SpeechHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I'm pleased to speak in this debate. Firstly can I just take a moment to acknowledge Jan Tinetti. What we do know about the Labour Party is that for years they talked about free education; we now know what their commitment is. It's like everything else they do in Government: they scale it back. It's called cheaper education; not free education any more—it's called cheaper education. We know this is a Government that has overseen 37 broken promises and this is what these Estimates demonstrate for us. When we look through the line of the Estimates we don't see 100 percent qualified teachers in early learning; we don't see the teacher ratios that they promised in early learning. Where are the devices for every child? Where is the promise that all schools would get access to a donation payment? The reality is this is a Government that has overseen like never before broken promises and scaled-back promises. Let me walk you through some big areas. I want to say to Jan Tinetti: she might have met one principal in tears; well I've met multiple teachers and principals who were also in tears because they were promised a number of things they haven't got. Let's talk about school property. It is true that this is the largest ever amount in school property. Well guess what! When we came into Government it was the largest ever amount in school property. The Auditor-General noted that we had seen a huge kick-up in investment about 40 percent under the last Government. We conducted condition assessments across New Zealand. What I would acknowledge and the Minister himself in our Estimates committee acknowledged—so to hear these lectures from Jan Tinetti—is that this Budget funds 50 percent of the growth requirements over the next 10 years. That's right Chris Hipkins; he knows a whole lot of ghost schools. He turned up with the Prime Minister in parts of Auckland—they haven't actually decided where these schools are going to go. He delayed the Auckland growth plan by two years hasn't actually made final decisions on a number of those schools and what do we know? We know it will only accommodate 50 percent of the growth. What we also know is with the existing money that they have they are so incompetent that we saw one of the largest ever underspends in school property at $170 million. Yes that's right—they can't actually spend the money that they've got. That's why principals and teachers while they had huge expectations of Labour they know they can't deliver because they scale everything back and then they have broken promises. Let's look at the issue of complex needs and children with additional learning needs. I want to acknowledge the work that Tracey Martin has done in this area and I want to acknowledge in this Budget actually there are learning support facilitators. But what was incredible about question time today was that this Government spent minutes forensically talking about a tabled document whereby I pointed out it was actually National who started the initiative around learning support facilitators and actually we were referring to 70000 kids that were helped as a result of that. What I can tell the member and what I can tell the Minister is actually all over New Zealand I've got emails from principals who are saying How on earth could this be such a flawed roll-out of learning support facilitators?" That's right. I'm going to want Shane Jones to walk up to Northland and talk to people like Pat Newman and talk to Matt King about the fact that north of Whangarei we've got a very limited number of learning support facilitators for children with complex needs because this is a Government that fritters money away and doesn't actually target it on some of those children that are most in need. It's not just me who is saying that; Oranga Tamariki pointed that out and Treasury pointed that out. It is again an incompetent Government.Now let's talk about donations. Again a Minister that used to talk about free education and then in the election campaign it became: "We'll provide an incentive payment for schools to not charge." Then we had a situation where it was scaled back to decile 1 to 7 schools. Then we had the extraordinary situation that I was being blocked in my view for basic advice at the Estimates hearing about exactly what the detail of the donation scheme would be. Then we find out that the Minister is going to bypass the select committee process to put in an amendment to clean up a law that he pushed through in a truncated process. Again this is a Minister that has abused the process of the select committee to do that. It's very relevant to these Estimates hearings because we're dealing with what is again another scaled back promise from the Labour Party.Now let's look at vocational reform and I'm sure my colleague Shane Reti will also deal with it. So again in an area where we have precious funds in education—that's right—a party that committed to an extraordinary number of broken promises why is it—why is it—that this Government is choosing to do a single megamerger of all of the polytechnics in New Zealand? Well Chris Hipkins I was there at Southern Institute of Technology and I will never forget—and Mark Patterson's looking at me with little beady eyes at the moment—the people of Invercargill who stood up at that meeting and said "Don't take away our institution. We have millions of community assets. We breathe life into the town." Chris Hipkins has shown in this Budget that not only is it going to be a centralised system but also a couple of hundred million dollars in this Budget is being spent on merging these entities when people don't want it and actually he's been told by multiple different officials that this is the wrong thing to do—and then he's going to take industry training away from industry. Again deeply centralised and deeply ideological and at a time when you've got precious education funds children who need access to additional learning support and I get emails every single week from those parents and those principals—Hon Clare Curran: Where was it under the National Government?Hon NIKKI KAYE: I'll tell Clare Curran where it was. We had this thing called the global financial recession and the Canterbury earthquakes. We had a situation when we came in where we were staring down a decade of deficits. Yes that's right; this Government has had hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars but instead we've seen it spent on diplomats slush funds and that's all.Look if we look at the rest of this Budget we can absolutely see that Winston Peters has had money for racing and diplomats and provincial growth funds and all of that money is less money for education. Why do I know that the Minister is slightly nodding his head? It's because when I look at the official information around the Budget request that Chris Hipkins put in miraculously it's all blanked out. We actually can't see the fact that there were a whole lot of failed Budget bids in education because this is a Government that despite one of the greatest opportunities in New Zealand's history handed over very good boards they've managed to see business confidence tank they've managed to see an economy massively slow down and they've managed to fritter away huge amounts of money. And in the education estimates area and areas like vocational structural reform that isn't wanted by a whole lot of communities that will take away the autonomy of a number of communities and that will strip away community assets from New Zealanders.So this is a Government in these education Estimates that we can see has not only failed to deliver on its promises but it's scaled back. I mean let's take the whole School Leavers' Toolkit; they promised $197 million. Again where's the free driver licensing in every school? Where's the career plan for every child? Again they're still working it through. They've got 15 working groups in education. It's absolutely evidenced by the learning support plan again whereby it's not in the next year or even the next two years that we're going to see huge progress; they're talking about 2025 because it's the case that in this Budget you can see several billion dollars on regional growth and money again for diplomats.So look I am unfortunately not that pleased to be speaking in this Estimates debate to see a Government that has been given more opportunities than ever before. What the education sector is saying to me is they believe that this Government has overseen broken promises. No better could it be articulated than by the slogan that we now hear from the Labour Party: instead of free education they've started talking cheaper education. When they talk about the initiatives that they promised they start saying "Oh we never said this term." That is a Government that is absolutely pulling back on its core promises. New Zealanders will remember because they are breaking trust with New Zealanders. The education sector will remember because every single dollar in education matters because it's about helping young people and children to get ahead.So we don't agree with spending hundreds of millions of dollars on vocational reform that people don't want we don't agree with them scaling back and creating a complex donation scheme and we don't agree with the fact that the learning support facilitators have been allocated in an incredibly flawed way. Again that is an example of this Government being incompetent and not delivering."