Martin Tracey: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Martin Tracey: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2595. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First) 
: 
 Excuse me Mr Speaker. Are you able to ring the bell at 5 minutes?  
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: If that is what you would like: 5 minutes or 4 minutes?  
TRACEY MARTIN 
: Four minutes with a minute to go. Kia ora. Thank you Mr Speaker. New Zealand First believes that education is a critical social and economic investment. If you listened to the spin put out by the National Government you could be forgiven for believing that it actually thought the same thing.  
But just before I get into addressing just a few—just a few because I have only 5 minutes to address these things—of the areas of concern that this seemingly innocuous but quite frankly dangerously sly Budget has within it I want to send out a message of support to Dr The Rt Hon Lockwood Smith. I can only imagine the distress that Dr Smith is feeling right now as he watches his own party apply a wraparound death grip to the teaching of technologies in New Zealand schools. Some of you will not know what this document is that I am holding up. This is  
The New Zealand Curriculum 
. It is supported by this other document I am holding up which is on the teaching of te reo inside mainstream English-medium schools.  
Dr Smith was a very hands-on Minister of Education back in the 1990s and it was in 1993 that he demanded—demanded—that the technologies be included as a compulsory learning area in our curriculum. This document was reviewed with wide consultation in 2006. It was scheduled for full implementation in February 2010. Part of the consultation particularly around the technologies inside this document was with the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Institution of Professional Engineers. This is a highly regarded—both nationally and internationally—and recognised document. Other countries come to study this document. But since 2008 and the re-election of a National Government this document and our schools have been under attack. First we had national standards a flawed system of markers given precedence over this curriculum by a Minister of Education who on every level refused to consult communicate or interact with those on the front line of educational delivery. From the last two Budgets $14.75 million has been spent on the marketing and spinning of national standards to the New Zealand public in an attempt to convince the New Zealand public that this Government actually cares about their children and their children’s education. In this Budget the 2012 Budget there is a further $13.9 million taking the spend on national standards to over $28 million by the end of the 2014 financial year.  
Here we have a Government and a Minister of Education that talk the talk but have not got the faintest idea how to walk the walk. This Minister says on the one hand the Government is going to invest in 21st century learning environments and in the next breath argues for 1970s class sizes. Here we have a Minister who talks about the one in five speaks about our most vulnerable and then allows her ministry to spend over $28 million on paperwork that never needed to be done. Not a single dollar of that $28 million will touch a child and yet this same amount of money could have provided close to 9000 identified 6-year-olds with reading recovery or the same amount could have provided 1690000 teacher-aide hours in the classroom supporting those children.  
But let us just skip now to this increase of $511 million that is apparently inside this Budget. How much of that money is going to be spent on designing a league tables website? How much of that money is going to be paid to Catherine Isaac and her team while they work on an internationally suspect charter schools programme for New Zealand? How much of that $511 million will never touch a single decile 1 decile 2 or decile 3 child in this country? We do not know yet because the Minister actually does not even know. The Minister does not know she does not understand the teacher ratios she has not received good advice and our rural schools are dying because of this Budget yet this Government will say much like National did in the 1990s: “A little pain now for some more gain later. Wait New Zealand. Trust us—we know what we’re doing.” You do not and that was obvious from today’s question time.  
The Minister has no idea and the Prime Minister has no idea how teacher to student ratios work. But even if she did why do they not apply to Maori-medium schools? Why are Maori-medium schools keeping the ratios across the board and yet mainstream English-medium schools are being affected in this way? What about all the Maori and Pasifika students who are inside our mainstream schools now? Are they just going to have their technologies set aside—the very people whom the Minister said she is overly concerned about? The Minister needs to gain further advice. She needs to send her Secretary for Education out into the New Zealand schools and out into the rural schools not just the brand new flashy ones where they can cut a ribbon. They need to go and talk to the staff so that the Minister and her Secretary for Education can actually find out what Treasury’s suggested cuts will do for those students. Thank you.