Lee DeniseDENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a privilege to take this call in this annual review debate. We focused on a topic on the Education and Workforce Committee on the school property portfolio so we had the Ministry of Education before us and we particularly wanted to hear about their response to the growth in Auckland—certainly I did as an Auckland MP. So many would know that the growth pressure in Auckland around the student roll is immense. In the Auckland region over 278000 students were enrolled in 2018. It's an increase of 3000 students from the year prior and if you go back to 2010 18000 more students have enrolled in Auckland. So it's a hugely important issue: school growth and overcrowding. Students and their families need assurances around the Ministry of Education's capability and capacity to respond to pressures. So when we were in that annual review of the Ministry of Education they in simple terms said that they didn't think funding was the issue; they thought that it was the capacity of the construction sector to respond to this growth. Well back in my electorate of Maungakiekie Te Papapa School and Oranga School who have had a lot to deal with are having huge housing growth pressure which means that they are staring down the barrel of student growth pressure. Both those schools have had one heck of a job getting the Ministry of Education and the property team to be responsive. We've gone back and forth with several letters to the Minister of Education to HLC which is an offshoot of Housing New Zealand—both ministries not talking to each other. It's been a really harrowing experience for these schools who genuinely need support and care given to their families who face very uncertain times. There are similar pressures all over Auckland. My colleague Chris Penk has talked in the House about the pressures faced for overcapacity in schools many of them in west Auckland—Chris Penk: That's right. DENISE LEE: —and he's agreeing with me to my right. Unfortunately what we're hearing from schools all over Auckland and indeed the country is that the ministry has not been working as well with them as they should. The capacity is just not there within the property team and so we needed to figure out what some of the causes were as we talked to them in their annual review. I even went so far as to ask them whether their staff turnover was an issue for why they do not seem to be responding to local communities and to MPs such as ourselves. This is supposed to be the year of delivery is it not? There are schools and there are communities all throughout Auckland who are left in a state of limbo with no action or leadership being taken on this particular topic. The ministry is clearly under pressure and the annual review that we sat through did not give me confidence that that was going to be met. Now if you take that in context and then look at what is happening at the time when we reviewed them the terms of reference were out for the Tomorrow's Schools task force review. As we've gone through that particular task force review we know that we are now looking at a supersized on-steroids Ministry of Education centralisation hub property network—whatever you want to call it. So right now we face all these pressures but what's the answer? A supersized fictional on-steroids superhero response? Well I'm not sure that that is going to be something that can come into reality because as we saw in those annual reviews the response currently isn't there. How are we supposed to have assurance that this Government this Minister and this Ministry of Education property team are going to have communities' best interests at heart? I'm struggling in my community. Chris Penk is struggling in his community. What's the answer? It's a shortcoming as we see it. Thank you.