Scott AlastairALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you Mr Speaker. It seems that the theme is the education policy recently announced by the Government and I'd like to focus on that for a minute as well.I'd like to open with a letter from one of my constituents. She's a 22-year-old graduate who's just finished her Bachelor of agricultural science at Massey University. To quote her Many of my friends have commented in frustration that they can foresee many first-year students abusing and taking advantage of the financial privilege of a free first year at university. I think New Zealand needs to develop a principle and culture of reward for effort. Something for nothing does nothing for people. Rewards are far more valued when the work has been done." I'm going to repeat just a small part of that: "Something for nothing does nothing for people." That is unfortunately the policy of the Labour Government.Whether I had a free education or Paula Bennett had a free education doesn't make it right—it doesn't make it right at all. My point here is that I find it quite ironic that the proposal of a universal benefit is supported but then the universality of the $1000 tax cut is rejected by the same people by the same Government. I find that quite ironic. I agree with Grant Robertson when he said today that he and I don't need the $1000. But then why does that Government give essentially $8000 or $9000 of fees free to the same group of people?The universality is my point. I think the policy on the Government side has got it wrong. I do not understand why the Government—and we all agree that people should have access to education particularly those who are in the lower socio-economic groups. But a universal policy is absolutely the wrong way to achieve that. Targeted scholarships means tests—anything but a universal policy should have been the policy of that Government.A universal policy is just going to mean a free year off a gap year for 19- and 20-year-olds or first-year university students. And there will be queues. There will be queues at enrolment time and that will put more pressure on the universities more pressure on the tertiary education institutes. So they're going to have to build more classrooms build more lecture theatres and more lecturers will need to be employed. This is going to be a balloon. It will be a free lolly scramble for those that don't need the money.The next point I'd like to talk about briefly is working for the dole—working for the benefit—that Mr Jones has been talking about. Again you know we've got disagreement between Mr Jones and Mr Jackson. Mr Jackson says Mr Jones is mad. The Prime Minister is not quite sure where she stands on the issue. She talks about not committing at all one way or the other to support one Minister or the other and certainly not particularly supporting Mr Jones.She talks about hope a lot. We can't feed our families on hope. We need jobs real jobs and a growing economy with real productive jobs out there in the open market. A tax-subsidised work-for-the-dole scheme is absolutely the wrong thing to do. It doesn't provide any training to those people that are doing meaningless jobs taxpayer-subsidised jobs. And again there seems to be this never-ending supply of money that is available to the Labour Government that at some point at one point and it's coming soon—they will realise they need to be accountable to the taxpayer for the money that they spend on behalf of the taxpayer.The work-for-the-dole idea from Mr Jones is ludicrous. What I would like him to support in the regions with his billion-dollar fund is to convince the Greens that water storage is a good thing that water storage does support regional New Zealand that water storage does provide productive and real jobs in the rural economy."