Estimates Debate — Education and Workforce Sector

Colleagues, we come now to the votes in the education and workforce sector, B.5, Volume 2. The question is that Vote Education, Vote Education Review Office, Vote Labour Market, Vote Pike River Re-entry, and Vote Tertiary Education stand part of the Schedules.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to lead this debate as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee. I want to start by thanking all members on the committee, and I also want to acknowledge both Ministers, the Hon Chris Hipkins and also the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway.

I want to start by talking about a couple of process issues, and I would like to start by talking about the education sector first. This is regarding the Hon Chris Hipkins. The committee worked around the availability of the Minister. A date that worked for the Minister was provided by the Minister, so the committee agreed to meet and have the Minister for an Estimates hearing on that date. The committee decided the length of the time, and the Minister’s office agreed to that, but then, very close to when the Minister was to appear before the select committee for the Estimates hearing, the Minister unilaterally decided to cut down the time. We understand there was a reason for that, and I want to—

💬 Marja Lubeck: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I hate to interrupt the member, but I believe that this debate should be a reflection of the committee’s deliberation on the Estimates. I don’t believe that our chair is doing that in that position.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It is reasonable that the chair is expected to give a report of what happened at the meeting without political inference. I was listening. I think it’s marginal, but I don’t think that she actually went too far. But I take the member’s point.

Speaking to that point of order—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): No, I don’t need you to speak to the point of order. I’m saying that you can carry on, but it is marginal, and you need to get back to a wider discussion of what happened in the select committee. It is reasonable to report if the Minister cut down the time—that’s fair enough—but continue on.

Thank you. I would like to also add that in the report of the Education and Workforce Committee—this is to the House—the Estimates process has been part of that report. It has been included in the report, so it’s very much documented in the report back to the House.

There were two issues about the process that I would like to talk about. One is that the Minister cut down the time. But I want to give some credit to the Minister, because then he didn’t provide any opening remarks; he went straight to the questions, which was good. It gave the opportunity to members to ask questions, but then, still, that didn’t compensate for the time that was cut down.

The second process issue, which is, again, in this report back to the House—I would like to highlight that as this time the Budget was later than the usual time in the month of May, for the supplementary questions to be lodged, members had only a few days to dig into the Budget to prepare those supplementary questions. As we know, the standard questions are provided beforehand, but I’m talking about specific Budget-related questions. Members provide those questions before an Estimates hearing in the hope that the responses will be received before the Minister appears before the select committee, but that didn’t happen. So there were several questions asked during the select committee process about the Minister not being able to provide responses to those supplementary questions that were lodged before the Estimates hearing. That added to the frustration of some of the members on the select committee, because members felt that they didn’t get a proper opportunity to scrutinise the Minister and also Budget 2019.

I really hope that this doesn’t happen again next year, because for Opposition members, it’s their opportunity to scrutinise the Budget and also scrutinise the Minister based on responses they get to those written questions.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Anything else in the report, perhaps?

It’s a very important point, and it’s a process question. This is the opportunity for Opposition members to scrutinise the Minister, and that should not be curtailed.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: The member is a committee chair.

I want to repeat that that should not be curtailed. That opportunity should be there for Opposition members.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Could I just interrupt the member, because I think you’ve made your point. As the chair, I would ask you now to come to the report on the actual examination.

Thank you, Madam Chair, because the member kept interrupting from there.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Well, you don’t have to answer.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Coming to the select committee process, the Estimates hearing, there were wide-ranging questions.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: One minute 20.

We know that this Education and Workforce—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That doesn’t help.

—Committee covers a wide range of portfolios. The good thing is that we have just two Ministers looking after these wide-ranging portfolios: the Hon Chris Hipkins for early education, also primary and secondary and tertiary education, and then the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway for ACC, immigration, and workplace relations. During the select committee process, members asked about several areas. Very quickly, I would like to—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come to leave the committee. The committee will resume at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to finish my call. Before the dinner break, I was talking about Vote Education, and I raised a couple of issues around the process. Now, very quickly, I would like to touch on Vote Labour Market. In Vote Labour Market, we covered a wide range of topics—we talked about business confidence, and the Minister talked about the Government’s goal to increase the minimum wage to $20 by 2021. We also talked about labour market productivity—this is in workplace relations—and, also, ensuring that businesses are supported.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not going to spend three minutes and 40 seconds of my contribution talking about process as the previous speaker, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, did, because there are so many good things to talk about about education and what we are doing in the select committee.

I think it’s of no surprise to anyone that I am absolutely passionate about education, but education has some big issues, just like a lot of other areas in this country. We are prepared for that, and we are tackling the big, long-term issues that are facing New Zealand. After the nine years of neglect—and I can talk about that, because I lived through all nine years of that neglect in education—there is a lot to fix. But, hey, we’re up to it, and we’re making a really, really good start. It was exciting to see the Minister come into our select committee and present the wonderful things that are happening in our education system—school property, for a start.

Now, I don’t know about other people on this side, but when I go into schools, I hear a lot about school property. It is one of the number one issues that school principals and boards of trustees will raise with me, because school property has had great neglect. But the exciting thing in our select committee—and as part of our Budget this year—we heard about was the largest ever investment that’s been made by a New Zealand Government going forward into school property. The National Education Growth Plan is exciting. We are building new schools and classrooms; I think it’s over 100,000 children and young people who will benefit from those new schools and classrooms. But here’s the best part: it’s that principals know what is happening in that growth plan. It isn’t being left to chance, it isn’t being left to “Oh, the school down the road got something and we didn’t, but we’ve got needs too.” Needs are being assessed; they’re being assessed as part of that growth plan, and that is really exciting to see.

