Carter Chris: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Carter Chris: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2444] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I rise because I care about education. Labour cares about education. In the financial period we are discussing much of the time was actually under a Labour administration and I of course was privileged to be the Minister of Education; we had much to be proud about. Education funding under Labour doubled from over $5 billion to over $10 billion. We saw $3.4 billion go into school property. We saw 20 free hours for every 3 and 4-year old in this country. We saw teachers’ salaries go up by 37 percent and principals’ by 42 percent. We saw interest-free loans for students. We saw tremendous things happening in our education system. We saw an education sector that was optimistic progressive and innovative. We saw a new curriculum come into our primary and intermediate schools. We saw the National Certificate of Educational Achievement refined and improved constantly. There was a sense of optimism in education. 
But what has happened since the election? What has happened since National took charge of education? I have to tell members that I have continued to visit schools as I did regularly as Minister of Education and I am hearing a lot of fear and concern. There is a sense that things have been frozen that things will be cut and that resources will be reduced. There is not a sense of direction any longer. 
I think of my own area of west Auckland and of two projects that were signed out last year. One of them is the Waitakere learning plan which I understand the new Minister of Education will be meeting principals of west Auckland to discuss on 16 April. They were told last year they had $100000 to develop this learning plan across some 93 schools. They had the money signed out and ready to go but were then told it was frozen. We also had the Waitakere Zero Tolerance to Truancy initiative which got a letter from the ministry stating that yes it had $80000 because truancy is an important subject. We heard a lot from the present Minister of Education Anne Tolley when she was in Opposition about how important it was to address truancy and that is a really great project. The project got a letter in early November stating that it had the money and ads were run on Flava the most popular youth radio station in Auckland. The project now has $4000 worth of bills and organisers have been told that the money is frozen. 
We have also been told that the kindergarten teachers collective agreement has now expired and the ministry has not received instructions from the Minister even to begin negotiations. But we did hear in this Chamber an admission from the National Minister of Education Mrs Tolley that pay parity was no longer a given. That is incredibly alarming. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: No I didn’t say that. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I heard the Minister say she did not say that. I say to her that she should check  
Hansard 
 because she said that nothing was on the table. Mrs Tolley said that pay parity was not a given. That news was received in the whole primary sector with enormous alarm. 
We are hearing everywhere in education that people are confused about the direction of the new Government. You know we heard so much before the election about how there would be no staff cuts and that any increases in education funding would be met by a reduction in bureaucracy. What a joke! We know of course that in terms of getting rid of a few bureaucrats the Ministry of Education was pretty lean and mean already. I remember answering a question in this Chamber as Minister for which I had asked the Secretary for Education to give me the figures for the entire pay package of every single bureaucrat in the ministry—from the secretary’s own salary to that of the cleaner who helped clean the building—and to add up all the figures. The sum came to $23000 per school in New Zealand. It is no wonder that teachers mostly voted Labour and I am sure that 99.9 percent of them will vote for Labour next time because they have been conned. 
What is happening is that stuff has been frozen. Stuff has been canned. The $1 million for the Manukau Institute of Technology to build a campus on the old intermediate site at Bairds Road—so we could address the real issue of underachievement and the transition between school and work—has been canned by Mrs Tolley. We have been told that the deal for the nine schools in South Auckland that had agreed to have early childhood education on site has been canned yet we have had so many crocodile tears from Mrs Tolley about how Manukau City desperately needs more early childhood education sites. And I agree with her absolutely. When I was Minister I asked what the biggest problem was. It was the cost of land. We found the sites but she has canned the deal. What sort of message does that send to the education sector?