Lee Melissa: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLee Melissa: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 27 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4062. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MELISSA LEE (National): Talofa lava. O manu o le lauamanu e felelei mamao. I think that the second bit I said was “Birds that fly together go far” in view of the fact that this is Samoan Language Week. It is a reflection of the National caucus and how fantastically we are doing. We actually flock together we will go very far and after that Budget we are guaranteed to go very far.I have to react to the contributions of the members opposite. My dear friend Barbara Stewart actually tried to quote her leader by saying: “I see red I see red I see red.” Apparently that is what he said. Darling you have to have a better memory. He actually said: “I can see red.” and I thought he was talking about the fact that he was not colour-blind or that he could actually see rather than about the Budget. He did not actually say “I see red I see red I see red” as in the lyric. He was trying to connect to the Split Enz lyric and he was trying to make fun of the Budget with some sort of rhetoric.I also have to react to my dear friend Richard Prosser. Sir you are a great mate but with the speed at which you speak I sometimes lose it. You are like a bullet—so fast. I am hoping that you actually said “shipload” rather than something else—I hope.I remember that people always say that the grass is greener on the other side and for many New Zealanders for a very long time Australia was in fact the greener pasture. I will quote from an article: “The sun seems to shine a bit brighter therethe pay packets are a bit fatter and they have koalas. But times are changing. The decline in long-term migration figures to Australia is just one example. And the reason is simple: Australia may have cuddly koalas but New Zealand has John Key.” That apparently is in relation to how fantastic our Prime Minister is and how well this Government is doing.It is about radical incrementalism which somebody mentioned to me. When people get sick do you know how you feed them medicine? We are saying that we are not trying to force-feed them medicine; we are convincing them that they are sick and that they want a certain kind of medicine. This Government is doing exactly that. We are giving people information about what this country needs and we are showing them the pathway that we want them to take for a better life. Having economic growth is actually a good thing and this Budget demonstrates National’s clear commitment to economic growth and dedication to helping hard-working New Zealanders and their families to grow. New Zealand is a small economy in global terms. Our population is a lot smaller than that of many countries but our economic performance in recent years has been very very strong and it is ahead of many nations that we could talk about.Earlier a member opposite talked about his community having been poor for a very long time. It sort of struck me that the member has been a Labour MP for a very long time. Before the National Government become the Government in 2008 there was in fact a Labour Government for 9 years and yet that community was poor then and it is still poor now.You know sometimes it is about people. This Government is taking action where the Labour Government did not take action. This Government is increasing benefits and spending $790 million over the next 4 years to help children living in some of New Zealand’s poorest families to be slightly better off. We are not the richestof nations and as a nation we cannot actually afford more than that and we are saying that we are giving families a helping hand. This is the first time that a benefit has been raised in real terms in 43 years. The previous Labour Government never actually did that. We are building a more competitive and productive economy through a number of critical initiatives.I want to talk a little bit about the way that this National Government has contributed to education. I know that my learned colleague the Hon Judith Collins talked about the special education sector which our Education and Science Committee had a discussion about. I have to agree with Ms Collins that we have a very friendly select committee where we actually work together very well indeed. Our discussions on dyslexia dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome were really interesting for me because I did not even know what dyspraxia was. I knew what dyslexia was but dyspraxia was something that was a bit new to me. Apparently it is about ordering things. For example—this example is for fun—Superman wears his underwear over his tights. You could call him dyspraxic because he obviously does not put them on in the right order—underpants should be underneath the tights I would have thought. I know I am cracking jokes about something serious and I should not but it is a disorder. It is an ability to learn in a different way.Our teachers should be better equipped to help children who have disorders in order to help them learn better and so that they can cope in our education facilities like the new modern learning environments which are actually way way better than they used to be. When I was child in Korea there would be 65 children in one class. There would be two children to each table in a row and if you moved the teacher would throw a chalk at you whereas the new modern learning environment is quite a different thing. A child who has attention deficit disorder cannot sit in a classroom for 50 or 60 minutes and they need to move around but in a modern learning environment the teacher can cope with teaching the kids who do not have these issues and they can also pay attention to those who do in fact have those issues.Education is particularly important in many ethnic communities. I know for example that many in the Korean community basically move to a country like New Zealand because they want a better opportunity for their children. What that means is that when they uproot their family to come to a country like New Zealand they do not have the family connections or the social support networks or potentially even a job. Often because they do not have a job they are even poorer than when they were in their home countries but they do this because they want a better opportunity for their children and education is something that is paramount in their minds.I am very proud that Budget 2015 invests an extra $686.7 million over the next 4 years in education bringing our total investment in education to $10.8 billion next year—$10.8 billion not million. This is a clear indication that reflects National’s determination and commitment to helping all young New Zealanders from all different ethnic backgrounds to achieve their brightest and fullest potential. That is what we are focused on when we talk about helping the families who are the poorest and beneficiary families with children by giving them extra money.But we also have a commitment for them to be available for jobs so that instead of living in a benefit-dependent home the parents are in fact working. Hopefully it would be part-time while the children are a lot younger. Personally speaking I went back to work when my child was only 5 weeks old and that was because it was my choice. I had the opportunity to work. If I did not work my staff could not possibly be paid. I had more than a dozen staff members whom I had to pay wages to so I went back to work when my son was 5 weeks old. But I was lucky to work in an environment—the television industry—where people were very forgiving of mothers who were working and who had children around.Budget 2015 delivered for New Zealand. I think that Labour and the other Opposition parties are just sore because they did not think of it first.