Hipkins ChrisBUDGET DEBATEDebate resumed from 22 May.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): It is a great time to be a New Zealander. The economy is going well and this Government is getting New Zealand's public services back on track after nine years of neglect. We are rebuilding the public services that we know New Zealanders need and deserve. Our Budget is in surplus and will continue to be in surplus. Government debt as a percentage of GDP is going to fall under this Government and we are going to get our public services back on track by increasing our investment in them.I am particularly proud of the changes that we have made in the education system as part of this year's Budget. It is the biggest increase in education spending in over a decade. We are dealing with the increase in demand that our education services are facing through early childhood education (ECE) and all the way through and we are ensuring that our education system is equipped to deliver New Zealanders the education that they will need in the future.We're starting with early childhood education. People who came with us on the campaign trail who attended any meetings that I was speaking at would have known that I spoke about early childhood education and special needs education or learning support as being my two highest priorities for additional funding in education and we are absolutely delivering on that as part of this year's Budget. Early childhood education is getting its first universal cost adjustment for early learning centres since 2008. It is the biggest increase in early childhood education funding in over a decade—200000 Kiwi kids will benefit from the extra investment we are making in ECE services. Over 4000 providers will benefit from this increase in funding for early childhood education.When it came to dealing with the schools budget we were faced with the biggest forecast increase in student numbers in decades. That's the biggest increase in the overall number of kids attending our schools in decades. We have to put significant extra funding in to employ more teachers to build more classrooms—more schools even—just to ensure that we are keeping up with demand and this Budget delivers on that: almost $1 billion going into the education system to cope with the increasing population. Almost $1 billion of the $1.6 billion that we are putting in is going in to cope with the increasing student population and that's something to be proud of. That means another 1500 additional teachers in our schools to cope with growing student rolls. That's something to be proud of. We will build quite literally hundreds of new classrooms for our schools and we'll be building a few new schools as well as part of that.We will be continuing with the Christchurch rebuild. I think New Zealanders would be somewhat surprised that the previous Government when they said they were going to spend $1.1 billion to do the Christchurch schools rebuild didn't actually set aside the money to do that at the time. We are going to continue with the rebuild and this year's Budget delivers the latest instalment to ensure that it can happen.We are also delivering on the additional support required for children with additional learning needs: $21 million is going into additional early intervention services. That's 8000 more pre-schoolers who will get additional support for their learning needs before they start school getting them off on the very best foot when it comes to their journey in education. A thousand additional students will get additional funding through ORS the ongoing resourcing scheme. ORS provides additional teacher-aides additional specialist support and additional teaching time to support those kids with the highest level of need. I am absolutely proud that we have been able to put the support in for the extra thousand students as part of that scheme. [Interruption] Mr Speaker I'm going to ask my two colleagues who are immediately to my right to maybe have their conversation in the lobby so that I can actually do my speech. That would be very kind of them. This isn't Dancing with the Stars Mr Seymour. I'm also very proud of the fact that—SPEAKER: Order! I am going to interrupt the member and ask the two members to take their discussion somewhere else. Thank you.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I'm particularly proud of the fact that 2900 students with hearing impairments or who are deaf are going to be getting the support that they need as part of this year's Budget. Fifteen hundred students who are blind or hard of vision will be getting additional support as part of this year's Budget. That is something that we can be particularly proud of.I also want to talk about lifelong education. We know that education is a lifelong journey. We know that increasingly people are going to have to move in and out of the education system throughout their life. That is one of the reasons why this Government in delivering the first year of post-school education and training for free ensured that it was available to adults who have not participated in education and training before because we know that some of those most vulnerable workers the people who might lose their jobs and find themselves having to retrain and re-educate could be some of the biggest beneficiaries from this proposal. So the first year free is going to make a big difference to the people who need to re-educate and retrain and we know that it's already making a difference to many of them.But I also want to point out that it's making a big difference to future generations of New Zealanders as well. I want to talk particularly about how young New Zealanders are able to avoid debt in their studies when they leave school. A $151 million decrease in student loan borrowing as a result of the first year free policy—and that is only in the first quarter. That is only in the first quarter. Twenty-five thousand—25500 in fact—fewer students borrowing to pay for fees under the student loan scheme as a result of the first year free. I think that is something that this Government should be particularly proud of because it means that those people are going to be getting out of debt faster once they complete their studies or their training. That means that they're going to be able to get on with their lives. They're going to be able to save for a deposit for a house. They're going to be able to put money into their families. That is because of this Government's approach to delivering a fairer education system where cost is not a barrier to participation. I think that this Government's commitment to education is evident in this year's Budget.I want to talk about some of the other funding increases that we have made because it's important to remember that we've got a teacher supply crisis in New Zealand. An extra $20 million is going into supporting teacher supply initiatives to ensure that we've got enough teachers in our classrooms. We know that we are already short of teachers and that if we don't do something about it that problem is going to get worse. The Voluntary Bonding Scheme which is also a teacher supply package gets an additional $6.4 million.Now here's one that people don't talk about very much: an extra $34.5 million to provide additional support for English for speakers of other languages in schooling. When we have a significant migrant population a significant refugee population we've got to make sure that we're actually supporting those people through the education system and we know that language and the unsupported number of people who have English as their second language is a challenge for our school system. The $34.5 million extra funding will ensure that we are meeting that need.I want to thank our partners in Government New Zealand First and the Green Party for the way that we have been able to work together to deliver on the commitments that we have made in education. Of course there is more to deliver. There is more to be done and we will do that over the next few Budgets. I do want to be clear however that some of the scaremongering that's gone on is bordering on the incredible as well as the desperate—for example the suggestion that we've cut funding for the Education Review Office which I saw in a press statement yesterday. That's because the Education Review Office refitted their offices last year and we're not going to have them refitting their offices again this year. It's also because they got an insurance payout from Revera House which is being demolished. And no they're not going to get the same insurance payout again next year; that's not generally the way insurance payouts work but to suggest that that's a funding cut is somewhat desperate. The idea that we've cut funding for teacher salaries because we've chosen to reinvest the funding that the previous Government failed to spend on their Investing in Educational Success initiative is also bordering on the incredible and the desperate.The education package in this year's Budget is one to be proud of. I'm proud of the whole Budget. It is the first step on a three-year path to rebuild our public services.Hon Paula Bennett: Mr Speaker?