Tolley Anne: Budget Debate 
Tolley Anne: Budget Debate 
[Volume:647;Page:16547] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to stand today and discuss the 2008 Budget where Dr Cullen finally opened his wee purse and where the average wage earner finally got a tax cut worth approximately $16—just about enough to go and buy a family block of tasty cheese. But they will wait another 2 years before they get anything more. We have waited 8 long years for Dr Cullen to consider tax cuts for taxpayers and the speaker who has just sat down made the comment that each year of the last 8 years has been better than the one before. The only context that one could put that into is in regard to the tax take because every year Dr Cullen has dug deeper and deeper into the pockets of taxpayers to accumulate the billions of dollars of surpluses that we have seen in the Budget. 
I will talk about a specific area in the Budget—that of education. The Minister of Education went out to make his announcement the day before the Budget. He went to his own electorate to make his announcement about what was in the Budget for education. Why on earth did he have to seek the safety of his own electorate to make that announcement? I would have thought that if he had good news for the education sector he would have been trumpeting it around the countryside but no he made the announcement of an extra $171.6 million over 4 years in the safety of his own electorate. 
Nathan Guy 
: Wow the old 4-year trick! 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: The old 4-year trick makes it sound bigger. As if there is any chance that he will be there to deliver that. What was the response to that magnificence that he announced to his electorate the day before the Budget? Well the New Zealand Principals Federation came out by 5 o’clock that day and said that it was extremely disappointed with the Budget announcement and that the Government had broken earlier promises to the education sector. The New Zealand Principals Federation president said: “Last year we were promised funding to recognise the workload covered by our admin support staff in covering Government initiatives. … It’s a complete double standard—the Government acknowledged a need for extra funding in this area but they have not kept their word.” So that was not a pass mark for the Minister. A press release at 5 o’clock that same day from the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) President Robin Duff said: “Today’s bitterly disappointing Budget announcement was a blow to secondary teachers who had hoped against hope for staffing relief.” He went on to state: “Perhaps the can-do attitude the Government expects of schools in terms of managing their money could be used by the ministry when it comes to where its funds go.” That was not a very encouraging reaction to the Minister’s generous announcement. Unfortunately for the Minister when he made that announcement he used some examples. One of the examples he used was Rangitoto College on Auckland’s North Shore which is New Zealand’s largest secondary school. He predicted what its increase would be going back to 1999. Well unfortunately for the Minister he got his maths wrong. 
Nathan Guy 
: Did he? 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: Yes he got his maths wrong. First of all he talked inclusive GST figures against exclusive GST figures and then he forgot to count in the extra 600-odd students who had started at that school which had increased its funding along the way. So the principal of Rangitoto College quite rightly came out in the media on the day of the Budget and said: “Mr Minister you’ve got this wrong.” and explained how it was. Now what do members think the Minister’s response to that was? What do members think the Minister said? Did he say “Gosh. I’m really sorry. I got the maths wrong. Look why don’t we sit down and have a chat about this and go through the figures?”. 
Coincidentally the day after the announcement of the Budget the Minister was due to go and meet with a group of North Shore principals and boards of trustees and the Rangitoto College principal was due to be at that meeting. So what happened? The Minister put out a press release abused the principal told him he was talking through a hole in his head and that he was ungrateful and cancelled the meeting the next day to meet with those other principals. It is a typical attitude. The Minister was so keen to go out and trumpet the success of his Budget bid and what he would do for education that in fact he abused the very people he was trying to get onside. He refused to meet with them and sit down like any sensible person and justify what was in the Budget. He not only talked about $171.6 million for the operations grant over 4 years but he talked about how that was to include $65.3 million for information and communications technology. However when we look at how much information and communications technology has actually cost schools over the last 9 years we see that it is more in the region of over half a billion dollars. Half a billion dollars has had to be raised by parents around the countryside in order to pay for information and communications technology and the Minister has responded with an extra $65 million over 4 years to help go towards that. So the Minister not only has not fronted up and defended his Budget to principals around the country but he has fallen out with the unions and has not delivered what the Government promised. 
Perhaps one of the reasons that the Minister did not want to front up to principals and defend his Budget was that at the same time he would have had to answer questions about what the Tertiary Education Commission got out of Vote Education. The Tertiary Education Commission received a 44 percent increase as against the operations funding increase which was in the region of 5 percent. The Tertiary Education Commission received an extra $22 million not over 4 years but 1 year—a 44 percent increase. One would have to ask why on earth an organisation such as the Tertiary Education Commission would qualify for such a huge increase in its operating budget when in the last year it had a 25 percent staff turnover it blew its consultancy budget by three and a half times—350 percent—and its staffing has ballooned into the hundreds over the last couple of years. The performance of the Tertiary Education Commission has been really poor yet the Minister has seen it rewarded it with a 44 percent increase of $22 million in just 1 year. 
Schools had been led to believe by the Minister—and members can read the lines from the PPTA and the Principals Federation—that the operations grant which had been reviewed in the previous 2 years would be adjusted significantly to take account of the extra work being demanded of them and that there would be recompense for that in this Budget. But the Budget did not do that and that is because this Government has its priorities all wrong. It rewards the bureaucrats but it continues to allow one in five Kiwi children to leave school without being able to read write and do mathematics anywhere near their chronological age. It allows four out of every 10 children to leave school without a qualification that provides them with the foundation knowledge and skills needed for work or further study. It is not good enough that more than 25000 Kiwis aged 15 to 19 are not in any form of education training or work. Labour’s Budget did not have any answers to those problems. The money went to the bureaucrats in the Tertiary Education Commission rather than into schools so that they could deal with those sorts of issues. 
Let us be fair: the Budget did provide a little bit more money for schools and that was good. It did provide a little more money for some more teachers and that was good too. We should not let anyone think we do not want to see any money going in. But the Budget did not contain any new ideas for improving what is actually going on in those schools and in the classrooms where the teachers are teaching. Labour does not seem to realise that the education system is underperforming for 150000 New Zealand children. It needs to change things if we want our education system to take the step up needed to give our children world-class skills and world-class jobs. National is ready to make those changes.