Mallard Trevor: Budget Debate 
Mallard Trevor: Budget Debate 
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Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
 I think it was 7 months ago that the member who just resumed his seat Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga led the Address in Reply debate for the Government. He was supported by the following speaker who was Melissa Lee. How the mighty have fallen! Melissa Lee fell slightly more publicly than that member but he should be embarrassed about that speech and the way he gave it. He read it very badly indeed. I would be embarrassed about the level to which I had fallen if I was that member. 
I congratulate Chris Tremain on his election to the position of senior Government whip. As someone who has held that position I know that it is an important position. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: A long time ago. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I say to that member that it was quite a long time ago but the lessons one learns last for a long time. There are many people around the place who do not know those lessons and I hope to teach those people some of them over the next period. 
I do not want to say a lot about the Mt Albert by-election but I want to say something about John Key and about his failure to lead at the end. I accept that John Key had a personal engagement in the Taupo area. I have had engagements myself from time to time over the past couple of years. But John Key knows he is the Prime Minister and he is the person who set the date for the by-election. If he had an absolute commitment that he could not break then the by-election could have been held a week later or a week earlier. Clearly it is easy— 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am on my feet. The point of order will be heard in silence. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: This speech has clearly got absolutely nothing to do with the Budget debate and that member knows it. So why is he talking on an extraneous subject? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Speaking on the point of order the Budget debate in these years is other than the Prime Minister’s statement the broadest possible debate there is. This is the broadest possible part of the debate. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member is quite correct; there are no prescribed limits to this debate. We are not debating a bill that has a defined purpose. The Budget debate has always been accepted as a very broad-ranging debate almost like a general debate. The member is well entitled to speak very widely in the debate. If the member who raised the point of order had listened to the speeches made by members of his own party he would have heard that they strayed far and wide. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I say to Jonathan Coleman that he is known in our caucus now as “The Maestro”. He was the minder for Melissa Lee until he dropped his guts and ran away. As soon as it went rotten where was Jonathan Coleman? He was anywhere but with his colleague Melissa Lee. He ran away; he was a chicken. When he thought Melissa Lee had a chance of winning he was there as the big man he was fronting up and he was a hero. But at the point when Melissa Lee was obviously going to lose “The Maestro” shot through. 
I go back to the point I was making earlier. John Key could have been there at the by-election. One of the signs of leadership is being there when times are bad for one’s members not just when times are good. He is not a chief executive officer and he is not someone looking after a fourth-level employee; he is meant to be a leader. The sign of a leader is fronting up in the bad times as well as in the good times. Like Jonathan Coleman when the pressure came on John Key ran away. That is very very sad. 
Even with this Budget John Key ran away. This year’s Budget was meant to be a Budget for jobs. Where are they? We went looking for the jobs. The only real jobs in this Budget are those that have been cut. Jobs have been cut right through the Public Service. The Budget is about superannuation. There was an enormous opportunity to make an investment in superannuation here and to buy internationally while prices are low. The Budget was an opportunity to invest in New Zealand and to invest in jobs. What did the Government do? It stopped the contribution to the Cullen fund not for 1 year but for 10 years. Why did it do that? It did that because the Government has no commitment to superannuation on an ongoing basis. Deep down the Government is like the ACT Party. It does not believe in superannuation funded through taxes. We are seeing that view coming through with this Budget. 
I found something particularly interesting during my sessions of doorknocking in Mt Albert which was how betrayed the people in the middle-class parts of Mt Albert feel by the National Government and by the fact that it withdrew the tax cuts. Those people sort of knew that the tax cuts had to be withdrawn but their response was to ask why National promised the tax cuts in December. Why did National pass the legislation in December when it knew then that the tax cuts were unaffordable? The people feel a sense of betrayal and of being lied to not by a Government that they voted against but by a Government led by John Key that they voted for. John Key said in December that of course the tax cuts were affordable then in May he took them away again. That went down very very badly. One of the problems with this Budget is that it is not so much that people lost the tax cuts; it is the fact that National members lied about the tax cuts after the election as well as before it. 
There are some particular education changes in this Budget that I will focus on. One of the changes is the interesting approach by the Minister of Education to fire nearly 1000 teachers in election year. That is a particularly interesting approach. During the previous sitting week I asked what the criteria will be and how she will decide which teachers she will fire. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: No idea! 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No she does have an idea; she will set up a committee. She will set up a committee to decide which teachers will be fired in election year. Well that is a very interesting approach. I think it is educationally stupid to fire a pile of teachers. I also think it is particularly good politics from a Labour Party perspective to have a Minister of Education who will spend the end of 2009 and into the beginning of 2010 deciding how she will fire teachers effective from the beginning of election year. I tell members that if Allan Peachey was the Minister of Education—as he should have been if the appointment was based on talent and not on gender—then this would not happen. Allan Peachy would have got it right because he understands how these things work and Anne Tolley certainly does not. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: You never said that before about him. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I tell that member that I certainly have said that before. To be fair when I was Minister of Education I had a number of reasonable discussions with Allan Peachey while he was the principal of Rangitoto College. I did not always agree with him and he certainly did not always agree with me but I acknowledge that he has a depth of knowledge and a commitment to education that is not found on the front bench of the National Government at the moment. His talent is not being used in the way it should be. He would not have cut professional development for teachers by 25 percent the way Anne Tolley has. I tell members that in particular he would not have cut 100 percent of the professional development for teachers who are working with gifted and talented kids. The whole lot will be gone from the end of this year. 
Gifted and talented kids can make an enormous difference to our future. When I was Minister of Education I found that a lot of the education system focused on kids at the bottom of the heap. We did a lot of that. We did a lot of work for those kids and made a lot of investment in that area. But the students who can make the biggest difference economically in our community are gifted and talented students. They can make a social difference and they can make an economic difference. But what has happened? National has been captured by the people who do not like tall poppies some of whom are still in the Ministry of Education. What does National do? It cuts the funding. It does not cut funding for gifted and talented kids by half or by 80 percent the way it did in some other areas like adult community education; it cuts the funding by 100 percent. That is an absolute scandal. 
Another thing National cut which I want to focus on now is a very good programme that was extending high standards across schools. The programme identified the schools that were going well and worked with them to share their good practice with other schools. Again there used to be a lot of focus on failing schools. There is still too much focus on failing schools. One of the ways to stop schools failing is to identify the good practice—some of which I acknowledge was occurring at Rangitoto College—and share it with some of the other schools in the area. What did National do with that programme? It cut the funding by 100 percent.