Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): This year's Budget and the developments that have occurred since then have now given New Zealanders a very very clear choice when it comes to this year's general election—a choice between tax cuts or health education and housing. That is the choice that they will face and when we look at Budget 2017 what do we see? We see funding for early childhood education on a per child basis frozen yet again. What does that actually mean in real terms? That means cuts—more cuts to early childhood education. This National Government has cut early childhood education funding on a per child basis every single year since it has been in office. When National members talk about the growing funding for early childhood education they conveniently forget to mention that there are more and more kids participating and as a result the spending goes up while the per child spending goes down.Early childhood education quality in this country is now reaching a critical breaking point because the Government is not willing to fund it. The very first decision it took in its first Budget was to cut funding for the early childhood services that offer the highest quality by employing qualified and registered teachers. Fees for parents have gone up 25 percent under this Government and what do its members throw back? They throw back a comparison with 2007 to say that the cost of early childhood education is going down. Well in 2007 the Labour Government introduced 20 hours' free early childhood education. If we take it on just the National Government's track record fees and costs for parents have continued to go up under this Government.That is why I am very pleased to say that the Labour Party will be prioritising early childhood education funding ahead of tax cuts. We will make sure that early childhood services that have 100 percent qualified and registered teachers receive the extra funding they used to get until the National Government cut it. We will make sure that early childhood education funding is adjusted every year so that it at least compensates for inflation on a per child basis and that is something that this National Government has not done once in the 9 years that it has been in power.Let us look then at the school sector. Schools in New Zealand are crying out because of the problems they are having with their school properties. There are 214 schools in New Zealand that are already over capacity and hundreds—hundreds—more are at risk of overcrowding because the Government has been too slow to respond to population growth and population pressures. It gets worse—it gets worse—for those schools in areas where the population is stagnant or in fact declining because they are getting next to no money put into their school property. As a result we are seeing school properties in some of the poorest communities being left to rot—being left to rot.There is one bright shining hope however and that is this recent flurry of announcements we have seen by the National Party members that they are going to spend more money in schools where they are marginal—where they think they might win the seat. So here is a message to every school community around the country that thinks that its school property needs upgrading. If you have got a National member of Parliament make them marginal because then National will come along in an election year and give more money as it is about to do later this week to Wainuiōmata High School which needs the money—and I hope that it is enough to completely rebuild the school because that is what it deserves. Anything less than that and the National Government will have let that community group down as well. The Labour Party will ensure that every school in the country is brought up to an acceptable standard by 2030. The current Government is playing catch up and has no plan to make sure that every child is working in a satisfactory learning environment.School operations grants were frozen last year and this year's operations grant barely compensates for inflation. The result we have seen is the contributions from parents increasing by 50 percent under the current National Government. School support staff are being done over once again because they rely on their school operations grants for their salaries and the operations grant increase does not even take into account the salary increases that they bargained for in good faith through their collective contracts.Teacher supply is yet another issue the National Government is turning a blind eye to. For the last 8 years National members have said there was no problem with teacher supply. Now they have acknowledged there is a crisis they are tinkering around the edges and we are going to end up short of teachers. There are not enough teachers in classrooms and they have got no solutions to that problem.