Moroney Sue: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20400] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 What a difference a day makes when it comes to Vote Education. 
Hon Member 
: There’s a song in there. 
SUE MORONEY 
: There is a song in that I think but I will not sing. Instead what I am going to do is recite exactly what happened last week in this House when the Minister of Education refused after I had put the question to her on two occasions to rule out funding cuts to Playcentre that were being proposed by the task force she appointed. That was on Wednesday of last week. By Thursday she was issuing a press statement ruling out those funding cuts. I am delighted with that result because playcentre parents up and down the land were horrified that the Government was even prepared to contemplate the prospect of funding cuts of up to 70 percent for playcentre children. It was the pressure put on by those playcentre families and also by Phil Goff the Labour leader and by me during question time that turned the Government round on that one and had it backing down within a matter of 24 hours. What that means is that question time does work. Question time does work to hold the Government to account in this House and it can make a difference. I was very very pleased indeed to see that. 
But sadly that is not the end of the story. The Government-appointed Taskforce on Early Childhood Education is proposing further funding cuts to New Zealand families. Today I sought to get the Prime Minister to rule out those funding cuts and he would not do that. The funding cuts proposed I say to those interested and listening to this debate are the cuts to 20 hours’ early childhood education. Funding cuts are being proposed by that early childhood education task force to the subsidy for that. If those funding cuts were to be implemented that would cost New Zealand families $50 more per child per week. We already know that this Government has caused fees to be increased in the early childhood education sector with its funding cuts from last year’s Budget. Although the Government has tried really hard to make it look like it has restored those funding cuts in fact it clearly has not. What we were able to ascertain through the estimates process was these facts: the centres that lost funding in 2010 lost 13 percent of their funding when the Government cut funding for 100 percent - qualified staff to the sector. They lost 13 percent in funding in the previous round. In the current Budget round what did they get back? Their funding rate increased by wait for it 1.1 percent. They lost 13 percent and the Government has returned 1.1 percent to them and they are supposed to feel grateful. They are supposed to be fooled into thinking that the Government has closed the funding gap it created in the previous Budget and that is absolutely not correct. 
Not only has the Government not closed the funding gap but it has not even given centres enough to break even. We all know that in the last year CPI costs went up by 5.3 percent—5.3 percent. Here is the Minister of Education thinking that the early childhood education sector and the families served by that sector should feel grateful because a 1.1 percent increase is going into those funding rates. Well it will not make ends meet. Even by the Minister’s own reckoning by her own argument at the estimates hearing before the Education and Science Committee she said that inflation would be going up 2.92 percent. So inflation is going up 2.92 percent for all of those early childhood education services yet there is a funding rate increase of just 1.1 percent. That is without even adding more children into the mix. It is not hard to see that the funding cuts have not been fixed up for early childhood education. The funding cuts have not been fixed up. Early childhood education services are going to struggle to make ends meet. When that happens we know that families end up paying more. Families end up paying more just like they have over the last 12 months. Statistics New Zealand told us that the costs for early childhood education have already gone up by 12 percent. They have already gone up by 12 percent in the last 12 months. This Government is underfunding early childhood education. We have established that there is not enough funding going into early childhood education even just to make ends meet. The Minister came to that conclusion herself during the estimates hearing. But that is not the end of the story. We know that further funding cuts are being proposed by the early childhood education task force. We are yet to hear a commitment from that Government that it will rule out those huge funding cuts—apart from those for playcentres. 
I want people to understand the numbers we are talking about. The number of people who use centre-based early childhood education is 140000 children and their families. That is the number of people to whom the Prime Minister refused today to give any comfort about what their costs might look like for 20 hours’ early childhood education in the future. In fact I think he was so flustered as he tried to shimmy his way out of the question that he reverted to calling it “20 hours free”. [ 
Interruption 
] He did. He reverted to calling it “20 hours free” even though that phrase—the “free” part—has been banned by the Minister. Yet here was the Prime Minister standing up today using the word “free” which was banned by the Minister because he got so flustered as he tried to shimmy his way through giving no commitment to New Zealand families about what their costs for early childhood education will be in the future. 
I also want to talk about the compulsory sector in education because it is also facing a funding squeeze as a result of this Government’s underfunding of Vote Education in this year’s Budget. Although the primary sector has a forecasted roll growth of 5 percent there is just a 4.2 percent funding increase for it. The funding that has gone into the sector does not meet even the predicted roll growth let alone on top of the roll growth the inflation rate which the Minister herself accepts is true. She talked about an inflation rate of 2.92 percent. That is what she said but she did not give enough money to the sector to pay for that inflation and to pay for the roll growth that her own ministry predicts for that sector. So again we know where that is going to fall. When schools’ budgets get squeezed then they will look to the parents to try to make up for that shortfall. 
Moana Mackey 
: I bet she called it an increase though. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well she did actually call it an increase. But look the smoke and mirrors are not working any more because what New Zealand parents know is that costs in education are going up and up for them and they want to know the reason why. I can tell them the reason why: it is because the Government’s contribution to education is reducing. The contribution is not keeping up with inflation it is not keeping up with roll growth and that is why it is costing New Zealand families more and more just to send their children to our “free” education system in primary and secondary schools. 
Another area where money is being spent in Vote Education this year is to implement the shambles that is national standards—$30 million just this year alone and $66 million over the next 4 years is being put into the shambles that is national standards. We know that national standards are not national because about 400 schools have refused despite the Minister’s bullying to implement them. So they are not nationwide. The Minister also told us that at best 80 percent of assessments will be similar to each other so they are not standard. So if they are not national and they are not standard what is the point? None the less $66 million is going down the tubes in a system that the educators—the people who know about this—do not believe in. We have about 400 schools refusing to implement national standards. They know that one-size-fits-all education does not work. How do we know this? We can look overseas and see the failure of education systems that have used exactly this approach. We know we outperform them already so why would we take up that failed approach? Labour certainly understands that every child is unique and every child has their own ways of learning. Putting them into little boxes called national standards a policy that was developed by a Minister who I do not think has spent a day in a classroom is not the way to have our children educated.