Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate —  
Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate —  
[Volume:610;Page:7247] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education)) 
: 
 If there is a magic bullet in public policy this Government believes that it is education. That is why 31 percent of the Budget has gone to education—the equivalent of what has gone to health. In other words there is no greater commitment that we in this Government make than the one we make to education. That is why we are spending over $8 billion on education as was pointed out by Deborah Coddington. But when I sit here and listen to debates like this I know why we are on 52 percent support in the polls and other parties are struggling to get over the threshold. The debate about education is fundamentally the debate that Labour along with its progressive coalition partner is having with the country. 
On one side of us we have a group of people who regularly travel the country and say that despite 31 percent of the Budget going to education—over $8 billion—it is OK to spend $400 million more on allowances to spend $500 million to abolish tertiary fees and to spend $X million on what it would take to deal with the loan scheme. They say that all of that is affordable that all of that is OK that we should pile well over a billion and a half dollars more into just tertiary education and that then no doubt we should turn our attention to the compulsory system the early childhood system the transport system the health system and so on and start writing out cheques for them. It is a kind of logic that hardly anybody actually believes in enough to vote for it. Only a few people do. People might go to meetings and say that they wished the costs would go down but they know that the only people who are serious about that are the people who are in Government now. That is why we are staying in Government. People understand that not only are we running the debate but also are the only people putting forward a genuine solution. We do not spend all our time with our heart on our sleeve. We try to think robustly about what we are doing. We are doing a good job. So when people on that side say that spending another $400 million would be OK that another $500 million would be OK and that we should just carry on racking up the amount and should just spend money I take that to be interesting but not important. 
On the other side of the debate we have people who say that we are spending far too much that we should charge students more and that the private gain to students during their lifetime from going to university is so great that they should pay for everything they have to face as university polytechnic wananga or college of education students. 
An Opposition Member 
: What about private training establishments? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: And students at those private training establishments—whoever. I can say to Georgina te Heuheu that we pay them too the taxpayer pays them they are publicly funded—[ 
Interruption 
] Well Carich Computer Training has to face the same things that all other private training establishments do. National never treated the private training establishments as part of the tertiary education system; they were some kind of limb hanging off the side of it. Under this Government they know that they are in legislation as being part of the tertiary education system and thereby are secure. 
But that side of the debate says that we should not be paying so much and that we should let students pay for their education as they get a private gain from it. People take one look at that and ask whether that argument means that students should pay the whole cost of training to be an engineer a teacher or a social worker. Once again we think those arguments are interesting but not very important. 
So we end up with a debate in here about people who on the whole attract a little bit of attention because they are saying extreme things. But in the centre of politics straddling the whole of the centre of politics—the big tent of politics—is the Labour Government which is taken seriously because its analysis is the only one in town that results in good concrete workable policies. 
This Budget carries on that tradition. It carries on that sensible tradition of investment and it says there are issues beyond students. It invests in the system. I wonder what the people who say we should spend another $400 million on allowances tell students about the quality investment in research teaching and so on that this Government is doing. I never hear people talk about that. The talk is always about one part of the equation. People have to be paid and institutions have to be kept running in a quality fashion. This Budget does that. It puts money into research innovation e-learning and the tuition costs of students. It is a good balanced education Budget that reflects the fact that we think that if there is a magic bullet it is called education. That is why this Budget so clearly emphasises education and that is why I believe that people around the country will carry on supporting exactly what this Government is doing.