Donnelly Brian: Budget Debate 
Donnelly Brian: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5962] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 At the start of my speech I would just like to tautoko the mihi of the previous speaker to Richard Mangu and his family. I also want to say to the previous speaker that having looked at this Budget I now know why the Taranaki Maori are making claims on the gas and oil underneath the ground. It is because there was nothing in this Budget for the economic development of Maori—I can assure members of that. Taranaki Maori have looked at the Budget too and they thought they had better go down the other track. 
Earlier this year New Zealand First embarked on a crusade over the issue of the increase in National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) fees which was callously dropped on parents when their children began this school year. This Labour Government this so-called worker-friendly Government has increased fees by as much as 233 percent in some cases. As I pointed out the implications of those ministerial decisions on low-income families in particular I can report that Labour members on the Government side of the House showed great embarrassment. Their body language was obvious and it said the Minister had mucked that one up. I challenged the Minister to get up and say that yes the Government had got that one wrong and would bring the fees back down. I said that if he did that he would earn our respect. 
As everyone knows New Zealand First is a party that always keeps its promises. So I say to the Minister of Education that he has won our partial respect. He has not brought the fees down for middle-income earners but he certainly has done something for lower-income workers and for those with more than one child sitting qualifications in the same year. Therefore to the Minister we offer our partial respect. I also generously add praise to the Minister for the provision of funding for 16 and 17-year-olds in tertiary education who have completed year 13. But the point is this: had it not been for that campaign by New Zealand First—supported I might say by no other party in this House except by the body language of the Labour members—those Budget initiatives would not have occurred.New Zealand First was prepared to take up the cudgel for the battlers on “Struggle Street” and in this case we have had a success. That goes to show we are the party that asks “Can we fix it? Yes we can!” 
I will take that one step further. When the Labour Government took office it inherited a design for a school qualifications system that an overseas expert had claimed could be the best system of any country in the world if it could be successfully implemented. All that Labour had to do was to implement it properly and it could not even do that. By the end of 2002 it was obvious that we had a shambles on our hands and it was then that Parliament itself stepped in in the guise of the Education and Science Committee. Through a careful investigation that committee demonstrated that the NCEA was in danger of becoming a disaster because of underfunding. I give credit to the members of that committee acting as an agency of Parliament itself. I believe that the members of that committee gained the essential additional funding of $78 million to support the implementation of the NCEA and the administration of other qualifications. However the question has to be why the Government could not work that out for itself. What is wrong with this Minister that it took a select committee report to get him to understand what was staring him clearly in the face? 
To understand this Budget it is necessary to face the reality behind the spin. For example an extra $61.2 million was announced for schools operational funding. That sounds good. I have to admit it sounds good—but it is over 4 years. When we break that down to the increase over 1 year we find it works out at about 2 percent which is slightly less than the predicted rate of inflation. In other words the schools are going backwards. Then there is the $55 million for early childhood education to ensure that more children can access quality education before they get to school. That is also over 4 years. When the New Zealand First – National Government put its first Budget together in 1997 we put up an additional $55 million for early childhood education—and those dollars were worth more than they are now—and the present Minister of Education said that that was mean and miserly. Well if that was the case then this $55 million over 4 years must be even more mean and miserly. 
Who are the big winners in the Budget? Kindergartens are the big winners; they are to be funded at a rate of $3.97 per hour. Other early childhood education providers will receive $3.13 in the first half of the year and $3.18 in the second half. So those providers will receive 27 percent less funding in the first 6 months of the year and 25 percent less in the rest of the year than kindergartens. Those providers have to deliver the same curriculum and operate under the same Desirable Objectives and Practices. But here is the rub: kindergartens will deliver according to this Budget half a million fewer hours of early childhood education next year than they have delivered this year. The providers who are to receive 25 percent less than kindergartens in funding will be the ones who will be producing the two million additional hours of early childhood education. 
I turn to the early childhood assistance grants. That is the money that the Government gives out for the provision of more accommodation in the early childhood education sector. It is money for new buildings. That money has been cut by 16 percent—by $1.6 million. United Future members are saying they will vote for that. In fact they are saying “Hallelujah!” to this particular Budget according to John Tamihere. Yet we are cutting that money for early childhood education by 16 percent. 
Let us look at some of the other areas of Vote Education. I totalled together all the increases in the Vote Education departmental classes. I will go through them. In terms of policy advice ministerial services ownership advice provision of information administration of regulations and administration of education sector resourcing—in other words the bureaucracy—the funding has gone from $160 million last year to $182 million in this Budget. That is an increase of $22 million for the bureaucrats. I will look at another area: supporting parenting. One would think this Government would really get in behind the supporting parenting programmes especially with United Future here in the House. United Future wants to see the delivery of Parents as First Teachers programmes and Family Start programmes etc. Those programmes have an extra $109000 compared with the $22 million increase for the bureaucrats; that shows where the priorities are. But when we look a little closer at that increase we see that 1000 fewer families will have access to parenting support programmes next year under this Budget than the number having such access now. 
That is down to United Future. That is the Budget that United Future is saying “Hallelujah!” to. United Future got $28 million for the Families Commission but the Families Commission is not by statute actually allowed to deliver anything. We are talking about the programmes at the coalface the programmes that deliver and that help parents to bring up their kids and make them better citizens. This caring Government supported by United Future which is the family party has reduced the access to those programmes by 1000 families. But the good news is that we have $28 million for the Families Commission. Taxpayers do not mind paying additional funds for positive constructive programmes that will build our society. But why are we cutting into the very ones that we know are productive and instead putting all that extra money into the bureaucracy? 
One of the big issues facing education at the moment is the industrial issue. I say that although in this Budget the Government has poured huge amounts of extra money into teachers I have never in my life known the teaching profession to be so disgruntled. It is disgruntled because of the mess that Trevor Mallard made of the collective contract negotiations which were then caught up in an early election and had to put over to an alternative disputes resolution panel which ended up giving the secondary teachers more than they had asked for in the first place. But a whole lot of people were alienated from access to that settlement and a severe breach of the social contract occurred with those teachers. 
The anger in our schools is immense. It is immense not just from those teachers who have not actually received the G3 plus increases but also from those people who did. Even the ones who have received them feel that the whole thing is unfair and unjust. The Minister of Education has a tiger by its tail and every time he tries to fix up a pressure point here another pressure point pops over there. We now have hundreds of millions of dollars going out purely and simply to resolve industrial issues that should have been resolved in the first place. That is not adding one jot to an improvement in the quality of education for our young children. 
I finish by saying that this Budget is a nothing Budget. People need to look below the surface to see the reality of it.