Andersen GinnyVIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity and I recall the words of the Minister of Finance on Budget day: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata he tangata he tangata." This is a Budget about building foundations about health about housing and about education which I would like to speak about today.I am proud and so happy to see that support staff and special education under ongoing resourcing scheme funding will be receiving $21.5 million of extra funding to enable early intervention and to enable parents teachers and students to identify learning difficulties as early as possible so that we give our kids the best start in life. I'm also heartened to see a 45 percent increase in the education operating budget compared to the last Budget; 45 percent will enable support staff to be funded in the areas that they need to be. The reason why that increase is so substantial this Budget is because in 2016 the National Government froze the operating budget—it froze that budget which meant that those support staff working did not have the hours to provide for children when they need to. That is not building foundations and it does hurt our kids.I spent a day in Wainuiomata Primary School when the New Zealand Educational Institute ran a campaign of walking in the shoes of a support staff person and I could not believe how hard people on the front line worked in terms of providing care on a daily basis and extra support to teaching staff. More often than not those support staff gave extra hours beyond what they were funded for because the kids needed it; because there was nothing else there. While being paid the minimum wage in some cases they worked extra for free. So many of our front-line services for the past decade have operated on goodwill: police teachers nurses midwives teacher aides. For the past nine years the National Government has done surpluses from the free hours they have stolen from these people and their families and it's about time we gave it back.The Budget surpluses delivered have not worked under that and it's long overdue that we start reinvesting in that area. A combination of additional funding for support staff and for special education will enable good things to happen in that space. As well as this we've got early childhood education (ECE)—the first universal increase in a decade benefiting more than 200000 children and 4100 providers. For so long I have seen community-based ECEs that are not for profit that are trying to keep their numbers low and that really believe in having fully trained teachers struggle—struggle—to be able to keep operating in an increasingly privatised market for early childhood education. It is so good to see those teachers who care about our youngest are able to be funded in a way where they can do their job properly.It is of great value to have those areas looked after because that is what really builds the foundation for New Zealand in generations to come. I want to see a country where our kids in education—family support is invested in. I would rather see a country that builds schools not prisons. I would like the next generation of New Zealanders to be resilient strong well-educated healthy warm and dry and not to have to be investing in areas that will be detrimental to their future. That's why this Budget builds foundations that's why this Budget invests in the things that really matter and that's why this Budget will deliver to New Zealanders for generations to come. I am proud to see education invested in because that is something that gives children in New Zealand real opportunity far beyond building a mega prison which the National Party would much rather waste its money on.I commend the Minister of Finance and I commend our support partners in delivering an excellent Budget that delivers to New Zealanders on an ongoing basis. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."