Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to take a call in this general debate. I'd like to go back to the theme that we have been talking about which is the omnishambles of this Government. This week the Government has reached 200 reviews working groups and all sorts of other types of groups of people having a look and doing their policy work on it—Kieran McAnulty: Not true.SIMEON BROWN: Actually it's true—it's not true sorry; it is not true. It's actually 201—it's 201. That's right. It's 201 because yesterday the Government passed legislation to set up a working group to put in place the marijuana regulations for medicinal cannabis. So it's 201—thank you for the correction Mr McAnulty. I really do appreciate it. And what's the cost of that? It's $279 million wasted by this Government; $279 million—that's almost $1 million every single day that this Government has been in office.This afternoon I'd like to talk about the fees-free fail that this Government is continuing to pursue. In education there are 19 reviews. About 10 percent of the reviews are being done in the tertiary sector but one area that this Government decided to implement policy without a review—about the only area I think—is the fees-free policy. Yes they implemented the fees-free policy without undertaking a working group or a review or something else before setting it up and what an omnishambles of a policy that has been. This policy was meant to increase student participation and enrolments at our universities. It was meant to increase the number of people who were going to university going into tertiary qualifications and trades. It was meant to make a positive difference to New Zealand.Let's look at some of the results which we've seen from this $2.8 billion policy—$2.8 billion and here's the results: 2500 fewer students studying at university—yes 2500 fewer students studying at our universities—1188 fewer at our wānanga 674 fewer at our private training establishments and 4740 fewer students undergoing industry training—4740 fewer people undergoing industry training at a time when we have a construction boom here in New Zealand—all at a cost of $2.8 billion. So we have thousands and thousands fewer students going to university going to study and going into industry training and yet the Government continues to dogmatically pursue a policy which they failed to think about before they implemented at the end of last year.And what did we learn at select committee earlier today? Fifty-three million dollars has been wasted. The Tertiary Education Commission was before the select committee and we've learnt that this policy—at least $53 million of it has been wasted just in this last year. Thirty-five million dollars from the cost of students who took up fees-free but have failed and $18 million from the cost of those who have reviewed.There are 2619 students who successfully enrolled in fees-free and then have decided to unenrol and withdrew from their studies part way through the year. That has cost the taxpayer $18 million over the last year. And there's a good question from my colleague Andrew Bayly: how many houses could you build with that sort of money? How many houses could you build with $50 million—probably a few more than what they have built. The 33 that they've managed to build—that's over $1 million per house. I'm sure Andrew Bayly's got some better housing policies than our friend the Hon Phil Twyford and his pipe dream of houses. Then we have the number of students who have filed false declarations in order to receive fees-free: 246 learners filed false declarations in order to receive fees-free this past year. Well that's the 246 which have been found out and caught. The Tertiary Education Commission said there may be others; there may have been others. So that's only the ones which have been caught and I just want to applaud the work of the Tertiary Education Commission in actually undertaking that serious review and making sure that they catch as many as possible and the good work that they're doing there.This is a Government which is wasting taxpayers' money left left and left. They're wasting taxpayers' money everywhere and on top of that we've seen the constant reviews the constant omnishambles and if there was one policy that should have had a review it should be this one—the fees-free.