Mackey Moana: Budget Debate 
Text is subject to correction 
Mackey Moana: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 31 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2793. Text is subject to correction.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 What did children ever do to the National Party? That is what was running through my mind as I sat there listening to Bill English reading out Budget 2012. What did children ever do to the National Party? You can just imagine Bill English sitting up in his Beehive office thinking: “It’s time someone cracked down on those little bludgers. They get a free education free food free board all paid for by adults. It’s about time someone taxed the happy out of them and wiped the smug smiles off their little faces so I’m going to tax their paper route. The time has come. They need to learn responsibility because someone has got to pay for my massive big tax cut. Lord knows the Government cannot afford it. So I am going to reach into the piggy banks of kids all around New Zealand and tax their paper route.” What a mean petty Government. And what it shows is that the Government is so destitute of ideas and so desperate for any form of revenue that it would actually as the big economic announcement in its Budget showed tax children. That is how bad it has got in this country. That is how few ideas we have in the National Party caucus—that taxing children is going to be the economic saviour of this country. 
This was a zero Budget with zero ideas zero hope zero reasons to stay in New Zealand and zero reasons not to move to Australia. It was a zero Budget. It is about priorities. I was very interested to hear the member who spoke before me Scott Simpson talking about how great it was that National upgraded the Kopu Bridge so that people could have it a little bit easier when they go on holiday at long weekends when they need to get to their holiday homes in the Coromandel. That should not be a priority in tough economic times because— 
Simon O’Connor 
: Politics of envy. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Politics of envy—it is the politics of envy to ask that the Government look after the people who need it the most in the toughest economic times! That is the politics of envy! Opposing a $1.7 billion piece of road north of Auckland—which officials themselves have said will do nothing except get Minsters to their holiday homes 7 minutes faster twice a year in summer—and saying it is not a good use of money in tough economic times is apparently the politics of envy. 
Apparently the fact that we are cutting money for State schooling but always managing to find more and more money for private schools so that they can keep lower class sizes is the politics of envy. I want to talk to Mr Borrows because he gets very upset when we talk about this. We are not saying we should not have small class sizes; we are saying that all schools in New Zealand and all students should have class sizes that are manageable where students can get one-on-one time with teachers. Why is it only private school kids who should get that and not our State school kids too? That is a question for Mr Borrows. It is no criticism of small class sizes. I think it is quite clear that we support small class sizes but it should not be for just those kids who are fortunate enough to be able to go to private schools. 
When you take $40 million out of the education budget for State schools and then look at the fact that the Government put $40 million more into private schools that is a pretty clear set of priorities. It is not the politics of envy; it is simply wrong and it should not happen. It seems like we can find all this money for tax cuts for the wealthiest New Zealanders for pieces of roads that get people to their holiday homes faster and billions and billions of dollars for private schools but when we want to put money into those students who are struggling who come from poor socio-economic backgrounds suddenly that money is not available and we have to tax kids on their after-school jobs. 
The Government seriously needs to think about its priorities because this Government is an anti-education Government. That is absolutely clear. From day one when it came in it made it clear it is anti-education. I want to say how disappointed I am that it has been two education Ministers from my part of the country who have led this anti-education agenda. They both should know better. They both come from a low socio-economic part of the country that faces a variety of problems where the schools have a broad mix of different cultures. They should know better. The Minister grew up in Ruatoria as did my dad. She went to the same school in Ruatoria as a lot of my uncles and aunts did and she said: “Well we had a big class size and I was fine.” The thing she fails to mention is that not everyone goes into school on the same footing. And the fact is that the Minister despite her performance this week is intelligent is able and was always going to do well in the school system. She also came from a family that valued education. That is just such a treasure to have. She had a father who was a teacher so I imagine that the education continued at home. 
I wish every student in the country could go into school with those advantages but they cannot. So our education system has to make sure that it delivers for those students who do not have that ability or who have abilities in different areas—like maybe the trades or music or art not necessarily the traditional academic areas—or who unfortunately come from families that do not value education as much as they should. An education system has to deliver not just for those who were always going to do well in a school system because of the situation that they are in. 
My colleague Sue Moroney talked about the early childhood education cuts. I also want to mention the cuts to the science advisers for primary schools. We talk about all this money going into science and innovation and how great that is. Where is the next generation of scientists in New Zealand going to come from? They are going to have to come from overseas because we certainly are not going to be producing any of them here—we are certainly not going to be producing any of them here. So it is all very well saying that science is great but science training has to start at school obviously. And we are cutting out all the support that would help those kids for whom science is their key interest. We got rid of the science advisers and we are now seeing the loss of speciality teachers in intermediate schools. How is that going to help us deliver a creative and innovative economy? It will not. 
Then we have the debacle of national standards. I have to wonder why National members keep looking to countries that consistently do worse than New Zealand students on every single indicator for their education policy ideas. Why would they take policies that have failed categorically all around the world where their students do worse than our students and say “Hey here’s a good idea. Let’s ditch a system that works and bring in one that does not.”? National standards will not work. National has been told that by teachers and it has been told that by principals. Again it does not listen. 
I want to talk about another really big issue and that is the change the Government made to quarterly roll funding. It is possibly one of the biggest anti-education initiatives the Government has come up with. It has devastated low socio-economic schools because they have far higher levels of transients than wealthier schools do. I want to mention the case of Opotiki College. This is a college that the Minister of Education should know very well because she knows the area very well. Well Opotiki College is addressing the tail of underachievement right now and it is doing it through quality teaching. What is stopping the college from addressing this and what is making it more difficult for it to do so is Government policies—in particular the shift to quarterly roll funding. It is losing about $70000 a year from its operational budget because of that change—in one fell swoop. Not only that when they bring kids into Opotiki College about 80 percent of them are in the bottom quartile for everything. By the time they leave Opotiki College they are achieving the National Certificate of Educational Achievement at levels that are akin to much much higher decile schools. The college is addressing the tail of underachievement. 
One of the things that it does is that it takes students who have serious behavioural problems and puts them into an alternative education course where they get the time and the attention that they need to re-engage with the education system. Overwhelmingly those students come back to the college and they then achieve. When those kids go to the alternative education course they are deemed to be excluded from school and under this Government’s policy the college loses the funding for those students. It would be financially better for the school to send them home to sit on their backsides and play PlayStation than it would be to send them to the alternative education course and actually try to re-engage them in education. 
Lo and behold in this Budget we have increases to class sizes. The National Party must be the only party that actually thinks that the way to get better learning out of students is to put them in bigger classes. It is not a trade-off. We need quality teachers but we need them in classes where the size is manageable where they can get to know the students and where they can spend one-on-one time with the students particularly those who need it. The teachers cannot do that when the class sizes increase. If we are going to be losing speciality teachers at the same time that is going to be devastating for all those students who engage in education in that way. That is what makes education relevant to them. It is the trades it is art it is music it is science. We risk losing these children at a very young age and then spending an awful lot of money on them throughout the rest of the system trying to re-engage them or—God forbid—in the criminal justice system if things really go bad. It is such short-term thinking. It is incredibly damaging. 
Education is the key. There is no doubt about it. Education is what is going to make a difference in the lives of the children of New Zealand. This anti-education National Government is doing irreparable damage and it should not underestimate that. What it is doing is wrong. National members need to apologise—or even not apologise but just back down—and recognise that the future of our children the future of this country is far too important to be gambled away because they need to find a way to pay for the extortionate tax cuts that they gave themselves 3 years ago.