Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much Mr Chairman. It's a privilege to take a call on the Estimates debate. Opposite we just had a history Mark Patterson of the last 25 years of the Winston First Party" stuck in the past. As he moved through his speech we started to get into the future and then he started talking about the 90-day trials and the concessions that he's managed to get. I'm not sure whether his colleagues in the Green Party quite share his enthusiasm but it's great to see that he's managed to get at least one concession in his time here in the House.I'd like to touch on a few things in the Estimates debate touching on the education report. In summary what we see here is division ideology and broken promises along with some wrong priorities. We see the Minister Chris Hipkins taking an ideological approach to education matters. You just need to go so far as to see what he's doing with partnership schools: closing them down with a lack of consultation and riling up different parts of our community rather than sorting out these issues and working with people. And look these are some of the schools which are achieving some of the best results—Hon Willie Jackson: They're very happy.SIMEON BROWN: —and we've been hearing the submissions from these schools.And I note the Hon Willie Jackson on the other side of the House and I know how much he supports these schools. It's time for him to take some leadership and stand up for some of the schools which he has supported so much in the past. And I look forward to the leadership from him and the Māori caucus in the Labour Party to do that.We also see that this Government is taking an ideological approach to school property. It's OK to build a road with a public-private partnership but it's not OK to build a school. And the Minister failed to answer questions as to why other than that it's an ideological approach to education—continually continually continually. Public-private partnerships give schools and give communities the opportunity to build new assets to develop them and to have better learning environments for the future but that has been scrapped by this Government and scrapped by a Minister who is taking an ideological approach.We have to remember that under National for nine years we spent $5.5 billion in education infrastructure; under the previous Government: $3.5 billion. We increased education investment every single year because we know that it matters. That was through the global financial crisis; that was through the Christchurch earthquake rebuild. The National Government invested record amounts in education infrastructure across New Zealand.Now I'd like to touch a little bit on some of the wrong priorities of this Government and you don't have to go far to see what's happened in the tertiary education portfolio area where you've had billions of dollars being put into free fees for students. But how many additional students are we seeing? Zero. There's been no new students going to our universities going into tertiary education despite hundreds of millions of dollars—billions of dollars—going into free fees for students. New Zealanders see what this is. They see it as an election promise designed to get votes without incentives without requirements on students and those who are the recipients of that money with the wrong incentives in place and that's constantly the feedback that we are getting out there.And we see there are sectors which now want pay rises—nurses teachers and midwives—which rightfully deserve that but the money has already been spent on free fees for students in order to gain their support at the polling booth.We also have broken promises. I'd like to touch briefly on the broken promise around school donations—well they call it a delayed promise: a promise which they will expect. It says on page 60 of the report "We heard that the Minister expects the Budget bid to be accepted before the end of [this] parliamentary term. The majority of us are alarmed at how schools became increasingly dependent [on school] donations … and welcome the Minister's commitment … ending donations during [this term]". Well he promised that at the election. He said that would happen this year. So how can we accept this as a commitment that anything will happen before the next election or is he going to go into another election with the same promise trying to ask for votes? Well I can tell you—parents out there will not be fooled twice by this Minister. They will not be fooled by a bribe taking away school donations because he's failed to do it. He said very clearly what he would do and he failed to keep his word in this Budget.Across the education sector we see the wrong priorities. We have ideological decisions and we have broken promises and the New Zealand public can see that very clearly. Thank you very much."