I know that principals are excited about that, because they’re telling me that they’re really excited. I met with a board of trustees chairperson the other day, who is really excited about the fact that they know what’s happening in their school now. They know what to expect and how far into the future they have to look. That board of trustees chairperson told me that that’s the first time that they’ve actually known that to be the case in their 13 years as chairperson of that particular school. It’s really, really exciting to see that we are planning with communities. We are actually bringing them in on the discussions about what is actually happening in that space. But not only that, we are staying true to delivering cheaper education for our families. That is really exciting.

Now, I’m not certain who might be spreading some misinformation in this particular space, but there must be some misinformation that’s being spread out there, because I had a principal in Auckland tell me the other day that someone had told them that they wouldn’t be benefiting from the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill.

💬 Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What? Who said that?

As I said, I’m not certain who might be spreading that misinformation, but someone was certainly spreading that to them. When I worked it out with that principal, not only were they benefiting from the school donations bill but they’re going to be benefiting, if they choose to take it up, by $70,000. The principal of that school burst into tears on Friday, when she found that out, because that has made such a relief. That wasn’t how that had been portrayed to her in the past few weeks. So she was feeling a great sense of relief with that; working through how that was going to work.

The other aspect of making education cheaper is taking away those fees from NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship. What a big difference that is making to so many young people in this country. I have an ex-pupil of mine who has not been able to take up their NCEA because they’ve never been able to pay those fees in the past. About three weeks ago, they said to me that they can now proudly show that qualification, and that’s going to help them get a job in the future. That is the difference it is making for people: being able to have that sense of achievement by showing that qualification. I’m proud of what this Government is doing. Thank you.

I’m pleased to speak in this debate. Firstly, can I just take a moment to acknowledge Jan Tinetti. What we do know about the Labour Party is that for years they talked about free education; we now know what their commitment is. It’s like everything else they do in Government: they scale it back. It’s called cheaper education; not free education any more—it’s called cheaper education. We know this is a Government that has overseen 37 broken promises, and this is what these Estimates demonstrate for us. When we look through the line of the Estimates, we don’t see 100 percent qualified teachers in early learning; we don’t see the teacher ratios that they promised in early learning. Where are the devices for every child? Where is the promise that all schools would get access to a donation payment? The reality is this is a Government that has overseen, like never before, broken promises and scaled-back promises. Let me walk you through some big areas. I want to say to Jan Tinetti: she might have met one principal in tears; well, I’ve met multiple teachers and principals who were also in tears because they were promised a number of things they haven’t got.

Let’s talk about school property. It is true that this is the largest ever amount in school property. Well, guess what! When we came into Government, it was the largest ever amount in school property. The Auditor-General noted that we had seen a huge kick-up in investment, about 40 percent, under the last Government. We conducted condition assessments across New Zealand. What I would acknowledge, and the Minister himself in our Estimates committee acknowledged—so to hear these lectures from Jan Tinetti—is that this Budget funds 50 percent of the growth requirements over the next 10 years. That’s right, Chris Hipkins; he knows a whole lot of ghost schools. He turned up with the Prime Minister in parts of Auckland—they haven’t actually decided where these schools are going to go. He delayed the Auckland growth plan by two years, hasn’t actually made final decisions on a number of those schools, and what do we know? We know it will only accommodate 50 percent of the growth.

What we also know is with the existing money that they have, they are so incompetent that we saw one of the largest ever underspends in school property, at, $170 million. Yes, that’s right—they can’t actually spend the money that they’ve got. That’s why principals and teachers, while they had huge expectations of Labour, they know they can’t deliver, because they scale everything back and then they have broken promises.

Let’s look at the issue of complex needs and children with additional learning needs. I want to acknowledge the work that Tracey Martin has done in this area, and I want to acknowledge in this Budget, actually, there are learning support facilitators. But what was incredible about question time today was that this Government spent minutes forensically talking about a tabled document, whereby I pointed out it was actually National who started the initiative around learning support facilitators and, actually, we were referring to 70,000 kids that were helped as a result of that. What I can tell the member and what I can tell the Minister is, actually, all over New Zealand, I’ve got emails from principals who are saying, “How on earth could this be such a flawed roll-out of learning support facilitators?” That’s right. I’m going to want Shane Jones to walk up to Northland and talk to people like Pat Newman and talk to Matt King about the fact that north of Whangarei, we’ve got a very limited number of learning support facilitators for children with complex needs, because this is a Government that fritters money away and doesn’t actually target it on some of those children that are most in need. It’s not just me who is saying that; Oranga Tamariki pointed that out and Treasury pointed that out. It is, again, an incompetent Government.

Now, let’s talk about donations. Again, a Minister that used to talk about free education, and then in the election campaign, it became: “We’ll provide an incentive payment for schools to not charge.” Then, we had a situation where it was scaled back to decile 1 to 7 schools. Then, we had the extraordinary situation that I was being blocked, in my view, for basic advice at the Estimates hearing about exactly what the detail of the donation scheme would be. Then, we find out that the Minister is going to bypass the select committee process, to put in an amendment to clean up a law that he pushed through in a truncated process. Again, this is a Minister that has abused the process of the select committee to do that. It’s very relevant to these Estimates hearings, because we’re dealing with what is, again, another scaled back promise from the Labour Party.

