Luxton JoJO LUXTON (Labour): That's all right. Thank you so much Madam Chair for the opportunity to take a call here—Marja Lubeck: You've been away a bit.JO LUXTON: —yeah I've been away a bit—tonight in this Estimates debate. I think I am the last member on this side of the Chamber and in the committee to take a call. So I am pleased to be able to do that. I was worried that I was going to miss it having been away last week when it all got under way but I am here now.One of the reasons that I came into this place or that I put myself forward as a candidate was that I was really passionate about our education system in New Zealand and had been involved as an early childhood teacher and then later on as a centre owner for over 20 years. The things that I had been seeing in the education system over the last 10 years were I thought heart breaking. So I'm really pleased to see a lot of the things that this Government is doing and putting in place for education and our education system. We know that we're not going to be able to solve it all right away but we're getting started and we are making really really great progress.One of the things that I think is really fantastic is that we are spending the largest amount of any Government in school property. Another thing that's really really good about what's happening in this space is that we've actually got a Minister of Education who's forward thinking. He's thinking beyond three years beyond the election cycle and looking forward into the future even up to 30 years—into 30 years. We've seen the abolishment of charter schools. You know I think it's important to be progressive but I don't think it's good to do that at the expense of our children and experiment with their education in such a way as what we have seen the previous Government do.We've seen that the NCEA fees are not going to be charged any more and what I think is really fantastic about that is the people who have got NCEA in the past are now going to be able have their qualification recognised even though they weren't able to afford their fees back then. That's a real shame for those who had to go through that who probably felt stigmatised and embarrassed because they couldn't afford their NCEA fees and now that's no longer going to be an issue for them.I'm really excited to see that we have had an across-the-board rise in funding for the early childhood sector. What we saw under the previous Government was cuts by stealth with the removal of the 100 percent qualified funding ratios under the previous Government but they gave us primary teachers as compensation which actually—no disrespect to the primary school sector or the teachers but they were trained in a different way and not in the early childhood sector so that wasn't really gaining a lot in the area.We know that there is a lot more to do here. We know that everywhere needs more funding and everywhere needs more money but we can't fix it overnight. We're taking a balanced approach at how we can start to fix nine years of neglect under the previous Government. These are big issues. We are tackling the big issues. This is a Government that's not afraid to tackle these big issues and we're seeing a lot happen in the education space.One last thing I want to talk about is the increase in minimum wage. We had the Minister touch on that before—the increase in minimum wage. We heard people across the House screaming that businesses are going to go under employment would go up but what we've seen is the exact opposite. So I want to commend our Ministers and thank them for the opportunity that we had for them to come before our select committee and I'm very much looking forward to what we see going forward in the future from this Government in the education and workforce space.