Martin Tracey: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3956. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Just before I begin the substance of my contribution can I just pick up on a comment that Dr Nick Smith made. He said that a budget is about choice and I would agree with him. Every budget is about choice. One prioritises what is important—whether it be for a company a family’s household budget or a Government’s Budget for example. So it is worthy of note that this Government chose to prioritise $25 million for a flag referendum that nobody actually wants but chose—Tim Macindoe: Speak for yourself.TRACEY MARTIN: —to make orphans and unsupported children wait until 2018 Mr Macindoe for the clothing allowance. So that is the choice that this Government made. It decided that a $25 million flag referendum that 84 to 90 percent of New Zealand does not want—but it is their money—was more important than providing a clothing allowance for orphans and unsupported children being raised by kin carers. So I agree with Dr Nick Smith. The Government made choices and it will be judged by those choices.Now—Hon Christopher Finlayson: “Ne-ow.”TRACEY MARTIN: —I think probably the first thing we have got here—obviously Mr Finlayson does not like my contribution either. You are getting snarky there Mr Finlayson. If one wants to put this Budget into context one actually has to look at the last six Budgets. I am going to hedge some bets here and say that National has actually had a really clever strategy over the last 6 years coming into this year’s Budget. I think we can see it by the cuts that were made between 2009 and 2012. Just one example would be the choices that were made way back in 2009. Back in 2009 this Government wiped $400 million out of early childhood education. It wiped it out in a Budget back in 2009—$400 million out of early childhood education. In this Budget it has provided $75 million over the next 4 years. How lovely—that is great. But it does not go anywhere near the amounts that it withdrew.Let us talk about the training incentive allowance that this Government removed from single-parent students. That had a value of approximately $4500 a year. In this Budget single-parent - family students will get $25 a week. That is lovely. That is about $1000. The Government just takes away and lets the people stay out there under hardship just long enough so that when it throws them some crumbs they are incredibly grateful. It is a brilliant plan and this Government has done it very very well over the last 6 years. It keeps announcing these incremental positives hoping all the time that the New Zealand public will not remember the negatives. Thank goodness New Zealand First is here to actually remind them.The other thing that we have seen in recent days is again around education and some new schools that are being built. That is wonderful. You have to build new schools when you have got a huge number of people coming into the country in net migration numbers. Their children deserve an education like everybody else’s children and so therefore you have to increase the education budget to build new schools. It seems sensible. It is unfortunate when one member of the Government does not know that a school in his own electorate is going to be shifted and actually has to go and ask a Minister in his own Government—and he is a member outside Cabinet himself—but nobody bothered to tell him that under this Budget a kura in his electorate was going to be shifted from where it is now to a camping ground in his electorate. So he has to go public and actually ask in a public fashion whether he can know please what his own Government and party are doing. I think that shows that the left hand does not quite know what the right hand is doing. There are obviously some people who are on the inside and some people who are on the outside.Perhaps that is punishment for that particular Minister for the advice he gave around Novopay. It was that Minister who gave advice to Hekia Parata saying: “It’s fine. Go with Novopay. No they didn’t meet their key performance indicators. No they didn’t. And yes there are about 147 glitches still in it and no we have not run a trial but I’m advising you go ahead. Go ahead Minister. Let’s roll it out.” So now let us take a look at Novopay. There is $53 million in this Budget for the continuation of trying to fix that lemon called Novopay. The increase in this Budget to the operations grant for State schools over the next 4 years is $42 million. That equates to about $10.7 million per year for the next 4 years for the operations grant increase for State schools—around about 1 percent. Power bills have increased by 3.6 percent in the same time frame but that grant increase is about 1 percent. Novopay is going to get $53 million from this Budget; State schools will get $42 million. You do not have to be very bright to figure out the maths and that is probably why it works over there for the Government. So this is an interesting interesting Budget because you have to drill down past the spin and the rhetoric and the marketing dollars that have been put here and actually have a look across the last 6 years to see what this Budget does.Here is another thing. This is from another press release from the Minister of Education. There is about $62.9 million of operating funding over the next 4 years. Of that $39.5 million is going to go to provide ongoing resourcing scheme support for about 500 extra students. That is lovely. There are more students of course. There are more students in our schools. That is why we are building two more schools. So actually it is not more support for current students; it is actually an increase in budget because we have got more students.The next thing we have got is that this is going to pay for specialists such as speech language therapists psychologists physiotherapists and occupational therapists. That would be brilliant—brilliant—except we have not got enough of them. We have not got enough of them because support has been withdrawn from our student body from our tertiary education provision and these are not target areas. We now have a shortage through that withdrawal of support and bad workforce planning so we do not have enough speech language therapists when schools call for them. We do not have enough psychologists. So now when schools reach out trying to help the young people in their schools—because now we have got a wraparound service and the resource teachers of learning and behaviour have all been shifted off to goodness knows where—and they reach out for psychologists for example you cannot get one to show up. You have organisations like Marinoto—and I am not being flippant—telling schools that unless a child has a rope around their neck do not call it. That is how bad it is out there. That is how bad it is. That is how short-staffed we are.Supposedly however this Budget is going to fix it. There is $23.3 million for extra in-class teacher aide support for 1500 students in special needs education such as those with dyslexia. The Dyslexia Foundation tells us that there are up to 70000 schoolchildren who actually are affected by dyslexia—one in 10 New Zealanders—and this funding is going to help 1500 students. This once-over-lightly sprinkle of assistance devalues the need that is out there. It is crumbs from a quite well-laden table when you have a look at the priorities that this Government has decided. There is absolutely nothing in this Budget for professional development for the early recognition of dyslexia dyspraxia or Asperger’s syndrome when those students show up at school. There is absolutely nothing in this Budget to provide extra support for early childhood education early identification and professional development.Tim Macindoe: Special needs and early childhood are up.TRACEY MARTIN: There is absolutely nothing in this Budget. In 2009 the gifted and talented funding was taken away Mr Macindoe. In 2009 the advisory groups were disbanded. In 2009 targeting funding for innovative programmes around talent development initiatives was abandoned. There is nothing in this report for gifted and talented children. Where is the tagged funding for gifted and talented children? This Government which came in saying it had aspirational goals for our students removed the category “well above” from national standards. I do not even like national standards but how aspirational is it that apparently no longer is anybody going to be “well above”? You are either “well below” “below” “at” or “above” but there is nothing for gifted and talented children. Again there is nothing for gifted and talented children in this Budget.I could go on. I have got a few more minutes; I will go on. The reality of this Budget and 6 years’ worth of work by this Government is a shift of the cost around our free to the end-user primary and secondary education. It is now being passed on to our parents. This is the reality of this Government’s Budgets over the last 6 years. If parents want to go and have a look they will see that at the same time they freeze the parental threshold allowance where students can actually get some assistance so they can eat. It is a very interesting Budget people—drill down into it. Kia ora.