Now, let’s look at vocational reform, and I’m sure my colleague Shane Reti will also deal with it. So, again, in an area where we have precious funds in education—that’s right—a party that committed to an extraordinary number of broken promises, why is it—why is it—that this Government is choosing to do a single megamerger of all of the polytechnics in New Zealand? Well, Chris Hipkins, I was there at Southern Institute of Technology, and I will never forget—and Mark Patterson’s looking at me with little beady eyes at the moment—the people of Invercargill who stood up at that meeting and said, “Don’t take away our institution. We have millions of community assets. We breathe life into the town.” Chris Hipkins has shown in this Budget that not only is it going to be a centralised system but also a couple of hundred million dollars in this Budget is being spent on merging these entities, when people don’t want it, and, actually, he’s been told by multiple different officials that this is the wrong thing to do—and then he’s going to take industry training away from industry. Again, deeply centralised and deeply ideological, and at a time when you’ve got precious education funds, children who need access to additional learning support, and I get emails every single week from those parents and those principals—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Where was it under the National Government?

I’ll tell Clare Curran where it was. We had this thing called the global financial recession and the Canterbury earthquakes. We had a situation when we came in, where we were staring down a decade of deficits. Yes, that’s right; this Government has had hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, but instead we’ve seen it spent on diplomats, slush funds, and that’s all.

Look, if we look at the rest of this Budget, we can absolutely see that Winston Peters has had money for racing and diplomats and provincial growth funds, and all of that money is less money for education. Why do I know that the Minister is slightly nodding his head? It’s because when I look at the official information around the Budget request that Chris Hipkins put in, miraculously it’s all blanked out. We actually can’t see the fact that there were a whole lot of failed Budget bids in education, because this is a Government that, despite one of the greatest opportunities in New Zealand’s history, handed over very good boards, they’ve managed to see business confidence tank, they’ve managed to see an economy massively slow down, and they’ve managed to fritter away huge amounts of money. And in the education estimates area, and areas like vocational structural reform, that isn’t wanted by a whole lot of communities, that will take away the autonomy of a number of communities, and that will strip away community assets from New Zealanders.

So this is a Government, in these education Estimates, that we can see has not only failed to deliver on its promises but it’s scaled back. I mean, let’s take the whole School Leavers’ Toolkit; they promised $197 million. Again, where’s the free driver licensing in every school? Where’s the career plan for every child? Again, they’re still working it through. They’ve got 15 working groups in education. It’s absolutely evidenced by the learning support plan, again, whereby it’s not in the next year or even the next two years that we’re going to see huge progress; they’re talking about 2025, because it’s the case that in this Budget, you can see several billion dollars on regional growth, and money, again, for diplomats.

So, look, I am, unfortunately, not that pleased to be speaking in this Estimates debate, to see a Government that has been given more opportunities than ever before. What the education sector is saying to me is they believe that this Government has overseen broken promises. No better could it be articulated than by the slogan that we now hear from the Labour Party: instead of free education, they’ve started talking cheaper education. When they talk about the initiatives that they promised, they start saying, “Oh, we never said this term.” That is a Government that is absolutely pulling back on its core promises. New Zealanders will remember, because they are breaking trust with New Zealanders. The education sector will remember, because every single dollar in education matters because it’s about helping young people and children to get ahead.

So we don’t agree with spending hundreds of millions of dollars on vocational reform that people don’t want, we don’t agree with them scaling back and creating a complex donation scheme, and we don’t agree with the fact that the learning support facilitators have been allocated in an incredibly flawed way. Again, that is an example of this Government being incompetent and not delivering.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take a call in this Estimates debate. I was confused after the first five minutes, and I’m afraid that the second half made it even worse. It’s also unfortunate for the member the Hon Nikki Kaye’s colleagues on the other side, who were deprived of being able to share their views through the House. It confused me in the first five minutes, because on the one hand the National Party has been saying it has been a waste to offer free education, but, on the other hand, we’ve heard from the Hon Nikki Kaye, the member that just sat down, that education is not free enough. So which one is it?

But the confusion is so tangible. It started off, actually, when the chair of our select committee—it was very disappointing, as my colleague Jan Tinetti mentioned before—took nearly three and a half minutes of a five-minute call to talk about process. In the end, I would like to put on the record that the Minister was asked to stay a little bit longer. The Minister obliged and stayed another half an hour, but the Opposition ran out of questions, and with five minutes to go, the Minister was free to leave. They had nothing else to ask. Yet the chair spent three and a half minutes discussing that process. I think that is a little bit of a hole in the foot, right there.

I’d also like to talk a little bit about the broken promises. The broken promises in education of a record investment in school property—the largest ever made by any New Zealand Government—that must sound like a broken promise to some of you; maybe not. New Zealanders having the biggest pay rise in a decade, with wages up 4.4 percent—sound like a broken promise? Not to me. The unemployment rate is the lowest in over a decade, now down to 3.9 percent—another broken promise!

Now, I just came back from—

💬 Alastair Scott: How many new jobs?

