Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It would be very unparliamentary of me to use the phrase lies damned lies and statistics" when it comes to the contribution of the Minister of Education so I will not do that but what I will do is inject some—Hon Hekia Parata: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I do take offence at that because in fact the numbers I was reading out are published in the Budget Estimates of New Zealand. They are not damned lies or statistics.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): If the member were making a point about unparliamentary language that would have been one thing. The member really raises a matter though that just underlines that it is a matter for debate.CHRIS HIPKINS: I will be very happy to inject some further statistics into this debate so that we can talk a little bit about them. They also come from the Government's Budget which I think is very useful because we have seen huge cuts on a per-child per-student basis in funding for education since this Government took office.Let us just look at early childhood education. We will look at just 1 year. Let us look at just 1 year in early childhood education. From the year 2015-16 to the year 2016-17—that is the current year's Budget—the funding has fallen from $8623 on a per-child basis to $8555. That is just actual funding. That is actual funding. If you adjust it for inflation it is even worse and if you go back over the time of the last National Government you will find that funding for early childhood education has gone back significantly. The current National Government seems to have forgotten that the reason we are spending more money on education is that there are more kids in the system. That is actually a good thing. It is great that there are more kids participating in early childhood education but the funding is not keeping up with that significant increase in growth.In primary school education—let us look at that—since 2008 the cost to parents has gone up 40 percent. In the last couple of years it has gone up at 10 times the rate of inflation. Parents are having to put more and more money into their kids' education because the Government funding simply is not keeping up.Let us look at the tertiary system and Louise Upston touched on that earlier. There is $15 billion of student loan debt up by 50 percent under this National Government. Fees have increased for those studying post-school by 41 percent during the time of this National Government. What has Government funding done? It has gone up by 3 percent barely even covering the rate of inflation. In fact it probably does not cover the rate of inflation during that time. And we wonder why homeownership is falling amongst an entire generation of New Zealanders—the lay-by generation of New Zealanders who end their educational journey for a time when they leave post-school study and go into the workforce saddled with a huge mountain of debt.There is a cartoon that I quite like. It has a graduate returning home to his parents with this huge sack on his back that represents the student loan debt he has got. His parents are tut-tutting in the doorway saying: "When we started out we started out with nothing." This poor graduate is saying: "Trust me I'd be quite happy to be starting out with nothing." The reality is that graduates—and it is not just at university; it is people leaving polytechs and other forms of post-school education—are starting out their working lives with a massive financial burden as a result of the student loan scheme and this Government is making it worse. This Government is not doing anything to address that. It cut eligibility for student loans. It has continued to increase fees. It has cut eligibility for student allowances to support people in their post-school study. It is simply not good enough.All of the rhetoric Government members say about wanting to give people a good start in life is just that—it is rhetoric because they are not actually willing to follow that up with actions. Louise Upston says the Government is unwilling to leave young people behind. There are 64000 of them being left behind right now. They are under the age of 25 sitting at home doing nothing. They are being left behind and the Minister of Finance Bill English simply calls them "pretty damned hopeless" rather than actually doing anything about it.And then Louise Upston had the audacity to say that the Government does not want to leave older New Zealanders behind when it comes to education either. Tell that to Steven Joyce who cut all of the sorts of financial support for older New Zealanders who want to undertake some form of tertiary study. Once you get to a certain age according to Steven Joyce that is it. You are cut off. You do not get any form of financial support for post-school study because of Steven Joyce. I do not think that is the sort of future we should be aiming for in New Zealand. I think we should recognise that older New Zealanders who want to continue to retrain so that they can get better jobs should be able to do so. They should be financially supported to do so and they should not be written off as is happening under this current National Government.Let us continue on through the education system. There are so many examples of funding cuts. Night-class funding has been cut. Funding for special education although there have been some increases in funding—and I do want to acknowledge that and I want to welcome the increase in funding for the ongoing resourcing scheme. But it is still not enough because it is still not keeping up with the number of kids who are arriving at school with special needs."