Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look it is with a heavy heart that National has to oppose this bill and I want to set out the reasons why but first I'm going to start with a quote from a school because we've just heard from Minister Hipkins with some quotes about schools. Kaharoa School: Rotorua does not have any rich suburbs. Our decile 10 [schools] do[es] not equate to Remuera." Another quote from a school opposing this bill: "Maybe Minister Hipkins can explain this to our families who have just seen their husband or wife die and leave behind three children or the solo Māori mum in an over-crowded house." Equity Minister—equity. This from another school Oropi School who has raised concerns regarding the bill—Andrew King: "The Budget announcement seems to perpetuate a lack of collectivity providing a band-aid using a simplistic tool from the past which is in hope of addressing the issue of inequity in our system." This from another school Amuri Area School: "All or nothing Minister." So our first point on this side of the House is that we absolutely believe in reducing costs to parents. That means petrol at the pump that means lesser rents that means higher wages. When it came to this bill we supported it to select committee but what we found was a shambolic process. We were blocked actually obstructed from information. We had a two-week submission process involving 800000 students affected by this but also potentially several million parents and grandparents that are subject to this bill. Why would you put such a shambolic process for this bill when actually this affects 800000 students and potentially a couple of million parents? We had the farcical situation of the school camp issue being amended in the House when it's a very complex issue this bill and we absolutely don't agree with the process. But the second biggest reason that we have opposed this bill is actually the issue of equity. Now I was the Minister in the short period that I had where I proposed to scrap the decile system and what we heard throughout the select committee process was actually there's a need to deal with the fundamental issues of inequity in our education system. So the concept as has been highlighted in the quotes from many of the schools to our select committee was: deal with the fundamental issues of inequity. Don't put over an inequitable decile system another mechanism that will see inequity. So 95 out of the 139 submissions said "Please deal with these issues of eligibility. Deal with the fact that in decile 8 9 and 10 there will be disadvantaged children that will not have the same opportunity." and it's very much highlighted by that quote from Kaharoa School—completely unfair and inequitable. We will not hear that Minister say "free education". We heard and we've heard the shifting sands from Labour MPs. They now talk about "cheaper education". Why? Because we've got 37 broken promises and what we know when it came to donations was that a year ago we heard that the Minister was going to bring this policy; it then landed in the Budget and it was scaled back. So fundamentally a flawed process. We would have thought that he would have tried to have brought the Opposition on board with this. Instead a truncated select committee process but then inequity on top of an already inequitable funding system. The next issue is it's very unclear about the policy. Now the Minister has said "Look this is very easy. That's why I had to basically put an amendment to the House around school camps." But I want to ask some questions which I've been trying to get answers to through this legislative process. We have now this complicated manual—that's all it can be described as—by the Ministry of Education around you can charge for some school lessons but you can't charge for other school lessons or ask for a donation. You can ask for a donation for some work books but not for other work books. You can ask for a donation for some music tuition but not for other music tuition. A "school camp" is an overnight school camp but actually if you go on a school camp in the daytime—so our other point about this bill is we now have this incredibly complicated process that we've had to literally define "parents" in legislation.What some principals are saying to me is that not only is it inequitable it's also built on this fact that Labour promised free education and it's also incredibly complicated to the extent—if members opposite don't believe me go and read the guide and then ask the question: why did the Ministry of Education tell our select committee that they would need eight people to police schools on this donation issue? Because we've created a bureaucratic nightmare. The other issue that has been raised by many a submitter is this issue of we would have been much better to deal with the fundamental issues in terms of inequity of our funding school system. That would be a much better approach because effectively this is an operational grant subsidy. I want to also say to the Minister that I would bank my reputation right now that there is not going to be every single decile 1 to 7 school that will take up this policy. Because I've heard from them and they've said "We've done the maths. We've now done the maths with this complicated guide and it doesn't work for some of us."So what I would say to the Minister is that it is a broken promise. It is a massive scale-back. People expected that donations would be ended scrapped under Labour. That is not the case. People expected free education. That is not the case. But also from an argument of fairness and basic equity there are children and families that will not have access to this policy because the Labour Party chose to scale this back and we heard that loud and clear throughout the select committee process. So from National's perspective we absolutely believe in reducing costs to parents. We absolutely believe we have to do a lot better around equity of funding for schools. That's why we propose to put more money into schools' budgets and to reform the decile system. That is a much more intelligent and fairer way to provide schools the funding that they need so they don't have to charge parents for some of these costs. But the reality is that what Labour have created in my view is massive expectation. They've put principals in a situation now where there's a number of parents that think that they won't be charged any form of costs in terms of schooling. That is simply not true as we know from the complicated guide by the Ministry of Education. The second thing that they've done is they have broken a promise. The third thing that they've done is they've embedded a more inequitable education system and we on the other side believe in paddling in a different direction. That is about reducing costs to parents but it's about travelling in a direction that is fundamentally about more equity in our country because that is one of the single biggest issues that we have. So we with a very heavy heart are not able to support this bill to the House and we are very sad about that."