Rurawhe AdrianADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Heamana o Te Komiti nei. I am really worried about the future of education in New Zealand. Yesterday I attended a pōwhiri for four mokopuna from Mangawhero Te Kōhanga Reo and they started at their new kura. What I worry about is the legacy that those tamariki those mokopuna inherit: a legacy of 8 years coming into the ninth year of this Government that has cut the budget effectively from the education system. It is a disgrace. It is not good enough. I worry about those tamariki because here is the fact—and we have heard it in the House before. The fact is that there are 90000 young people in this country who are not in education not in employment and not in training.What kind of legacy does that leave for the tamariki those mokopuna I went to support yesterday for their education? I will tell you what it means. It means that they are reliant on the staff the teachers who have to go beyond what they would normally have to do because of the lack of funds because this Government has frozen the operations grant. The report from the Education and Science Committee spells out the changes to the operations grant. The Government is effectively cutting 66 percent from what would be the increase in the operations grant for this year. That is not good enough. That tells us—it tells the whole country—that this is not a priority for the Government.I will go on to add another dimension to this: NCEA results in charter schools. Here is a fact. It is in the report. There is a technical issue around how charter schools add up who has passed and who has not. They add them up differently from State-run schools. What does that tell us? If you do not like the results just change the way you add it up—that is what it says to me: If you really want to cut 66 percent out of the funds that should have gone as increases to the operations grant just add it up a different way. Formulate a new way of distributing those funds." The Government has found that way. That is just not good enough. Those mokopuna who started kura yesterday deserve better than that. I am here in this appropriations debate really disappointed with this Government that it has seen fit to take this course of action or as I would like to put it inaction. It is deceitful. It is a way of confusing people around the true amount and value that this Government is putting into education.That is the main point that I want to state here in this Chamber this afternoon. I have spoken to principals at a number of schools and they talk about the struggle that they have in coping with not having enough money. Of course that is not a new issue but they tell me that this is an issue that is unprecedented. I am talking about principals who have been in schools for long periods of time. They have been principals of schools for up to 15 or 20 years and they understand the dynamics of how this works. Some of the schools do not have the opportunity to insist on donations from parents. I put a big mihi out to parents as well along with those teaching staff and non-teaching staff who were acknowledged yesterday because those operational funds are just not enough for schools to be able to fund those positions properly. Kia ora."