92,000 new jobs since we came into office, to the member whose name I forgot—92,000, since we have been in office. Actually, yes, let’s talk about those jobs. The member Brett Hudson wanted to lift the hood on the numbers. He said, “Oh, let’s look at the numbers because, you know, the Government doesn’t like us looking at the numbers.” Well, actually, every time the Opposition talk about record growth, they talk about “a job”—any job, it doesn’t matter what kind of job—never mind the quality of those jobs they created. Never mind the fact that most of the people under their watch had to take two or three jobs to make ends meet, one job wasn’t good enough to make ends meet; people were doing it rough. Never mind that under their watch, 40 percent of children living in poverty lived with parents who both worked—shameful. There is shameful silence on that side now. Never mind that under their watch, a whole new class of workers was created called “the working poor”. Now, that is worth a shameful silence.

It’s clear that this Government is very different. We are tackling those big long-term problems facing New Zealand. We are forecasting more jobs, and addressing the cost of living for our Kiwi families—that includes higher wages. At the same time, as I said, we have created 92,000 jobs since we came into Government. That proves you can actually raise minimum wages, and you can have more jobs all at the same time. When a deflated, delusional—what is another “d” word?—and desperate Opposition says, “You can’t increase minimum wages. You couldn’t possibly remunerate workers for the jobs that they do and create more jobs”, well, guess what! We just did it. So unemployment is at an 11-year low, and wages are the highest that we’ve ever seen, and it’s very plain and simple: this Government is delivering for New Zealanders.

In workplace relations and safety—which, you know, I should be talking to, to the report—we are lifting the minimum wage to $20 dollars by 2021, which will benefit another 210,000 workers. We are restoring core employment protections for workers, as well as strengthening collective bargaining, and the people out there are absolutely rapt about it.

My red cheeks are not just from talking so enthusiastically here in the House. They’re also from running up and down to PSA House, where I was talking to the WorkSafe reps, who all complimented us and applauded us, some with teary stories on how life has been for them over the last few years. On the work that we’re doing, they’re very hopeful. We have reassured them that, obviously, there’s a lot more to do.

But we have started, and, under the lead of our brilliant leader, Jacinda Ardern, we are continuing what we’re doing. We’re making things better for New Zealanders: increasing jobs, lifting wages, providing free education, and investing in record property. We are making things better. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

It’s a pleasure to speak tonight on the Estimates, and I’ll be speaking to two main components: to fees-free, referenced in the Estimates on page 27 of the transcript, and to the review of vocational education, which is page 24 of the transcript of the Estimates, with the Minister.

To talk to fees-free: well, clearly, that’s been a flop. There’s just no other way you could look at a $197 million underspend for participation rates that went down. Let’s be clear: participation was one of the key objectives of the Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE). The Minister, around about November 2017, said the RoVE would increase participation by 15 percent. In fact, 80,000 were predicted, and 50,000 turned up. There are fewer learners after fees-free than before. What we know from the Canterbury study is that only 6 percent of students in that study said fees-free made a difference to them; the rest were already going to university. It’s the wrong lever; it’s not the right lever to pull. You would achieve different objectives with fees-free, but to say participation increase is one of them is not correct. And the $197 million underspend—in fact, the Minister didn’t even announce that himself on the day the $197 million was announced; Grant Robertson actually did it.

The Minister’s offered comments before. In fact, in the Estimates, when it was raised with him around the underspend, this was put to him: “So do you agree with the comments of Chris Hipkins, who once said that a significant underspend is bad project design by Ministers?” The Minister replied: “Yes.” Well, he sort of needed to, because, on 24 February 2017, when he was discussing underspends in Investing in Educational Success, he said “Whereas they’ve poured that money in, it’s barely been touched, and that shows the whole concept was badly designed from the beginning.” On 11 July 2015, he offered a similar comment on the underspends, indicating that it was poor management, saying that he called the underspend in special education “incompetence”. We just heard from my colleague Nikki Kaye on the underspend in building. So with his own words, underspends are incompetence.

An incompetent Minister—and I’d put it to you that the fees-free is clearly an indication of incompetence. It is the next KiwiBuild, closely followed by the RoVE—the Reform of Vocational Education—which will be the third KiwiBuild in evolution. The amalgamation of polytechnics, removing local autonomy, and centralising apprentices under polytechnics—it will fail. How do we know it will fail? Well, I don’t need our analysts to tell us that. Let’s look at the Minister’s own documentation. The programme business case says that in the short term, there will be nearly 14,000 less industry trainees, 2,310 less apprentices, and 2,248 less learners at polytechnics. That’s the short term. It actually gets worse in the medium term: 18,000 total industry trainees who will not be participating.

The programme business case goes on to say, “Well, what is the likelihood of some of the risks actually happening?” The risk of workforce disruption: almost certain. Participation in vocational education dropping: almost certain. The needs of industry and employers not being met: again, almost certain. The needs of the regions not being met: almost certain. Here’s the spinner—the risk of the new model not achieving the desired outcomes: likely. Not my information—your information. Download it. It’s your data. Then it was backed up, of course, by the regulatory impact assessment (RIA). So if you don’t like what the Tertiary Education Commission is saying about all of this, about the RoVE, why don’t we see what the RIA is saying—the regulatory impact assessment by the Ministry of Education and Treasury—on the quality assurance assessment: “the panel does not find the RIA fully convincing and complete at this stage”—wow.

