Delahunty CatherineCATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Fa'afetai lava Mr Deputy Speaker and talofa lava to all the Samoan speakers in Aotearoa for Samoan Language Week. This week has been quite bizarre in many ways and the thing that I found most bizarre was when Steven Joyce was on television saying that the Budget had nothing to do with the election. I think that stretched the credibility of almost everyone in the country—maybe not Steven in his parallel universe but we all know there is an election in 3 months and that this Budget was about that. I do not see the point in pretending that it is not. That is what it is about. That is what is always going to be about from any Government and this Budget was a typical one for a pre-election Budget. Why not just admit it instead of pretending to be a bad spin doctor?However moving right along to the Budget and a couple of issues that we really need to concentrate on and read my lips: we are not voting for the Budget. What we are saying here is if you look at the environment—in the environment this Budget has completely failed and I am going to touch on that and I am also going to touch on education because they both have created deep disappointment in the communities.Before I do that I just want to acknowledge that I am also from the Coromandel-Hauraki area and I will tell you what is booming: we have a housing crisis and we have food banks booming. So along with all the rhetoric about how fabulous everything is watch out for the global financial crisis that is coming our way which economists like Steve Keen have identified. Watch out in the regions for what is really going on rather than just what people want to see.So water—what does the Government do for water in this Budget? Well I have just come back from a local government conference on water this afternoon and everybody knows that this is an important issue. Everybody even thinks that it is an election issue but the Government has not really grasped that so all that it did in this Budget was give $63 million to big irrigation. So even though the entire country is worried about the state of our waterways concerned about water—and in fact Nick Smith spent a lot of time running consultations and making us all fill in forms about it—the Government did nothing for water. The only fund that is mentioned is Te Mana o te Wai Fund and that is $1 million versus $63 million. And that $1 million—the hapū on the ground have told me that they have to raise half the money. So they cannot actually use the fund unless they have already got the money but they do not have the money and that is why they need a fund. So that one is not a victory when small groups—it is fine if you are talking about regional councils and people who have access to money but the groups that I work with the champions of hapū and community groups working on cleaning up rivers were really hoping the Government had heard the message that water was important.James Shaw in his speech talked about broken systems including our management of water. He is quite right and this Budget has failed to address it. The $63 million the Government is giving to big irrigation is not the only dollop of money that it has given. It is subsidising—and has in the last few years subsidised—large amounts of money including this $63 million for schemes that will strip waterways and aquifers so that we could all become dependent on water as climate change absolutely destabilises our climate. But this is all it seems to be capable of—pretending that there is nothing coming straight towards us that there are no enormous ecological changes under way and that we have not already stripped the Canterbury rivers; that the rivers are not already struggling. People are gobsmacked that this Government not only does not mention climate change in the Budget; it also does nothing for water except ask people to come up with half the money for a very small fund. It is very very disappointing indeed.In terms of the other area I want to touch on as the education spokesperson I have been on I do not know four or five panels in last 7 days. Some of that was before the Budget; some of it was after. After the Budget there was a definite tone in the teachers' voices. They were not happy. The rural principals were not happy. The Early Childhood Council was not happy. They told us in no uncertain terms that they saw the Budget as an abject failure for education and they told us why. They said that the operations grant which has been frozen has been increased by only 1.3 percent which is not even a catch-up. The education system is bursting at the seams with broken buildings and children and the money that has been put into the operations grant will not be sufficient to allow schools to do what they need to do. So they were furious that they were still stuck in that same place of struggling and taking money off families for what is supposed to be a free education system. It will entrench inequality.They were also very disappointed in the early childhood education sector. They told us that this is the seventh year without any money for early childhood education and they told us that each centre could lose up to $15000 a year. They told us that the chance of actually being able to bring more quality teachers into early childhood education is gone in this Budget. They were very disappointed. The Government will say Oh but we gave $35 million over 4 years"—you can do the maths on that because there is quite a bit in the Budget that is over 4 years; it is always important to remember that—"to help one part of early childhood which is going to help some disadvantaged children." But the early childhood community said that is about $2 per child. So it is not going to fix the crisis and disadvantage and it is not going to fix the fundamental functioning of early childhood education. It is not going to allow schools to actually do their job because they are going to be fund-raising yet again. So there is deep disappointment in the education sector around the Budget.The compulsory sector and the principals whom we talked to were also very disappointed. They are struggling with a Government that underfunds them on a regular basis and then does not listen to them. The Government is hell-bent on getting rid of deciles but what we are afraid of is that it is actually just going to be rationing from now on. While the Government tries to find which child comes from which type of so-called deficit-based dysfunctional family before they get any funding the rest of it the public quality universal education system that people like myself were lucky enough to experience—people are not going to experience that. Rationing competing capping and thinly spreading—I think it was the Post Primary Teachers' Association that described the Budget as a "timid sprinkling" of funding. I thought that was quite a good description for what we see in the education sector—a timid sprinkling. A little bit here a little bit there but for the rest of it you are on your own. The schools are on their own. That is very very disappointing because there is so much rhetoric from the Government about the importance of education so much rhetoric about participation in early childhood education but as we know participation is nothing without quality.Then we heard from the early childhood teachers who every 15 minutes have to report on their activities. That is going to ensure quality but the money is not going to be there and the respect for what they actually do is not there otherwise why would you spend every 15 minutes trying to record? You can picture the scene in an early childhood centre—short of money short of qualified staff and then here we go. Sometimes some people are looking after five kids under 2. Just imagine trying to look after five kids under 2 but every 15 minutes you have got to fill in a form to say what you did to prove that you are delivering quality. That is supposed to be a "data-rich" evidence-based approach to education. It is ridiculous. The Budget has failed on education.Just returning for a moment to the bigger picture education and water are two passions of mine. I have been in this Parliament for 8½ years seeing Budgets that have failed both of them. I am really disappointed that we continue to have to listen to this Government crowing about its great achievements while the education system falls apart and while the education sector tells us that it is drastically and chronically underfunded by the Crown. It is the Crown's job to fund education. It is not a business. And it is the same for the waterways. If we cannot have clean water and if we cannot lead from the front on clean water we as a nation have nothing. We can suck it up and sell it all we like but future generations will hold our names to shame for what we have done to our schools to our early childhood centres to our waterways and ultimately to our entire society. These systems are broken. This was a chance to change them. The Government did not take it. And Steven Joyce says "Oh no we're on a track. It was never about the election." People will see through this. I am looking forward to 23 September. Thank you."