Luxton JoJO LUXTON (Labour): Thanks so much Mr Speaker. It's my absolute pleasure to stand here and take a call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. What a fantastic piece of legislation this is. I want to thank the Minister of Education for bringing this piece of legislation to the House. Just one piece of legislation; there is a suite of educational policy changes that this coalition Government is bringing to the people of New Zealand under the fantastic leadership of our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and I am very very proud to take a call on this piece of legislation. I too like the last speaker who has just taken his seat Simeon Brown want to refute a couple of the things that were brought up by previous speakers from that side of the House the first one being Dr Parmjeet Parmar. I listened to her contribution. I actually felt quite confused by the end of it. Initially she said that this was a bad policy and that the only reason it was being rolled out to decile 7 schools was because of the Opposition's opposition to it. And then she said—so does that mean that because the Opposition opposed this that we only went to deciles 1 to 7? Is it because of the Opposition that that's what's happened? So is it because of the Opposition that it's not being rolled out to deciles 8 9 and 10 because that's what I took from what that previous speaker said. And then she blamed the Minister for ignoring those schools deciles 8 to 10 so I felt quite confused by the end of her contribution. Then there was the contribution from the member Denise Lee who usually is quite a nice and happy and positive person. But I feel that she's just jumped on the negative National bandwagon with this one here and I think that they're a little confused about how MMP works. You know for example each political party has their own policies that they promote during the election during the campaign period but the reality is MMP is when parties come together to form a Government and therefore decisions are made based on the commonality and agreement of all those parties. So that is MMP 101 for members opposite.Kiritapu Allan: They haven't learnt that yet.JO LUXTON: No quite clearly they have not learnt that but perhaps one day in 10 years or so they may understand that when they've been sitting in Opposition for that length of time.So what this piece of legislation does is keeps money in the back pockets of some of our most vulnerable families that attend deciles 1 to 7 schools. And actually $150 per student is an awful lot of money. When I spoke to a member of the Netherby School in Ashburton they jumped right on to this offer and they accepted it without hesitation because what it means for them is instead of getting $6320 in in school donations they are going to look at getting in around $23700. Now what do members opposite think that that will do for that school? I just don't understand why members opposite continue to look at this from a deficit perspective and say Who's missing out? Who's missing out?" Well actually look at who is benefiting: some of our most vulnerable families in society. Yes I agree that there are people that are of lower incomes and families in need that attend deciles 8 9 and 10 schools but do you know what? This is a start. This is not to say it won't be rolled out to those schools later on in time. This is merely the beginning. This is the sign of a coalition Government who is forward-thinking future-focused and concentrating on meeting the needs of our children in our education system so we can continue to provide the best education system—one of the best education systems in the world—for our children so I absolutely commend this bill to the House."