Salesa Jenny: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5176. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East):This Government and its Budget may use clever politics but it has no plans to address our long-term challenges facing New Zealand. It promised a Budget surplus and on Budget day it did not deliver on that promise.We believe that every New Zealander should be entitled to access quality public education of the highest standard throughout their entire lives. Quality education ensures that every Kiwi regardless of who they are where they come from and whether or not they are rich or poor can achieve their full potential to contribute to our society and our economy.This Government claims as we have just heard from the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment that changes to tertiary education are providing results. It is great for people to get qualifications and we expect to see constant changes and improvements over the years in this particular area but what we are also seeing is universities and polytechnics being required to do so much more with much less money. National has been underfunding the tertiary education sector for far too long and the cracks are beginning to show.On Budget day it was announced—as we heard the chair of the Education and Science Committee address before—that there is $130 million worth of operating funding over the next 4 years for tertiary education. But when the tertiary education Minister was questioned about this when he came to the select committee he conceded that only $7 million of this funding was actually new money. The rest of the balance was made up of reallocations and it is not new funding at all. That is not being straight-up with New Zealanders.New Zealand now ranks close to the bottom of the OECD on tertiary education spending per student. We are behind Australia Canada Denmark Finland France Germany and a few other countries. We are well below the OECD average. Under this Government the total spending on tertiary education has fallen from $3.194 billion in 2009 to $3 billion in 2015. We need further investment in tertiary education not radical restructuring to align our universities and our polytechnics with the Government’s corporate view of the world in which it interferes with academic freedom democracy and independence.Under this Government we have around 70000 young New Zealanders who are not in employment education or training—or the “neet” numbers. This number is just way too high. It is not acceptable. Under this Government 40 percent of our total unemployed are young people. Again it is just unacceptable. This is the highest percentage of total unemployment of any youth population whatsoever in the OECD countries. I do not know about you Mr Chairperson but I think that this statistic is really quite shameful for a country like New Zealand. We have one of the best educational systems in the world and yet we have 40 percent of our total unemployed being young people. This surely is something that must be addressed. This Government is focused on the 1600 or so 16 to 17-year-olds but I think that this focus is wrong. The focus should instead be on the 70000 or so young people who are currently not in employment education or training.The safety of our children should be paramount and it should be the main objective when the Government considers funding for school buses not cutting costs. So buried in the details of this year’s Budget is $90 million worth of funding cuts for school transport. We remember the horror ride for Green Bay High School students one afternoon when they had a relief driver. The safety of our children when riding in school buses should definitely not be one of those things that the Government looks at in terms of cost-cutting. I do not know of any parent—not one—who would want their children to experience or to go through a similar traumatic experience like the one that these Green Bay students went through because of this Government’s cost-cutting measures.