Delahunty Catherine: Budget Debate 
Delahunty Catherine: Budget Debate 
[Volume:654;Page:4163] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena koutou katoa. Last week I received my SIS file which dates back to when I was a student activist within the high school system aged 15 years old. It was a great reminder of those heady days in 1970 when we school students marched on Parliament calling on a National Government to fund more teachers smaller classes and a better more appropriate education system. My thanks go to the SIS for documenting that period of my life and keeping clippings that I had thrown away. It was a great reminder that the more things change the more they stay the same. 
This Budget’s context is recession and it is no good pretending that this Government—or any Government—has control over the global financial downturn. The only flexibility the Government has is in its response to the situation. It has responded by cutting aspects of education that are critical to the well-being of both people and the environment and to the social well-being and future of Aotearoa. Of course we cannot have everything we want in education but the cutting is a clear indication of the Government’s values priorities and directions. The Post Primary Teachers Association rightly described the compulsory education sector section of the 2009 Budget as “smoke and mirrors”. To build some new schools is great but any pay increases to keep up with the cost of living this year are undermined by the projected cuts to resourcing in 2010 to 2012 and by the lack of support for professional development in the compulsory sector especially in early childhood education. The $35 million for private schools would be better spent on public school support staff for children with special needs. Those support staff are mainly women and they do not even have pay equity. The unit that focused on pay equity has been axed and the Pay and Employment Equity investigation which identified the discrimination against women has been cancelled. What is the effect of this cancellation on children with special needs? 
We are going to spend an awful lot of money on literacy and numeracy which is vital but we could waste an awful lot if we do not take heed of the barriers to learning the basics which this Budget fails to address. Children are coming to school hungry. Some of them are hearing and vision impaired and as the Education and Science Committee learnt today many of these impairments are not being picked up by current screening methods. The Government has allocated $59 million to improve behavioural issues but if we do not increase the benefit and support parents the children will not be in a fit state to learn. If social meltdown occurs in a New Zealand house because one parent has lost his or her job and the other one has cancer or there is only one parent trying to pay a ridiculous electricity bill and he or she cannot pay the dog registration let alone feed the kids or the dog the child of that family carries a heavy burden into the classroom on his or her small shoulders. 
The Green Party also believes that the decisions on adult and community education show no understanding of the contribution of adult education to reintroducing people to learning. As Te Ururoa Flavell said yesterday in question time PricewaterhouseCoopers did a study on the economic value of the adult and community education sector and found it was worth $6.3 million annually to the country. So how does an 80 percent cut assist us in a recession? It is vital that literacy programmes continue but being a literate citizen is about so much more than going to an English class. Adult and community education provides incredible value for money as second-time learners and migrant communities dip their toes into the shallow end of a pool of lifelong learning which can lead to the most radical transformation of their lives and their communities. What is adult and community education all about? I say to the Minister of Education that yes it is about literacy but it is also about weaving car maintenance sewing and gardening. It is learning to dance with strangers. It is trying out a new type of cooking. If someone cannot weave or dance or whatever it is he or she wants to learn—let alone cook Moroccan food—he or she needs this opportunity. It can be a totally transformative experience. And Moroccan food which the Minister seems quite obsessed about is actually very healthy and nutritious and very affordable in the recession. 
We can guarantee that attending adult learning classes will do something else for us: it will connect us back to our communities it will give us practical skills and it will encourage us to return to study when we have lost confidence in our ability to learn. Thousands and thousands of people—especially women refugees and migrants tangata whenua Pasifika people and people living with impairments—left school feeling like losers. Adult and community education is a bridge to recovery and participation as well as to the possibility of employment. If there is no job to go to in a recession what should people do? Should they watch rich people having fun on TV? Should they watch Parliament TV for information on how wise leaders are creating a sustainable future for them? Should they pray for a miracle? Perhaps they should go to cheap high-quality education experiences in their local communities. The cannot any more. 
Adult education includes high-quality Te Tiriti o Waitangi education which is the single most effective tool for rebuilding harmony and a commitment to justice in Aotearoa. Most of us did not get Te Tiriti education in school because we were all one people in those days! However we did learn how to play stick games and sing waiata with appalling pronunciation and I say that as one of the offenders. We all need this vital element of adult education. The wananga and kura offer fantastic courses in te reo and the broader field of matauranga Maori. These opportunities are not just good; they are a Treaty obligation for the Crown. 
The 80 percent cut in schools-based adult education programmes will cost 200 people their jobs as coordinators and more than 200 people part-time work as tutors. These people are mainly part-timers which is how many of them create a patchwork of employment that allows them to pay the rent and feed their kids. When they lose jobs their communities lose much more: they lose adult and community education itself. 
Perhaps the most depressing and self-defeating cuts are in the environmental education field. The Government has given minimal funding to some of these programmes for the next 6 months and it has cut all the funding for Education for Sustainability advisers who have done vital work in the development and education of the curriculum around environmental issues. What has environmental education done for our nation and our children? Te Matauranga Taiao is an expression of education for sustainability based on the recognition that we live in Aotearoa and that a Maori view of sustainability needs to guide education programmes our relationships and our practices when we attempt to inspire our young people to look after Papatuanuku and each other. The Education for Sustainability advisers gave holistic advice to schools and Enviroschools helped to create participatory and practical leadership by children in terms of sustainability kaupapa. But now those advisers have lost their jobs and the Enviroschools’ funding has been cut. They have 6 months in which to make up a plan and find a way to fund themselves after 2010. Yet Enviroschools by anyone’s assessment are a huge success story. Demand far exceeds supply as schools queue up to join this wonderful programme. They have been so successful that their model has been exported to the other Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement countries such as Chile and Singapore with our people teaching the teachers in those countries how to develop environmental education programmes. Everybody loves them so let us cut them to pieces! 
I do not know what this Government thinks it is doing. All these education cuts are a form of sabotage to communities of lifelong learning and they also sabotage communities themselves. Kia ora.