Mahuta Nanaia: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mahuta Nanaia: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 12 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2814. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Speaker. That was the member for Tamaki Simon O’Connor who was happy to support the loss of teachers in intermediates in his electorate. He is standing in front of this House promoting education and what the Government has done. National has framed its fourth Budget as a zero Budget but a zero Budget is about zero hope zero aspiration and zero opportunity for the hard-working Kiwis struggling to make a living. They deserve more from a Budget than the one National dished out.  
We know that 13 days is a very very very long time in politics. The Minister of Education stood up in this House during the Budget debate promoting great gains in education. Just 13 days later she had to not only retract but reverse and do a whole about-face on a policy that fundamentally impacted on children and parents in the delivery of education as people know it and want to preserve it in their communities. It was an epic blunder that needed to be fixed and Labour members were happy that we raised those questions in the House to assure good-thinking New Zealanders that we were working with them on this issue.  
The Minister claimed that the Government was focusing on quality not quantity in the form of the new staff ratios that it wanted to introduce capping teacher numbers over the next 4-year period. Well it simply did not stack up. As people worked through the detail and as we presented questions in the House to the Minister that could not be answered more and more red flags went up as bastions of opposition in the schools and in our communities by parents who believe that their children deserve more. Parents were furious at the prospect that losing one or two teachers would fundamentally impact on the learning of their children. Why? Because they translated the National Government’s changes as larger class sizes fewer teachers and less opportunity for their children to get a really good chance in the classroom for one-on-one feedback from their teachers. They knew that it just did not make sense.  
The Minister talked a big game but she was short on detail. This became more and more evident as we started to understand the real effects of the policy that she was presenting to the House in Budget 2012. When she came to this House and introduced the fact that for years 7 and 8 technology teachers would be included in the new staff ratios we were flabbergasted on this side of the House. Immediately members on this side of the House were getting calls from intermediate schools saying: “She’s got it wrong. We’re not losing just two teachers; we could be losing up to eight teachers.” And that is not just about technology teachers; it is about delivering subjects like science like art like drama like all sorts of technology subjects like kapahaka and like gifted learning. Then we had a whole lot of primary schools saying: “Well actually for our young learners it may mean a cut to the extent that we cannot deliver remedial maths or recovery reading to our youngest learners who are often the ones who need it most.”  
The Minister still stood in this Chamber and defended that policy to members on this side of the House as if it was a great gain in education and we knew it was not. We knew that fundamentally children would miss out. Well hello! It was not until the adjournment when members of the Government went back into their own communities that they were flooded with very angry National supporters who said time and time again that the Government had it wrong. Thirteen days later right up until the end the Minister was still defending this policy. One morning she was saying that the Government was not going to reverse the policy the next minute she was saying that it would make a partial retraction and then by day 13 she said it would reverse this policy. The heat was too hot and she knew that the Government had got it wrong.  
Let me ask this: did the Minister in fact ask for the necessary information of officials to ensure that prior to making this decision the Government had got all the information it needed to assure itself that it was not going to fundamentally impact on the delivery of education in the communities? If she did ask for the information did Cabinet override that advice? We have not had any answers on that front. Or did she deliberately ignore that information? Time and time again when we were asking questions of the Minister in this House on that particular issue she managed to evade some detail on some very important questions. 
Maggie Barry 
: Listen to the answers. 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA 
: But parents deserve an answer. Parents deserve an answer. That member should be listening to constituents in her own electorate who were equally as angry on this particular issue. That member was happy to go out and promote a policy that would fundamentally see the loss of teachers in intermediate schools in many electorates throughout the country.  
Labour said it would reverse this ridiculous policy because it did not stack up. Putting more children into a class and more pressure on a teacher to teach those children and give quality feedback would cause only more stress and National was not listening to them. We did. We said very early on in the piece that we would reverse it.  
The Minister needs to spell out her plan about how National will invest in quality teaching because this is an important aspiration. It should be done. But now that the Government has reversed the policy on larger class sizes I ask whether it will retract from its investments in improving the quality of teaching. There is no answer. Not a word. Not a sigh. Not anything. Members on that side of the House have their heads down. Continuing to invest in quality teaching we believe is an important thing to do but the Minister will need to demonstrate where she will now find savings from because that particular investment is essential.  
The other part of the humiliating reversal that she had to do and backtrack on was really supported by the words of young people themselves. I suspect that once the anger of parents moved into the domain of supportive evidence from teachers and then was translated through children they started to get upset about the prospect of losing technology teachers. This is how they explained it at Kowhai Intermediate School: “The good thing about technology classes is that they’re a fun way to learn things that you may need to do when you’re older.” They also said: “In primary schools they don’t offer technology.” and “Creativity and practical skills are an important part of education.” But here is the point that I think National members might want to hear. Students at Kowhai Intermediate School said: “Getting good grades in other subjects is important but people who make a difference in the world usually have a unique way of looking at things. You cannot be one of these people without creativity and that is what technology classes deliver.” Here is a Government that says on the one hand that it wants a brighter future for all New Zealanders but then it cuts technology teachers in our intermediate schools and limits the opportunity for our children to be able to take up courses that teach creative innovation. The Government got it wrong. We are happy to see the reversal. 
There are so many other areas in which things do not add up. We see increased funding for private schools since 2009—$14 million extra every year since National has come into Government. What is happening there? In last year’s Budget $21.8 million went into public-private partnership business case modelling and we still have not got any detail on exactly how much has been spent on the Hobsonville public-private partnership project. In adult and community education a further $4 million has been cut from universities affecting their ability to offer things like language programmes and computer skills. Here is a Government that is cut cut cutting and limiting the opportunities in a whole lot of areas for people to continue to thrive in education.  
Finally I will respond to the member for Tamaki who talked about student allowances. We do believe on this side of the House that postgraduate study is important. Limiting access to a student allowance to only 200 weeks will affect those who cannot afford to go into postgraduate study. We will see a lot of people who are unable to take up the opportunity to continue to improve their skills because of a decision that this Government has made. We do not support it. The fourth Budget for National has got it wrong in education. National should be ashamed about what it was proposing to do pulling the wool over parents’ eyes. Parents are not stupid. We are glad we supported them on that fundamental issue of giving our children the very best in education. Kia ora.