Again, if we look at some of the risks, the additional costs of the proposed approach—the certainty of additional costs was all medium for the workforce development councils, the regional leadership groups, and the mega polytechnics. Now, maybe the benefits are going to be there. Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe it’s not all about the costs. The certainty of benefit for the Crown getting cost efficiencies: low; employment and productivity benefits: low; the community voice and better skills across all industries: low. So the costs: medium risk to be high; the benefits: low. In fact, this written parliamentary question from about an hour and a half ago—thank you, Minister, for sending it to me—my question to him was “What is the net economic impact of the reform of vocational education?”, and he wrote to me, “It is not possible, at this point, to accurately quantify the broader benefits sought from the reforms”—wow.

All this risk—80 percent of submitters saying, “We don’t think one polytechnic is going to work for us”, and, by the way, I think it diminishes the voice of the 20 percent who sent in form submissions, including Southern Institute of Technology—yes, they may have been a form submission, but many of them actually spent a lot of time and a lot of effort writing what they put. It wasn’t just the default submission. So 80 percent against; this will fail, in your own words.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I tell you what: one of the most telling things about Nikki Kaye’s speech to the House tonight, with all of her carry-on about broken promises, etc., etc., was that when she was challenged about what her Government did about all the issues that she was challenging this Government about, she said “the global financial crisis”, which was 2007 and 2008. When did that Government cease? In 2017. So it was like: that is the same old line that continues to be used as to why her Government couldn’t deliver the reforms that she keeps challenging this Government about—and it really blows that out of the water.

This Government—and I’ll say: new schools, classrooms, 100,000 students, 623 learning support coordinators; that’s just the beginning. Financial pressure off parents by increasing funding to decile 1 to 7 schools so that they don’t ask the parents for school donations, removing the fees from NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship, transitioning all of the charter schools to the State school system, and investing in early childhood—as well as that, on top of that, vocational reform. This is real reform. This is about deep change in the education sector. It’s actually looking forward 30 years, rather than just the three-year cycle. It’s actually what a real Government does. It’s about the long term, and—[Interruption] Oh, they laugh on the other side, because all they had to say was, “Oh, global financial crisis. That’s why we couldn’t do it.” Well, that’s what your education spokesperson said anyway.

Vocational reform: I want to talk about vocational reform, because there’s a really important message and a conversation that we need to be having in the public arena about vocational reform, and that is around the fact that working with your hands—and we need to be delivering this message to young people—and learning a trade is important, if not more important than getting a university degree. I wish that we could all say that out loud more and believe it, because for too long, trades and on-the-job skills training has played second fiddle to how we see success at school and later career choices. There are huge skill shortages in our country, across many industry sectors—and I challenge that party over there to get up and say that that’s not correct.

If they are getting up and saying that it’s not correct, then why do we have so many long-term issues—deep issues—in our community? Actually, I heard Nikki Kaye talk about principals crying; well, I actually sat with a principal and a board of trustees last night, and there were tears. The tears were about the last decade, which produced social circumstances for so many children’s environments that have ballooned into huge issues in our schools, where deep change and long-term reform is absolutely necessary. And that’s what this Government and that Minister, Chris Hipkins, are actually delivering.

Just as an example of that—and we talk about the skills shortages in all the different sectors—the primary sector is actually one of those sectors that has been hollowed out and where you’ve seen the two agricultural colleges that have been in dire straits. How has that happened? Get up and defend that. I’d really like you to get up and defend it, because it is indefensible. We’ve had to put a hundred million dollars into the vocational sector since we’ve been in Government—it’s absolutely ridiculous. And what Chris Hipkins did a couple of weeks ago was to go down to Balclutha, and announce that the Telford farm campus was going to get ongoing funding to let it get back on its feet. The Southern Institute of Technology is going to deliver that. This is just the beginning of the vocational reform that’s absolutely fundamental.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I find it surprising that the member opposite, Clare Curran, just sat down and said, “And Southern Institute of Technology is going to deliver that.” Well, Southern Institute of Technology won’t be around under this Government’s reforms to deliver anything if the Minister can get away with making sure they nationalise all of our institutes of technology and polytechs across New Zealand. That speech was shameful.

The member stood up and said that we’re going to be building classrooms like no classrooms have ever been built before, but all I heard were words and announcements and all sorts of other numbers. I’d like to quote my very learned friend Erica Stanford, who interjected and said, “Announcing a school is not building a school.” That is what is in this Budget: half of their promises for building the schools are funded. Only half of the money is actually in there, and I do echo the call from the member for East Coast Bays and say, “Where is the school for Albany? Where is the money and where is the delivery for that electorate?”

I also really am surprised to hear the member talk about partnership schools being closed down, as if that’s some incredible achievement by this Government, and a 30-year vision for the future of our country. I think that’s a victory for the unions, but it’s not a victory for the children who are going to those schools and whose lives are being changed so that their next 30 years would be turned around and so they could actually have a bright future.

Then we come to vocational education, where the member talked about the conversation and how there were skills shortages. Well, I’m not sure if that member has actually read the business case, which was released by the Minister only a couple of weeks ago, which talked about the risk of workforce disruption being “almost certain” and the impact being “extreme”—whether she read the bit where it talked about participation in vocational education dropping being “almost certain” and the impact being “major”, and whether she read the bit which said the needs of industry and employers not being met was “almost certain” and the impact “extreme”. The proposed changes to our vocational education system by this Government verge on reckless, and they will only lead to fewer people going into vocational education—the complete opposite vision which was outlined by the member opposite.

