Xu-Nan LawrenceDr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. Education is a cornerstone of any society but unfortunately what we see with this Government is that they're taking a hack and slash yo-yo mentality to education. And this Budget only confirms that.When it comes to the Budget let's start with the elephant in the room. Let's start with the cuts to the Ministry of Education (MOE). The proposed cuts cut 724 roles in the Ministry of Education—the single-biggest cut of any Government department. It is a cut of almost 20 percent of their workforce indiscriminately cutting roles and cutting whole sections and whole teams that are crucial in supporting teachers and support staff and schools and principals. But what we are not seeing is any form of thought any form of consultation any form of appropriate decision-making that has gone into that decision to the point that the Employment Relations Authority has ruled in favour of the Public Service Association in the sense that they have not taken the correct consultation when it comes to their cuts.At the same time what we're seeing in terms of the MOE cuts to the contractors and consulting savings is a $16 million saving out of a projected $246 million spending—and this is a projection—based on March 2024 figures. The Ministry of Education is the biggest spender on contractors which is close to a quarter of the total expenditure across all Government agencies. Yet they have decided to cut their staff and their full-time staff instead of looking at savings from their contractors and consultants. These are some of the bad decisions and bad planning we are seeing with this Budget.But the other thing we are really seeing when it comes to this Budget particularly around education is all of these things being set up by the National Party by the biggest party only to be torn down by their coalition partners spoiling them with pet projects. To give an example when it comes to early childhood education (ECE) great we have the FamilyBoost which is arguably spending $726 million on FamilyBoost instead of just extending the free 20 hours a week to two-year-olds which was what was projected which would have been much better for families who are already struggling to do their day-to-day tasks. But instead with FamilyBoost they have to go and keep their receipts collect their receipts and then get reimbursement from the friendliest Government agency in the country the IRD!When it comes to something like that parents understandably would be frustrated because as we see with the regulatory impact segment they were not consulted as a part of this to see how much burden this will place on them. They were also not consulted from the perspective of Can they pay this upfront?" because the idea is you get a reimbursement. One of the things looking at the ECE sector—and particularly some of the things that their coalition partner is currently putting through—when it comes to changes to ECE and privatisation of ECE when we were questioning the Ministers there was no guarantee absolutely no guarantee from any of the Ministers that the costs we're going to see from the privatisation of ECE are not just simply going to catch up with the FamilyBoost—with the $726 million that were put in the FamilyBoost being caught up.Other than that we're also seeing that we're putting in resources around standardisation we're putting in resources around structural literacy but we could not save something like Creatives in Schools—something that is evidence based—and we have the report that says that it is doing well; it is doing a good job. Again when we were questioning the Ministers they could not say what evidence they were looking for. Decisions that have been made around cuts to education have been arbitrarily made. We also couldn't confirm the fact that they received bad information around the cutting of Creatives in Schools because they said it was a COVID measure that was introduced in 2019. The Ministry of Education said they extended it but it actually was for four years to begin with. So we are just in general seeing some bad planning.We won't see the immediate impact of these changes but education is a slow burn and we will only see the detrimental effect in years to come."