Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Education): Thank you Madam Speaker for this opportunity to speak on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. This is legislation that will alleviate the financial pressure on thousands and thousands of our New Zealand families especially our parents. This is not a complicated issue. For us on this side of the House it is pretty simple and it is about ensuring that more of the cost pressures don't continue to go on our parents especially those parents who are from the lower decile parts of Aotearoa New Zealand.Before I go on to the rest of my contribution I'd like to thank the Minister of Education the Hon Chris Hipkins for his leadership on this and many other issues in the education sector. I'd also like to thank the chair as well as the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful consideration of all of the submissions to the select committee. I'd like to thank each and every person that submitted not only in writing but as well those who came to Parliament to submit in person.One of those submissions was from the New Zealand Principals' Federation (NZFP). One of the points that the Hon Nikki Kaye covered before was about equity in funding. The New Zealand Principals' Federation covered this. They basically stated in their submission that schools at the lower end of our decile system have warmly welcomed this announcement of $150 per student in lieu of asking for donations. NZFP is one of the largest professional organisations of educators representing over 2000 principals from primary from intermediate as well as from area school principals. One of the things that they actually stated in their submission is that many of the schools within their membership report that they have actually already stopped asking for donations from parents within their schools. Why? Because parents keep telling them that they cannot afford to pay. Others within their school membership have asked for minimal donations and they only get between 10 to 20 percent of donations because these are the only numbers of parents that can actually afford to pay.I'll give you an example from Waterview Primary School which has a submission that was also made to the select committee. This is a decile 3 primary school. They have 300 students. They say that they only ask for an $80 donation voluntarily from parents which equates to about $24000. However when they budget annually they only budget somewhere around about $9000 because this is the only amount that they get per year.However with this legislation that is going to be put through the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill by the Minister of Education this particular school will get a total of about $45000 per year and they say that this would allow them to actually employ one extra teacher which is something that they actually need. I've been around so many of the schools in South Auckland from the area that I represent and they also tell me the same thing that they themselves have stopped asking for donations from parents because many of our parents just do not pay because they cannot afford to pay for this voluntarily. So yes it is said that it should be voluntary but when you're a parent that cannot afford to pay it this is why these fees are no longer paid and this is why we need this legislation.We have gone through the right process. Yes it has been a shorter than usual process but that is because we want this legislation to be enacted and we want our parents to no longer have to pay this voluntary donation and we want our schools especially those in the lower socio-economic areas of Aotearoa New Zealand to be able to get this assistance from their Government. I strongly commend this bill to the House.