Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): There are a number of issues that I would like to talk about in this Estimates debate on the Education Sector but let me begin with charter schools. I have particular concerns about the approach to funding that this Government has around charter schools. We have an estimate at the moment that this Government has spent around about $44 million on charter schools to date and in this year's Budget at least $11.8 million will be invested or spent on new charter schools. This is despite the fact that this model is a failed model. This is a model where as we have seen with Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru—it is a model that has failed there so much so that it actually closed the school. The taxpayers of this country New Zealand have invested $5.5 million in Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru and it has closed down and yet this Government is going to expand it even more in this Budget.Charter schools as we know are targeted at Māori and Pacific students. So can I just address Māori and Pacific students but in particular Pacific students in my electorate in Manukau East in South Auckland. I just heard the honourable Minister of Education talking about how this is a Government that actually assists and is really really successful with Pacific and Māori children and talking about real families and real students. But if I can just give a couple of examples from the families that I see in my office.Just last week we had a family referred to us from a social worker in a school. They have six kids. They lived in a garage. This garage was leaking. The day that I visited this family—because they had no car—to authorise me to assist them so that they would get into a house it was raining. It was a day when it was also very windy; a very cold day. Three out of six of the children were at home sick. This mother said that her kids are healthy kids apart from the fact that since they had been living in this garage in South Auckland her kids have been sick.Honourable Minister we deal with so many children who live in garages and so many children who live in cars the issue of transience is an issue that we deal with in South Auckland on a daily basis. In one of the schools—the largest primary school I am told in South Auckland with over 1000 children—57 percent of its children are not there at the end of year in December because they are transient. The official definition of transience" is: "Students that move school twice or more over the period from the 1st of March to the 1st of November." We have other schools that have even higher transience levels than that.What I know from the children whom I see who are transient—here is another example: a mother with two teenage boys. She has been living in her car for over 6 months but during that time she has not enrolled her sons in a school. Why? Because she has moved so often. She has moved from Hamilton to Tauranga to the Bay of Plenty and back to Auckland. She has moved so many times. She is not able to find a private rental or indeed a State house. Her two sons who are teenagers have not been in a school that whole time. So when we hear the Government talking about how this is a wonderful Government that is doing so much for Māori and Pacific children—it is not doing enough for the thousands of Māori and Pacific children who are homeless.We know from Otago University that there are at least—this is 2013 statistics—41000 people who are homeless. In Counties Manukau in my area the Counties Manukau District Health Board tells me that there are at least 110000 people who are living in overcrowded conditions. We know that when people live in overcrowded conditions they do not have the space to be able to do their homework and they are admitted in and out of hospitals a lot and these families are transient. So honourable Minister there are a lot of consequences when our children are homeless.On one of the weeks that our Labour MPs went to visit Te Puea Marae—a marae that has served over 160 families who are homeless—they were told that at least about half of the children who were there in that week were actually children who were not even enrolled in school—half of those children. So there are various—"