Goldsmith Paul; Mallard TrevorHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It was very interesting to hear the honourable member Shane Jones yelling out Crisis! Crisis!" and that indeed was the tenor of the speech that we heard from the other side. This in a country that has been doing so well over these past nine years—a strong country with a strong economy that is well prepared to deliver the living standards that all New Zealanders have wanted. I look back with satisfaction on the efforts that we made over the nine years in Government and yes we go away in Opposition to contemplate and think about the things that we can do better next time we get into Government the next time the people of New Zealand give us that opportunity. But in the meantime we'll be working very hard to hold this Government to account.This week after weeks of working through the previous Government's legislation and scratching the order book very hard in order to find some things to do finally the Government is bringing in some legislation of its own later this week to take away the $1060 that 1.2 million households in New Zealand were looking forward to after eight years where the thresholds haven't changed and finally getting some tax back. That's been taken away. It's going to cost about $2.4 billion—about the same amount they're going to spend on making it free for university students and tertiary students to go and have their first year free at university. People will be scratching their heads at the argument—the logic—used because we're being told that we shouldn't be having tax cuts for wealthy people such as members of Parliament but by the same token we'll pay even more money for the children of those wealthy people to go to university and to go on and earn higher incomes throughout the rest of their careers because that is the absolute priority.There's no question that student life can be tough and it's always tough financially as a student and few would disagree that rising accommodation costs have made it tougher in these past few years. I've spent a lot of time speaking to student reps and students and know the pressures that they've been under. That's why the previous Government in the Budget this year lifted the accommodation benefit for students in order to make it easier for students to get by in the accommodation sense and if I'd been returned to Government I would have argued for further investment over the next few years as surpluses have allowed.But when we go about our spending in Government we used to focus on targeted well-thought-through spending on important issues and on making sure that we were getting the most bang for our bucks. What we've seen from this Government has been the spray all over the place approach to public policy so that you have $2.8 billion invested in tertiary education. And what are we getting for that? How many more students are we getting going to university as a result of it? What are we actually buying for the $2.8 billion over the next four years?Well we've got the Cabinet paper that gives us an answer: virtually no new students at all. In fact we'll hold steady. They've talked about the decline in students. Yes there has been a very slight decline in tertiary students for the past three years for two simple reasons. One is that there is a demographic drop. The parents of the country weren't active enough 20 years ago so that's an issue. Secondly there's been a jobs boom in this country and so everybody has been finding it easier to get work. They've been hounded to get into work because there are so many jobs and that's why there have been slightly fewer people in polytechnics and the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand area.But as a result we look at what's going on in the Cabinet paper for the $2.8 billion investment. What are we getting? Virtually no new students. So you're spending $2.8 billion on what you're already getting—students going to tertiary education—because they've been doing it and they've been prepared to make a contribution of their own because they know that the outcome is a good one for them personally and that they're going on to earn a higher income. So instead of targeting and focusing on getting those who had genuine barriers to getting into education putting resources into getting them over the line they're spreading it everywhere and that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.What about the things you could have done with the $2.8 billion? Well there's a whole lot of things but in the tertiary space on its own what about investing in the quality of the institutions to ensure that New Zealand's tertiary education remains world class? You need to continue to invest in that every day. There's no new money—I'd be interested to see; maybe the new Government has found the money tree and they will find an extra billion dollars to do that. But I don't see anything in the $2.8 billion investment in tertiary education that raises the quality of that education or enables the New Zealand university sector and the tertiary sector to continue to improve in order to create a world-class education that will genuinely make this country more productive.So it's a real missed opportunity and a perfect example of bad policy and I hope over the summer that they go away and reflect and come back—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."