Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Faakalofa atu and ki a monuina for Niue Language Week. I would like to say to my colleagues Mark Patterson Jo Luxton Chlöe Swarbrick: te kaha o te korero—those were fantastic speeches; I really enjoyed them. To the other speakers unfortunately: te kaha o te hōhā. I think really they should have another good read of the bill and what it actually does. So thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to speak on this fantastic bill the third reading of the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill.First up I do have to say I agree with some of the comments from the Opposition where they stated that there was a common theme amongst many of the submitters that this grant should be extended and available to all the decile schools. We are not denying that. It has been said by the Minister in the first reading in the second and in the committee stages that while deciles 8 9 and 10 schools are now not eligible for the scheme it doesn't prevent them from being eligible in the future. It has consideration for future decision-making. The most astonishing message—and we've heard it repeated on this side of the House already but I just can't get my head around the argument—is that if it's not available to everyone then nobody should have it. We actually had no submitters from deciles 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7 who said Please don't give this grant to us." They were not the overwhelming messages we received during the select committee process.So it really comes back to the negativity from the Opposition. When you're looking at this bill it is actually really condensed in one sentence. You can say that what we're doing in this bill is us giving the schools more money so that the schools don't have to ask the parents for donations. That's really all it is: us giving the schools money so the schools don't have to ask the parents for donations. It is beyond me how anybody can make such a negative narrative around that messaging but that's what we hear from the Opposition because very clearly that's what the Opposition is doing. They obviously don't realise that many families are struggling to make ends meet; they're struggling to come up with these voluntary donations. That can potentially cause that stigmatisation that my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick spoke so well about from first hand.So we know that many schools don't actually even ask for the donations because they know the parents can't afford it so they're not even asking for it. This bill will take that burden away. So what we're doing with this bill is we're removing the barriers to a public education system because it should be a free public education system. We should make sure that there are no barriers for anyone in this system to have the chance to succeed.So what this bill does in general terms is it's supporting our Government's Wellbeing Budget and it does acknowledge the priority of reducing child poverty and improving child wellbeing in this country. Through this bill it'll be nearly 500000 kids at 1700 schools that will benefit and they will no longer have to pay those school donations. Again it is only an Opposition that is absolutely negative and desperate that can turn such a positive thing into a constant negative. It's because they're desperate. They have no new ideas. They are basically constantly negative.At the end of the day—Kiritapu Allan: Barking at cars.MARJA LUBECK: Really though—barking at cars all of that. But New Zealanders aren't as gullible as the National Party probably thinks they are. People know that the flow-on effects from the nine years of neglect and nine years of under-investment are going to take us a little while to fix up. It's going to take us more than one term to turn that ship around but we have started to fix a lot of things. We have recently—SPEAKER: Order! Order! I am going to call the member back to the bill which is about school donations. The member has to somehow make the link.MARJA LUBECK: So much good positive messaging and I guess what our school donation bill does is it is extending that positive investment into so many areas like health and like this one: education. Now it's about putting the free back in the public education system. The school donations bill is just barely part of that plan of the Government and that's what we're doing.It has been mentioned already that this is a similar measure as we've taken with the NCEA fees a similar one with regards to the removal of those fees and again in line with the free public education that we should see.There's one submitter which was the New Zealand Principal's Federation that put it down in a couple of paragraphs when they did the submission and I think it sort of goes to the core of what this bill does for a lot of the people that submitted. It said that the "NZPF"—the New Zealand Principals' Federation—"recognises and applauds the intent behind this policy [which] is to progress the aim for education to be free to all in Aotearoa New Zealand … We … recognise that a further intent of the policy is to address issues of equity. By eliminating student fees and now donations to schools the goal of achieving equity in our education system draws ever closer." Again it is such a positive message.I was quite disappointed to hear the chair of our select committee Parmjeet Parmar talk about the school camp donations because it's very clear that she actually is still not understanding how the current system works. Under the current rules—and all this bill does is actually reinforce the status quo—schools cannot charge the parents for a school camp that is part of the school curriculum; they can actually not do that. They can ask for a donation but many schools have called it a fee and actually that's what they cannot do under the current legislation—that is before we implement this bill.So all this bill does through the Supplementary Order Paper is just implement the rules as they are now. So by saying it's complex I think the complexity sits with the person who doesn't quite understand what this bill is about. So I guess at the end of the day our brilliant leader Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said that she wants New Zealand to be a country that is the best place in the world to be a child. That is one of the things that this bill contributes to. So it gives me great pleasure to commend this bill to the House."