This Budget is not delivering for New Zealanders. It is full of broken promises in the education sector, and I would, again, like to touch on the impact of the fees-free policy, which Shane Reti outlined as being something which is considered a flop. We’ve seen 2,400 fewer students going to tertiary education last year than the year before. This policy was meant to increase participation in tertiary education, but what we’ve seen is a reduction in the number of people going to tertiary education—a failure of a policy and an expensive mistake—and $197 million from that policy is now being allocated to the review of vocational education, which is, again, going to be a mistake. The business case says it’s going to cost probably twice that in order just to pay for the establishment costs of this new nationalised institute of skills and training. So not only does it rely on fees-free failing once but it relies on fees-free failing twice in order for that other policy to be able to be funded.

The costs of the review of vocational education—not just the establishment costs but the ongoing costs—come to a staggering $686 million to $1.08 billion, three times the benefits which are being estimated in the business case for that. That’s not a cost-benefit analysis where the benefits outweigh the costs; that’s a cost-benefit analysis where the costs outweigh the benefits. I’d expect that, in that instance, the Government would be looking at it and saying “No, we won’t be going down there.”, particularly with all of the incredible and major and extreme risks which are outlined in the business case. This policy will be the next fees-free flop.

I thoroughly enjoyed the select committee scrutiny of the education Estimates this year, and I have to say I was concerned because the Opposition members on the committee wanted me to be there for longer than I was willing to make myself available for. They demanded I be there for about 2½ hours, and I only had an hour and a half available, but at the end of that time they were banging their fists on the table about how outrageous it was that I wasn’t giving them more time. So I said, “All right. Well, I’ll stay a bit longer.” And they ran out of puff; they didn’t have any more questions that they wanted to ask me. But, anyway, I thought I’d come to the House, and I sat here with my pen and paper at the ready, ready to answer any questions that they had. Well, that’s what I got from their contributions today. [Holds up blank sheet of paper] They didn’t ask any questions for me to answer in the House. What we did see was a lot of desperate misinformation, which seems to be the trend from the current Opposition—I remember those days: when you’re in Opposition, everything’s a crisis—but they didn’t actually raise any new issues or any substantial issues.

I do want to respond to one or two things, though, because there were some concerns raised about the review of vocational education, and in particular some quoting from the business case. I have to say I’m staggered that, for a party that prides itself on its commercial and business acumen, there don’t seem to be any members on the other side of the Chamber that actually know how to read a business case. When a business case is put together, you start with the unmitigated risk—so you identify all of the risks and what the potential consequences of those could be. And then you look at the mitigations for those risks. So, when the members are rattling off the risks assessment, which they have done just then, they are talking about the unmitigated risks; what they don’t talk about is that the business case then goes through and talks about how the risks will be managed so that they don’t have the impact that could happen if they weren’t being properly managed. But the members opposite don’t bother to read that far through the business case, which staggers me, really, seeing as they seem to pride themselves on having such a high degree of commercial acumen.

There is a lot in this Budget that our Government is very proud of: the largest injection of funding into new school property that New Zealand has ever seen—over a billion dollars extra in school property funding so that we can get ahead of the growth curve. In the next 10 years, we’re going to need around 100,000 more places in our schools to cope with population growth. The funding that we have set aside now, including from this year’s Budget, last year’s Budget, and the money that was there, gets us at about halfway to funding that population growth all the way out to 2030. On the other hand, what did we inherit when we came into Government? The Opposition had the temerity to say, “That’s not enough, because you still haven’t funded half of it.” Well, under them, they’d barely funded any of it at all. They weren’t planning for the population growth, which our Government is actually doing.

They’re complaining about learning support coordinators and the fact that we’ve funded only 600 of them. Well, they funded none of the learning support coordinators, and, yes, I don’t think 600 are enough; we’ll be coming back with more. But 600 are a heck of a lot better than the none they got under the last Government. To schools that don’t ask for parental donations: $150 per student; better than the nothing they were going to get under the last Government. As for teacher salaries, they were decrying the fact that we weren’t giving teachers more money. They had the choice to give teachers a bigger pay packet not once, not twice, but three separate times, and they did not do that. They chose tax cuts instead. They had the opportunity the year before the election to give teachers the pay bump that they are now saying they deserve, and they did not deliver it.

Teacher supply was something that you won’t hear the Opposition mentioning, because their record on that is absolutely shameful: a 40 percent reduction in the number of people training to be teachers, and we inherited a teacher shortage. We had the temerity, again, of the Opposition banging their fists on the desks and saying, “Why do we have this critical teacher shortage?” Well, they should look in the mirror. They created the teacher shortage that our Government is going to deal with.

