English Bill: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
English Bill: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:624;Page:19417] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 Like the health portfolio the education portfolio is littered with lost opportunity in a fiscal fool’s paradise. I just want to take members over some of the numbers so they can understand what has actually happened to education under the stewardship of apparently the most competent Minister in the Government Mr Trevor Mallard. 
Darren Hughes 
: The Hon Trevor Mallard. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Hon Trevor Mallard and then there is the other education Minister who has taken up his job recently and cannot stay awake in the House. When I get letters from parents about the fact that their children with special needs cannot get teacher-aides and that they are getting semi-abusive letters back from the Minister then I know there is a problem. 
I will tell members where the money has gone because it has not gone to the people who need it. Sneering arrogance from the Government will not change that one bit—not one bit. The member from Otaki can listen to these numbers: in tertiary education Government spending has gone up between 2002 and 2005 by $1 billion—from $2 billion to $3 billion—and over the next couple of years it is forecast to go up another $500 million so the rate of increase is picking up. This is when the Government has said that it recognises there is a problem with the Te Wananga O Aotearoa and it is going to do something. Well it is actually not doing something at all—it is doing nothing. 
Tertiary spending has got completely out of control with homeopathy for pets the “art of health” which includes learning about the effect of colour on the human soul and $20 million phantom computer courses that no student ever did. The member for Otaki is going to sit there and giggle at the parents of special needs children who cannot walk cannot talk and cannot change their own nappies at school and who cannot get a teacher’s aide. That is the reality. That is the cost of the fiscal fool’s paradise that this Government has overseen. 
A bunch of half-successful lecturers and middle management out of universities have got hold of the Government’s honeypot and spent it all on their mates—in the polytechs mainly—not on the students. The proportion spent on students has dropped by 20 percent so we have had a multi-billion dollar blowout in tertiary education which has not gone on the students. They have not got their fair share. Let us compare the increase in—[ 
Interruption 
] Well that member’s local polytech campus is in real trouble because when Trevor Mallard comes with his cuts—which are inevitable—it will be the first to go. Members heard it here; that member will regret ever raising the topic of the Wanganui campus of the Universal College of Learning because it will cost her the seat of Whanganui. She just has to wait. 
Expenditure on tertiary education in the two terms of this Government has gone up 50 percent. That is before the coming salary negotiations which are going to certainly boost that expenditure because university staff are looking for a collective contract with big increases. 
In schools Government expenditure has gone up 16 percent over that time but of course parents’ expenditure has gone up much faster. Parents now contribute almost $500 million per year to the operating costs of schools. That has gone up 34 percent in just 3 years from 2000 to 2003. So what will the member for Otaki tell parents in Levin about that—that in 2003 parent donations and fees for Labour’s free State education were $199863111?