Jones Dail: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Jones Dail: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17508] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First believes that the money spent on education will be treated as an investment not as expenditure. Educational advancement is both in the national and in the individual’s interest and educational investment is critical for our country’s economic and social well-being. Again New Zealand First believes that the foundation of education lies in the family. New Zealand First will focus on programmes that assist families to provide the best environment of care and educational development. New Zealand has an enviable education system by world standards and the teachers who work in our schools and all the people who assist the teachers all the people who work in the Ministry of Education and suchlike must be congratulated on ensuring that that happens. Now and then perhaps we will have a few words of praise for members of Parliament while we are talking about it. 
But there is more to be done. In the early childhood education sector for example although we may have a 93 percent turn-out there I believe that is still not good enough. We must always be aiming to make it at least 100 percent especially because that missing 7 percent is often the group that can end up in jail and end up with problems and they need a good start early in life. New Zealand First is focused on making sure they get a 100 percent turn-out in early childhood education. We believe there should be an improvement in the funding eligibility so that the icon of New Zealand’s early childhood care—Playcentre—can by some means or another be advantaged by the 20 free hours’ childhood education that is available. It will require a rethinking on the part of the Playcentre movement as well and I understand that that is taking place at the present time. I was pleased to hear from the Minister in the chair the Hon Chris Carter today that the kohanga reo movement is being supported as well. Once again there might need to be a further consideration of the way in which it can be fully supported. 
I understand that the biggest problem as far as schools are concerned relates to the operations grant to schools. A lot has been said about the operations grant. New Zealand First regards this as a big problem that must be reviewed and if necessary additional funds must be made available for operational purposes once the whole area of the operations grant is fully understood and reviewed. 
There are various Government education programmes today that come to light and will be known to the Minister and other members of Parliament. I was rather staggered though at how many different Government programmes there are for schools. The immediate thought comes to my mind as someone who is in business and who has been in business that each one of those systems and programmes must surely have a bureaucratic back-up and we just have to be very careful about how many more programmes we institute. Schools Plus which sounds very good also falls within this category. We have to be very careful as to how that is implemented if it is to be implemented. 
In the area of tertiary education New Zealand First supports having a universal student allowance and we note with some pleasure that the Government is now looking at perhaps extending the universal student allowance even further. The Minister is to be congratulated on reducing the age from 25 to 24 but New Zealand First believes that it should be a universal student allowance. Our policy provides for this to be introduced over 3 years and we challenge the Government to do the same. We have a policy of having a bonding system for medical students who are willing to trade off student loan abatements for staying in New Zealand. It must be a good policy because until recently it was the only education policy released by the National Party but we are always only too pleased to allow our policies to be borrowed by others. 
New Zealand First and I are exploring the extension of this policy to teaching nursing and other employment areas such as the building industry. But as a lawyer I say that we should certainly not extend it to lawyers; there are far too many of us already and we could possibly close a law school rather than look at opening a new law school. We should not open a business law school which I see that the Auckland University of Technology wants to do. We have far too many lawyers already and I question that development. Why do we allow a situation whereby we train doctors nurses teachers builders and suchlike for Australia and elsewhere? Why can we not do something to keep them in New Zealand? For example we could have a system where a student loan of $30000 to $80000—which might exist at the moment—is abated if that person stays in New Zealand. 
Of course New Zealand First also asked the Government to consider the Auckland University of Technology idea. The National member has spoken about the non-allocation of funds. I am most concerned to see there is a discussion about the Auckland University of Technology moving to Manukau at a cost of $20 million to $100 million. There was no reference to that in the Budget whatsoever. It will also be providing courses that are not relevant to the Manukau area.