Then we had the outrageous claims about how there could be fewer people in vocational education and training as a result of the reforms. There are fewer people in vocational education and training now. There were 40,000 fewer people in on-job training and apprenticeships when National left office than when they came into office. So what National did was drive a knife through that system. We’re trying to put things back together because we’ve got critical skill shortages and, unlike them—unlike the previous Government, who were happy to coast along and say, “Nothing to see here. Don’t really want to know.”—we actually take business and industry seriously when they come to us and say, “We need better skills. We need better skilled workers to up our productivity and to make sure we’re delivering what our industries need.” We’re taking them seriously, where the last Government simply shut the door in their face and did not listen.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate taking this call on the Estimates hearing on this year’s Budget. The Government’s incompetent handling of the Budget documents before they were released is exactly the same way that they are handling our economy, our health, and our education system. It was botched—a botched Budget. The Government is slowing the economy down, and this we know. They’ve inherited growth of 4 percent, but we’re down to about 2 percent now. They’ve installed bad policies around oil and gas bans, foreign investment restrictions, and labour law changes. These are the policies that they were certain about, and, on everything else that they’re uncertain about, we’ve got working groups—260-plus working groups. They’re failing to deliver on their promises. That’s what we’ve got from this Government: KiwiBuild, $10 cheaper doctors visits—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): If the member could come to the education and workforce review.

—and they said no new taxes; we’re up to nine already. That’s right: we’re up to nine already, and we’ve got broken promises on education.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Education and workforce review.

And those broken promises on education: we’ve got 57 broken promises on education that we’ve clocked so far and 37 that have been partially delivered. Let me get on to that. On the broken side of education promises that we’ve talked about in the Estimates hearing at select committee: ensuring that all students have access to mobile digital devices—how’s that going? That’s a fail. How about extra funding for early childhood educators that employ 100 percent qualified and registered teachers? That’s a fail. That’s not happening.

How about giving industry training organisations (ITOs) a greater role in career advice and guidance to school leavers? Well, that’s not happening either. But here’s the irony with that: instead of giving ITOs this greater presence in schools, the Government then turns around and completely turns everything upside down for them. And do they want that? No, they don’t. Just talk to the likes of polytechnics, Southern Industry of Technology, and ITOs—they do not want the Government’s mothership mega-polytechnic scheme.

How about the partially delivered promises? Well, let’s go, of course, because we all know about this, and we talked about it in select committee: scrapping school donations. It’s not at all equitable—the way that the Government’s delivering their broken promise. In fact, it’s only going to low-decile schools. Now, in my electorate, we’ve got one school—one State school only—that is over decile 8. How do you think they feel about being the only school in my entire electorate that does not get the same treatment as every other school. In that school, do you think that everyone in that school is well off and can afford school donations? No, they can’t. It’s a flawed system and a broken promise, and the Government should be ashamed.

We also have—along with that school donation—a really poorly thought through delivery around uncertainty and confusion for the likes of school camps. We do not know where this is all going to end up. There are many aspects to this policy that are confusing to regular Kiwi parents in New Zealand, and I’m going to pay particularly close attention to that, being someone on the board of Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre, where hundreds and thousands of children have gone through and have had the most amazing camp experience that delivers real benefit to their schooling. Let’s see the clarity on that. We don’t have it—another botched delivery.

Auckland property: again, in my electorate, I have three schools that are crying out for certainty around what’s happening with property. All they’ve had is a trifecta of botched communication between the Minister’s office, the Ministry of Education (MOE), and them as schools. They can’t get certainty. They’ve been told to apply for special funds, and MOE says you need to go and apply for special funds. The Minister’s office said it too. No one even told the schools what the special funds are. For over a year, I have been trying to communicate to the Minister’s office and MOE to get certainty for schools going through massive roll growth and upheaval, and nothing is coming through to them or to me around certainty for their future and for their growth. For those on the other side of the House that said it’s all about the growth: only 24,000 of the 100,000 additional places in schooling are funded. Only a quarter of the Government’s 10-year programme is funded. It’s not about assessment; it’s about building.

It’s a pleasure to take a call in this Estimates debates on, broadly, the labour and education portfolios or areas of expenditure within Government. Unlike the previous speaker, Denise Lee, I’ll actually try to address issues pertaining to those areas. That is not going to be hard at all, because anyone that—sometimes we get the empty rhetoric from across the House that we’re a do-nothing Government. If you’re on the Education and Workforce Committee, you have got waves of legislation coming at you from Ministers that are reforming their sectors.

There has been considerable change already—the abolishment of national standards, and charter schools, and we’ve got the review of Tomorrow’s Schools, after 30 years, which is now yesterday’s schools—but within the Budget we have had several initiatives that are being so welcomed.

I’ve just heard the previous speaker bemoan the $150 per student contribution to abolish school fees in decile 1 to 7 schools. Now, talk about the Grinch that stole Christmas. You can’t necessarily do everything in one day, or in one year, or in one term, but we are starting to address these very real issues, and they have been incredibly welcomed by these schools. It’s $265 million worth of contribution, and it is not a broken promise. That was a Labour Party commitment; this is a coalition Government, and you have just demonstrated that you do not understand that. You do not understand how to count and the realities of coalition Governments, on that side of the House.

But I would like to touch on the vocational training, which has come under some scrutiny. I have been involved in this debate. I was actually at the Southern Institute of Technology on Friday, and they are coming together with this. They are seeing the advantages. They are starting to understand what we are trying to do. The system was broken. We’ve heard from the Minister that there was a 40,000 decline in people going through vocational education, at a time when we’ve got massive skills shortages in our industries. It’s the likes of Business New Zealand, it’s the likes of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, and it’s the likes of Dairy NZ that are coming out and backing these reforms, because they know what was broken.

