Maharey Steve: General Debate 
Maharey Steve: General Debate 
[Volume:642;Page:12441] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 One of the things we know about the National Party is that when the leader is away we get the best performances from its members. That was Bill English peaking. That was “peak” Bill English at his best. That was the signal to Mr Key who would have heard that speech—given the volume—all the way from London. It said: “Don’t come back because over the last few weeks you haven’t been doing too well but I’m doing quite well.” Bill English would also be saying to John Key: “I’m no deficit; I’m a surplus. I’m trying to make sure that I’m stamping myself here in New Zealand while you’re away.” Do members remember the last National leader who got off a plane and was met and then told: “No don’t come back now.”? I think that is what Bill English is saying to John Key today. 
One of the things I want to do today is ask a little question about youth apprenticeships. I think that the issue of youth apprenticeships and the way the National Party criticised this straight away goes right to the heart of the difference between the two parties. The National Party has told us over the decades that the main reason that it is in politics is the market. National wants to be in politics to set the market free. It ran policies like that throughout the 1990s on training with devastating results. 
Let me tell the House a bit about National’s training policy in the 1990s. National slashed the funding to Career Services then privatised it. One could not get any careers advice for love or money. National downgraded the technology area in the curriculum. It did not want it to be taught any more. It told the teachers of this subject that they were not valuable any more. It told them to go away. It told them that it was “yesterday’s subject” and not to bother at all. National did not do anything about the transition from school to work. Kids actually transited from school to unemployment under the National Government. That was the transition policy—go from school to the dole. National abolished the apprenticeship system. It made sure that industry training was also downgraded. In other words it said the market policy should be followed and the market would provide. Unfortunately through the 1990s we discovered that the market did not fill the gap: training collapsed and we are still living with that problem today. 
Members should contrast that with Labour’s approach. We believe that the market is a good thing but it needs to be worked alongside a good strong public sector. So what have we done? We have restored the funding to the Careers Service and it runs great services for kids right across the country. We have made sure that the curriculum has a strong emphasis on technology. The new curriculum will make it a real emphasis for young New Zealanders. We put in place things like the Gateway programme in order to ensure that young people—9000 of them today—can make the transition from school to work. We have 13000 young New Zealanders training in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme and 176000 people now in industry training. We are rebuilding industry training—that is skills. These are real genuine policies. 
I thought that the National Party had learnt about the faults of the market and that it had eschewed all that. It has been haranguing us to death over the last little while saying that everything Labour wants to do National wants to do too. But the National Party cannot change its spots. Members should look across the Chamber at Dr Lockwood Smith. We see the “market” sitting on the front bench—like Mr Maurice Williamson who is proudly pro the market. When National got pushed recently to say what its policies were it said: “Sell State assets”—not just sell them but partially sell them so that mums and dads could get access to 20 percent of all these assets. We know what happened in the 1990s. Mums and dads did not get access; big business immediately got access—that is people who support the National Party. 
National has said: “Leave doctors alone. Let them set their own fees. Let the market decide on where people get a doctor from.” National has said it would make sure the system was run by allowing the market across the country to set the cost of going to a doctor. National has said: “Let us have more private schools. Let us have more funding for private schools. Let the private sector build own and run the property in schools.” That is the thing that Labour will die in a ditch over. We will not allow the National Party to destroy our public education system—the sixth-best education system in the world. We will not allow National to replace that with a competitive market based upon people getting money out of our schools and sending it off to Macquarie Bank in Australia. We do not like that idea. New Zealanders do not like that idea. That is the problem. 
The National Party has not learnt the lesson that the market does not deliver. But National is back again with that view and when we scratch the surface we see that that is what it would bring back to this country if it were ever in Government. That is what New Zealanders need to know. They need to have a comparison next year between the parties in order to decide whether they will take the record of huge success of the last 8 years and of a balanced approach to policy that has led to things like industry training coming right or whether they will return to the horrors of the market-led policy of the National Party.