Hipkins ChrisGENERAL DEBATEHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. It is a great day to be part of this coalition Government a Government that is positive optimistic and working together to provide strong and stable leadership for this country. I want to acknowledge particularly the Acting Prime Minister the Rt Hon Winston Peters and thank him for his leadership over the last six weeks. As I indicated earlier he is a man of great wisdom and foresight who has led this country—Hon Grant Robertson: Seriously.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —for the last 6 weeks in a seriously well manner. He speaks with great exactitude and that is something that we are very proud of on this side of the House. I could understand however if the Acting Prime Minister was feeling a little deflated and disappointed by his experience over the last six weeks. He may well have been expecting to be put through his paces during the six weeks he was Acting Prime Minister and instead he got Simon Bridges. So if he's feeling a little disappointed that's fully understandable.This is a Leader of the Opposition who was upstaged not once not twice not three times but four times during his first National Party conference. First he had John Key. You know you're in trouble when they wheel out the last person to remind you of how good they were. So he was upstaged by him and then of course the great hope for the future: John Howard was the great hope for the future! Simon Bridges decided to demonstrate just how modern and progressive he is by wheeling out his hero John Howard to the National Party conference. Then of course he was upstaged by Mark Mitchell. Mark who?" I think most of the country will be saying but he was upstaged by Mark Mitchell during his conference and then of course he was upstaged by the Prime Minister during that as well.There is an insight into Simon Bridges' modern and progressive thinking in some of the comments that he made. For example he wanted to demonstrate how down he is with young people by talking about his online banking which he lost the password to six months ago—so he still writes cheques. I didn't even know that people were still issuing cheques but Simon Bridges is still using them. Simon Bridges offers a Walkman solution in a smartphone world. But they did come up with what they think—they thought really hard and thought "We need a bold new policy. I know! More teachers and smaller class sizes." This was the bold new innovation from the party that tried to increase class sizes last time they were in Government.As the Minister of Education I thought "This is good. This is going to be a good debate for us." I look forward to getting into this debate because I also value the role of teachers and want to see class sizes in New Zealand smaller. It's a position I think all of the parties in Government have held for some time. So I looked up the details of the National Party's policy announcement because I was looking forward to the debate on this and there weren't any. I could not find any details.So I listened to Simon Bridges' interviews. I thought "It's all right. It will all become clear as to what it is that the National Party is promising." So first of all what about how much it's going to cost? How much would it cost for their policy? I thought that was a good place to start. This is an exact quote: "The hundreds ballpark not billions. Whether that's 300 400 500 we've got to do the detailed work." There's nothing vague about this! There's nothing vague apparently about the difference between $300 million $400 million and $500 million a year. The Minister of Finance I think would take a slightly different view on that particular assertion.Then I wanted to know well how much smaller would the class sizes would actually be? How much smaller would the class sizes actually be? He isn't sure—had to work that part out. But then he admitted in an interview that class sizes might not actually be any smaller.So the grand gesture—the grand big new idea from the National Party—had no detail. They don't know how many more teachers they're going to employ. They don't know how big the change to class sizes will be and they don't know how much it's going to cost.What happened to the disciplined and focused National Party that used to be? It never would have happened under John Key Bill English and Steven Joyce—never would have happened—but this is the new Simon Bridges National Party. When they're not being relentlessly negative they come up with these vague ideas of something they might do one day in the future but you'll just have to trust them that they're going to deliver on the promises they make. New Zealanders deserve better."