Delahunty Catherine: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10438. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I am delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this slightly bizarre debate. I sometimes wonder whether the listeners who are familiar with George Orwell will be weighing up whether the Budget is reallyNineteen Eighty-FourorAnimal Farm. It is a bit hard to tell which. Also I do have to comment on the attack on South Dunedin. It was quite odd to say that someone from South Dunedin can talk like this but not in Parliament implying that Parliament is the real world? I find that really odd. We all claim we are in the real world but I think South Dunedin has its feet on the ground in a way that Parliament possibly does not. Parliament despite our aspirations to be in touch with reality has a certain unreality about it and so did the Budget.The thing I want to talk about in terms of the Budget as laudable as some of the things may be is that there was a huge elephant in the room—actually a herd of elephants trampling around the room as usual standing on each other trying to find spare room because they were being ignored and trying not to gore each other in the process. There were many issues associated with poverty that were not addressed. But there was also this thing that was not mentioned called the environment—this thing that actually we all depend on for our life for everything. We cannot get food and water without it but it was not addressed in a 21st century Budget in a so-called modern country. There was no addressing of the issue of the environment.All around the world countries everywhere recognise we are facing the greatest ecological crisis that we have ever faced as a species. It is self-created which some of us are still in denial about. There was nothing. There was silence. It is very Orwellian when some people ignore the issues that are screaming out because they cannot see a way of leading with any vision to solve those issues. They think that if we continue with business as usual and just ignore them they will all go away. But they will not and they cannot and we have a responsibility to do a whole lot better than was done in the Budget with that absolute howling silence on the issues of the environment.However I want to briefly address a couple of Budget issues in this speech. One is to do with the $90 million that was spent on charter schools in the education budget and the other is the money that was set aside for the family carers and the Budget bill that pushed that through under urgency. That would have to be a lowlight in the history of the Parliament. It is perhaps one of the most disingenuous discriminatory and unbelievably cruel pieces of legislation masquerading as a Budget that was not going to assist anybody. But I will refer to that later.Starting with charter schools and the $90 million in the Budget it was a nice little sum considering that there was no mandate for it and that nobody at the last election asked for it except for the ACT Party. I am not saying they are nobodies; they are certainly not everybody but they are the only people who actually wanted it. When the evidence which is a rare word these days in education is looked at for the results globally of charter schools in terms of creating educational equity and improvement of children’s learning the very best that you can say is that the results are mixed. If you go through Stanford University and all the other research the results in the United Kingdom and the USA at the very best can only be called mixed.So why is the Budget giving money for a bunch of experiments from religious fundamentalists to people who also could use the special character provisions or the kura kaupapa provisions? What about the other groups of people who may not be religious fundamentalists who have been seduced into thinking that they will get more money and more autonomy by signing up to this latest failed fashion for the screwed-up notion that competition improves children’s learning? Competition works well in sports teams but it does not improve children’s learning. This may be news to the National Government but actually children learn through working with a supportive professional with a registered teacher with family and with each other through cooperation. Learning is a collective and collaborative experience. It is not a competition.However the reason we have got this $90 million being wasted is that the ACT-National coalition agreement says it should. It also works really well for the Government with its meme that the public education system is a failure. If a decision has been made to present a system as a failure then you really need to spend money on it and create models that you would ensure at the beginning initially at least will succeed. That is what the charter schools are all about.I think there is nobody who thinks that the education system is perfect and that it has delivered for everybody. But as to the idea that a model based on a contract where unregistered teachers and a sponsor who does not have to have an educational background is going to succeed better when the results from overseas are clear that it does not that is just not evidence-based. It is just ideological and political agreement between the National Party and the ACT Party. It certainly suits the National agenda when you look at its history with the educational system since 2008. It is not going to work but does it really matter because they have made their agreement? Well of course it does matter because those children who are going to charter schools if they are not counselled out because they cannot meet the statistics are going to be put in a very vulnerable position because the very particular version of charter schools that we are funding—and this will come up tomorrow in the House—supported by the Budget is based on some very bizarre ideas.One idea is that the schools do not have to have registered teachers. On the one hand we put a lot of effort and energy into improving the Education Review Office the Teachers Council registration processes and making sure we protect children from inappropriate behaviour in schools. On the other hand we throw up our hands and say: “Hey let’s bring in charter schools. They don’t have to abide by any of the rules just so long as they meet the contract.” That is where the business meme in education gets sicker and sicker because all it says is to “meet the contract”. If you can produce the data at the end of the day they do not care how you do it. They do not care whether the teacher is registered. They do not care how many hours the students are expected to be at school. They do not care what means are used so long as they meet the contract.There is no scrutiny that is going help. There is not going to be an overview by any external body. There is going to be a contract that will be a secret between the Ministry of Education—probably the Secretary for Education—and the contractor. This to me is Orwellian because our children are not lab rats and because the Budget is wasting precious educational dollars on something that at best is called “mixed” in terms of success.When we have got programmes that have been proven to work we should support them—for example Te Kotahitanga has been proven to work. It would be quite a good idea if instead of taking out the core element—the facilitators in schools—because they are too expensive we actually invest in those programmes and then we will start to get results such as they have at Melville High School and Kerikeri High School. If the Government does not know about those I suggest it goes and talks to those schools to find out how it is working for Māori and Pacific students. That is what we call evidence.However given my short call I will make a brief mention of the other Budget disaster that I wanted to focus on amongst the many—and I am spoilt for choice—and that is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) that was forced through the House as part of the Budget. I think the reason it was forced through under urgency as part of the Budget is that probably very few support parties could have stomached it if it had not been. It is a unique bill. The Budget has allocated $23 million per year for 3 years for perhaps 1600 families who can be paid less than all other carers who can be paid for only 40 hours’ work a week and who basically if they are not able to get that funding and want to complain about any aspect of the Government’s new policy will be unable to do so because there is a discriminatory clause in the bill. A most extraordinary discrimination has been entrenched in the bill and it has been commented on far and wide. That is why I have called the bill the “Too Little Too Late Too Bad Shut Up Bill” because that is really what it is about.The only reason there was any money put aside for this in the Budget is that the Government had lost in every court in the land. The Government did not do it tobecome internationally recognised as people who really like to defend people. The Government did it because it could and it is wrong. Thank you.