Donnelly Brian: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Donnelly Brian: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 16 June 2004. Volume:618;Page:13671. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 The previous speaker the Minister of Maori Affairs stated that this was a good Budget for Maori. I want to ask him one thing: what is in this Budget for kohanga reo? I have read the details and in fact it has ended up with the differential being greater than it has been before. We have read the details and I want to point that out. 
I was out of the country when the Budget speech was delivered so I did not catch up with the details for a few days. In fact Martin Gallagher provided me with the details. I was not surprised that the Government used the opportunity of this Budget to create some bribes for voters. Let us face it—no party could really honestly claim that it would not do the same thing if it were in the present Government’s shoes. Neither was there any surprise that the target was basically the large mass of lowly paid workers. 
I have often made the statement that Labour is no longer the party for workers it is the party for non-workers and maybe Labour has been listening to me as it did over the National Certificate of Educational Achievement cost cuts to parents. However what has been incredible about this Budget is its absolutely cynical approach to bribery. I mean bribery for votes; I certainly do not mean any corrupt bribery. Instead of budgeting for some specific goodies—baby bonuses and things like that—to flow directly from the Budget the Government has stretched its bribes out over 3 years. In the first year its targeted groups get just a little titbit just a taster then there will be a little bit more around election time then the next thing will come on in 2006 and 2007. The message to people out there is: “If you don’t vote for us they will take all these goodies off you.” That is cynical and I say to the Government that the public is not that gullible. It can see through such cynical vote-buying Budgets. 
I also say to the Government that when it comes to the next election Labour will not be the only party that believes that low-paid workers—the Kiwi battlers—are deserving of some social largesse at last. It is the group that has sacrificed most since the days of Roger Douglas and received the least benefit from New Zealand’s economic reforms. New Zealand First has been advocating for this group for years. For example which group has been a voice for casualised labour? It has been New Zealand First largely led by our deputy leader Peter Brown. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Who? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: OK the member is following in unison with Peter Brown. We accept that there are followers and leaders. In this particular case I make the proposition that it is Peter Brown who has led the way. The Budget also demonstrates the justification of another of New Zealand First’s policy positions—that is a universal tertiary student allowance. The biggest factor in the burgeoning student debt which this Government has done nothing to allay—indeed it has grown faster under this regime than it would have under National—is student loans for living allowances. Moreover it is in this area where the greatest injustices can be found with the entitlement or non-entitlement to an allowance being based upon parental income. We well know how some people can hide their income. 
This Budget certainly demonstrates a recognition that a problem exists but it goes only a short way towards remediation. By increasing the parental income threshold an extra 12000 students will be able to access the full living allowance and 28000 will be able to access a partial allowance. The cost I might remind members is $283 million over 4 years which is not a huge amount on an annual basis. If Bill Birch was able to budget for a universal allowance policy then why cannot Michael Cullen do the same? But there is a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” approach in this tertiary policy because it is to be partially funded by a change of policy towards married students. I hope United Future members are listening to this. At the moment married students—that is people under 25—are assessed on their own joint marital income when determining whether they are entitled to a student living allowance. In the future following this Budget a married student will be assessed on his or her joint parental income until the age of 25. 
I wonder how many parents listening to this debate—parents who hand over their children at the altar in solemn matrimony—realise that this Government still considers them to be financially responsible for their children until they have turned 25. That is what this Government is saying. A 13-year-old for example can be given the morning-after pill with the support of a State agency—the school—without a parent having even to be informed. But that same parent is considered to be financially responsible even if his or her child is married until the age of 25. I need only think back to my own circumstances—I would certainly have been disadvantaged under this new policy that the Budget introduces. New Zealand First will continue to press for a universal student allowance. We believe it is abhorrent that the one group in this country that has to borrow to put a meal on the table during the period when income earning is impossible is tertiary students. 
The Minister has stated—he stated to the select committee this morning for example—that a certain amount has been set aside in contingencies for settling teacher contract settlements and anything left over will go into staffing improvements. He has not yet resolved the issues around the G3 question which arose out of the last pay round. Members need to realise that the claim and all the conflict in 2001 and 2002 was about pay parity within the compulsory sector. The G3+ was a mechanism to break it. It has in fact led to injustices and anomalies within the secondary teachers sector so that people with technical teaching skills—and Harry Duynhoven would certainly be interested in this—whom we need more of and who are competed for in the private sector do not get access to the G3+. Yet others who have degrees for which there may not be any large private sector competition do. The other problem is that it creates a whole lot of anomalies in all the crossover points for example between full primary schools and schools that cover forms 1 to 7 and they certainly have not been fixed. I believe that the Minister has to ensure he has a strategy this time to be able to sort out those tensions within the sector without having to pour in huge amounts of money as he did last time and give in at the last minute because an election was coming up. 
The issues around pay parity create a major problem in the early childhood sector. It has to be recognised that this Budget puts a lot of extra money into the early childhood sector. But no one seems to be asking the question about how that money is to be used and whether it will have the impact of increasing or improving the quality of early childhood education. People need to understand that the largest proportion—almost 90 percent—of that additional money will go into teachers’ salaries. It will go into maintaining that large albatross around the neck of the early childhood sector which is pay parity. It is overlaying a pay structure that was developed for the secondary service where there is a viable private sector competitive base and laying that structure across the early childhood sector to which it does not seem to bear any resemblance. 
The comment I made at the beginning about kohanga reo is seen within some of the issues around the rates that are paid. Kohanga reo for example are paid on rate 2 and they have a 2.4 percent adjustment. Rate 3 which is much greater is paid out only to kindergartens and that is because kindergartens have to have most of their money going into paying teachers’ salaries—not into better staffing ratios not into better capital improvements but into teachers’ salaries. They are to get a 6.55 percent increase. The question has to be asked: what is the justification for creating an even further bigger differential between the funding of the different services? 
The point I am making is that whilst the Government can rightfully crow about a lot of additional money going into the early childhood sector no one has really asked what this will do in terms of improving quality education. Will it create more accommodation for example particularly in areas where there are not enough facilities to meet all the needs of parents? No it will not. Will it be used for example to create better teacher-student ratios? No it will not. A large proportion of all this money is going purely and simply into fulfilling a doctrinal position a piece of emotive rhetoric that came around before the 1999 election of having exactly—and I mean exactly—the same pay structure for early childhood teachers as for secondary teachers. There is no research justification for that.