Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): You can see why the National Party is so attached to their attack advertisements because it's the only thing that they have. Today they apparently launched their education policy which Paula Bennett the deputy leader couldn't bring herself to talk about. She instead devoted her time to criticising the Government's working groups and task forces which actually if you read the National Party's education discussion document seem to have been the source of inspiration for most of their new ideas because they don't seem to have any of their own.When it comes to education I will put this Government's track record against that Opposition's track record any day of the week. It is going take us some time to undo the nine years of damage that was done to our education system. The fact that during National's time in office we saw a 40 percent reduction in the number of people training to be teachers—that is going to take some time for us to turn around but we are working hard on that.The fact that during National's time in office they did not invest in making sure that our schools were adequately prepared for roll growth. They were happy to see the population continue to grow and were happy to take the extra tax that went with that but they didn't spend that tax revenue on actually making sure New Zealand had the infrastructure to cope with that population growth—and we see that in our school system where hundreds of schools up and down the country were already overcrowded when we became the Government and more were projected to become overcrowded. That's why our Government has put the single biggest injection of funding into school property of any New Zealand Government because we want to get ahead of that growth curve so we don't leave the disastrous legacy that we inherited from that last Government.We are unapologetic about breaking down financial barriers to participation in education at every level. We see that in our school system where we are increasing school funding so that the parents aren't put under constant pressure to pay donations to schools. We have scrapped the fees for NCEA and scholarship exams resulting in quite literally hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders being better off including a significant number who completed their qualifications in past years but never had that qualification awarded because they could not pay the fee. They now get that qualification awarded. They can hold their head high and have the qualification that they earned without the financial penalty that was stopping them from getting that. I'm very proud of that policy.We stand by our policy of removing the financial barriers to participation in post-school education and training. We are not going to sign up to the elitist view of the world being promoted on the other side of the House that it should only go to third-year university students. We think that those undertaking trades training and applied courses that are less than three years long should benefit from it as well; unlike the members opposite who don't seem to know what their policy on it is because they seem to say Oh we'll shift it to the third year but maybe we won't do it at all maybe we'll spend it on something else maybe we'll use it to build more roads maybe we'll use it to employ more teachers." bearing in mind that they promised at least $800 million more worth of teachers to improve teacher-student ratios. Where those teachers are going to come from of course they're silent on all of that because we know they didn't train enough teachers.This Government is making good progress in tackling the legacy of neglect that we inherited. We're going to build more schools and classrooms for 100000 additional students because that's how many we know we're going to have to have over the next 10 years. We've already put aside a huge amount of money to get ahead of that curve and we're going to continue to do that so that unlike the last Government we don't have to play catch-up all of the time; we're actually going to make sure that we're building those schools and classrooms ahead of when they're needed.There is so much happening in education to be proud of. We've made New Zealand history a compulsory part of the New Zealand school curriculum something that parents have been asking for for some time; New Zealanders have wanted to see that.What do we see from the members opposite when they're talking about returning to failed policies? More charter schools; back on that agenda under that Government because it worked so well. They seem to think that having kids working and learning in shipping containers is an adequate standard of education—that's what we saw under the charter school model and that's not something that we're going to tolerate on this side of the House under this Government.We want a quality public education system that delivers for every New Zealander—that is what this Government is focused on delivering. We've got a proud track record we're just getting under way and there's a whole lot more to come."