a number of questions that will require detailed feedback, not only from ministry officials but also from school leaders, from parent organisations, and from communities across the country. For that reason, we would seek a longer time for the select committee to consider this bill. We think that would be proper.