Goldsmith Paul; Dean JacquiHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. We're here to debate Labour's 2020 Budget and the message from the Labour Party to working New Zealanders is very clear: drop dead. That's the message: drop dead. Because if we look at this Budget there's billions and billions spent there's higher debt there's slower growth and there is nothing for working New Zealanders. People who work hard look after themselves and their families—there's nothing in it for them. If we look at the three most urgent issues in this country today it's around housing. The complete failure of this Government to make any progress in dealing with the housing crisis in this country and what is most of the Budget about? It's about increasing benefits chasing the higher costs that are putting New Zealand families under real pressure. Rents have gone up primarily because of crazy policies introduced by this party adding costs to landlords which are sent through to the renters and we're seeing rents go up by over $100 a week. So this Government chases that by putting benefits up even higher. But they're not dealing with the real issue and they've never dealt with the real issue. KiwiBuild was a complete failure and now all their interference in the rental market the failure to understand that it's not compulsory for people to rent out their houses and if you make it too expensive too risky too difficult they'll withdraw from the market—shortage of supply price goes up. The second issue is around vaccine. We're well off the pace of that. We're supposed to be the head of the queue. Second half of this year New Zealanders will be looking at the rest of the world moving around engaging in trade and tourism and getting back to normal life and we'll be huddled down here because this Government has been too slow to get the vaccines. The third issue is the lack of any clear and coherent economic plan coming out of this Government. All they know how to do is shut things down and spend and add cost to businesses. That does not create the wealth that we need in order to have the living standards that we aspire to. We've added incredible cost to small businesses that are struggling to stay afloat. This Government has created massive policy uncertainty by lurching around all over the place—Oil and gas? We don't like that. We don't like this. We don't like that. We don't like international education. We don't like a whole lot of stuff." Todd Muller: Don't like cows.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: They don't like farming don't like cows but somehow miraculously we're going to make a higher living standard and we're going to create the wealth that we need for this country. There is no clear coherent economic plan coming from this Government. There was certainly nothing in the Budget. And then when we turn to education well that's the longer term challenge for this country because there is a long tail of underachievement and everybody recognises that and it has been the case for a number of decades. But I've been shocked and horrified going to schools over the last few months that there isn't recognition of the fact that we are falling off the pace internationally in our educational outcomes. Hon Dr David Clark: What about maths?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reports—all the international studies show that New Zealanders are falling behind in maths and literacy. But you go to your average principal and it's "PISA schmisa. Oh no we're different. It doesn't matter. We don't believe in all this sort of stuff." It's living in a fantasy land if we think that we can have the living standards that we aspire to as a country without producing top rate educational outcomes so that New Zealanders can compete and we're falling behind.Now what can we do about it? Well there's a couple of very simple things we can do about it and the first thing is make sure that the kids actually go to school. The disgrace of this Government is in this Budget where billions and billions of dollars have been spent they could find only $5 million a year extra to deal with the truancy crisis in this country and that was just a joke. We've got only 60 percent of children regularly attending school—60 percent. I went to one school in Hamilton Whitiora primary and 15 percent only attend regularly. Can you believe that in this country? Now you're not going to make any progress in education if the kids aren't at school and we've got to get on with that seriously. The second thing is we won't make any progress if we're not measuring academic progress in any way shape or form. Nothing in the Budget about that. There's lots of money however for the Ministry of Education to spend on consultants and all that sort of stuff around the curriculum review. Yes the curriculum does need to be reviewed. NCEA has been dumbed down over the years and we need some rigour back in there but I'm deeply concerned that the changes proposed will make it even worse. We've done away with accounting and economics at NCEA level 1 and I'm sure there'll be a lot more to come. The other thing that's been surprising is a complete absence of real extra resources in the learner support area. I go to so many schools and they're struggling to deal with children with special needs. So we see all the billions of dollars in this Budget mainly trying to deal with the situations that this Government has helped create in this dysfunction of the housing area.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired thank you."