I would especially like to give the example of Telford. Telford was run into the ground and enfeebled under that previous Government. You sent that luminary in there Todd Barclay to sort it out at one stage, and it failed miserably. They had $10 million in reserves, and they were pillaged by Lincoln, and you let that happen—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I didn’t—I didn’t.

Sorry, Madam Chair. The National Party let that happen when they were leading the last Government, and then they allowed it to fall into the hands of Taratahi. One of the great announcements the other day that has been widely regarded and well received in the South is the $4.7 million injection into Telford to put that back in its rightful place as the jewel of agricultural training in the South, and, hopefully, it takes its place leading vocational training for agriculture into the future. I commend the Minister of Education, who actually had to come off his holiday in January to save it when the wheels were almost totally off, and put $1.8 million into it to just get the wheels on to get it to this point—and now followed up with $4.7 million. I absolutely commend the Minister for his work there, and that has been incredibly well received.

In my last minute—because a lot of this stuff has been traversed in some detail, but I see that the Pike River recovery is part of this Estimates debate, in this particular section. I sat in on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, where Minister Little gave his contribution to that. This Government has been united in putting that travesty right—29 New Zealanders went to work that day and did not come home. We individually made commitments before the election to do something about that, to put that wrong right, and we have. The National Opposition have finally come round to that, but never let it be forgotten: they were going to concrete that place in, and we have absolutely stopped that travesty. We are going in there. We’re going to give some closure to those families on what could be New Zealand’s biggest—well, one of its biggest—crime scenes. We are acting, and I’m very proud that we are.

For those watching this at home, can I tell you what this is about. This is about the Budget and how people choose to invest the priority of Government spending, and what we can see in these Estimates is what is a priority and what is not a priority for Government. Last week, I visited a number of primary schools in the Wellington Central electorate, and not one of those schools—in fact, not one single school in Wellington Central—had been allocated additional funding for a learning support coordinator. They were really disappointed, and I’ll tell you why they were disappointed: they thought that Labour had promised the world. They were going to wipe every tear from every eye, they were going to sort out all the problems, and they haven’t seen delivery. So you look across the Wellington region. Are there learning support coordinators allocated in the Rongotai electorate? No, no. Are there learning support coordinators allocated in Ōhāriu? Yes, for a small group of schools in the Newlands cluster, but across our city, we don’t, apparently, have children who are in need of additional special-needs support via this scheme, because the children in our city aren’t a priority for this Government. Budgets are about priorities, and this Budget has failed to prioritise the things that really matter.

Let me turn to early childhood education, because this is another area where Chris Hipkins, before the election, was very happy to go on to the front steps of Parliament, sign a pledge, wave a banner, and promise early childhood teachers that he would do their things—that he would fund 100 percent qualified teachers. He would ensure that there were lower teacher to pupil ratios. He would rain funding upon the sector. And here we are, two years in—we’ve had two Budgets. Have we seen delivery of those promises? No, we have not, because Mr Hipkins has not prioritised the early childhood educators of our country. He has not prioritised our youngest learners. He has not prioritised the thousands of early childhood teachers in New Zealand.

Do you know, what makes it worse is that what we learnt during the Estimates hearing from the Minister—he was direct, to his credit, in answering my question. I said “Well, did you bid for additional funding to ensure that the Government could deliver on these promises?”, and do you know what the Minister said? The Minister said “Oh, yes, I did.” And do you know what happened when he went to his Cabinet colleagues—when he went to you, Mr Lees-Galloway, when he went to our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, when he went to Grant Robertson—and said “I need more money to deliver on promises for early childhood education.”, do you know what his colleagues said? “Sorry—not a priority. We’ve got other things we’d prefer to do. We’ve got $250 million worth of working groups to run. That’s what we’d like to spend our money on, because if we can shuffle a few more papers around and defer a few more decisions, that would be politically more expedient than delivering for the early childhood education sector. What we’d prefer to prioritise billions of dollars for is free fees for tertiary students, because what we’ve promised is that it will increase participation in tertiary education—oh, look, never mind that it hasn’t achieved that at all; that’s where the money will go.”

Then, we learnt in the Estimates hearing—because you’d expect, well, maybe the reason that the early childhood education sector hasn’t had its promises delivered despite having a severe teacher shortage, despite centres struggling for months to find teachers to staff their centres—perhaps the reason there isn’t funding for the promises is because there’s not enough money. There’s just not enough money, because it’s been spent in all of these other areas. Well, what we actually learnt at the Estimates hearing was that there had been a significant underspend in early childhood education—it had been estimated that $1.975 billion would be available. That’s how much the Government had budgeted would be available, but, in fact, only $1.9 billion was to be spent. So what we learnt is that there was $75 million out there that could’ve been allocated, that could’ve been invested in early childhood education, and the Government chose not to make that investment.

So we asked about some of the problems that our early childhood education centres are having across the country—finding teachers, finding the people to look after and educate our kids—and the Minister’s excuse for not having one single initiative in these Estimates to address that chronic problem? His excuse: “We don’t have good, reliable data.” Well, tell that to the early childhood education centres around this country. I have visited dozens of them, and I tell you what: they have good data that demonstrates this is a severe problem, and this Minister has chosen not to prioritise it.

Budgets are about priorities. This Estimates debate is about what this Government’s priorities are, and they prefer working groups to investing in our children and their potential.

I move, That the committee report progress presently and move to consider the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill.

Motion agreed to.

Bill to be reported with progress presently.