DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) : In Vote Health in the coming financial year we will see the real investments that can be made in public services under a Labour-Progressive Government. This Government is good for people’s health. When we pick up the Budget, pick up any community newspaper, visit the local primary health organisation, visit the local Plunket nurse, call in to see a general practitioner, or go out there with the people working in our communities on health, we can see the massive inroads that have been made in terms of improving the health of ordinary New Zealanders over the last 6 years. We can also see what is planned for the coming year.

We have a very clear plan for health—for public health, for primary health, and for getting more operations done right throughout the sector. Then we have to go into the primary health organisations—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why are twice as many people on a sickness benefit?

DARREN HUGHES: Nick Smith asks about the sickness benefit, in terms of Vote Health. I am not going to reply to him about that; I will let him think about that himself. The total number of people on benefits in New Zealand has fallen from over 400,000 to less than 300,000 in the last 6 years, under this Government. A quarter fewer people are on all welfare rolls than ever before. Just last week the Minister for Social Development and Employment put out a report that shows that the growth in sickness benefit numbers has halved, to just 3 percent. So the big increases that we have seen in the number of people on the sickness benefit have come right down. But even if we are uncharitable, as the Opposition members are, and just focus on that, we can still see that the total number of people on all welfare benefits has gone down, from over 400,000 under National to under 300,000 under Labour. That is progress. And, of course, we have halved unemployment in this country in the last 6 years, putting more people back into work.

In terms of Vote Health there has been a record spend—40 percent more than when we became the Government in 1999—and that is making a huge difference. I think of two projects that are being funded by the Hon Annette King in this financial year, which we are discussing in these estimates. One is the plan to conduct another 7,500 cataract operations. Those operations are life-changing for the people who receive them. Normally they are our senior citizens, who need access to that kind of surgery in order to improve their lives. This Government is delivering it, because we are prepared to put the money into the public health system. It is not for us to go around slashing taxes for our rich mates. We are not going to do that; we are putting money into the health system. The National Party members are interjecting wildly, but I ask them this question: what is their health policy? Silence. What is their tax policy? Silence. At the moment the Committee of the whole House is considering Vote Health, which is paid for by the revenue the Government receives. In both those areas, health and revenue, we have not had one policy from the National Party members. They are not using this estimates debate, 7½ weeks out from a general election, to front up to people with a health policy or a tax policy.

Let me ask Nick Smith this: would the 7,500 extra cataract operations stay under a National Government? Would the doubling of hip and knee operations stay?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Absolutely!

DARREN HUGHES: Nick Smith says “Absolutely!”. Of course, he paused for a long time before he said that.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: There will be more.

DARREN HUGHES: Oh, there will be more, he says. So we now know that National wants to spend more than Labour on its health policy. Well, this is a very good debate. It is no wonder that Simon Power is keeping very quiet; he knows that that does not add up. What about National’s tax policy? That has not come forward, either. So the National members are going to spend a whole lot more, but they will not tell us what their policy is. We have gone from having Roger Sowry, to Lynda Scott, to Katherine Rich, to Judith Collins, to Paul Hutchison as National’s spokesperson on health. National has gone right through those people, sacking them left, right, and centre—there is no problem there. And on the revenue policy, nothing has been said in terms of tax.

There has been an absolute flip-flop on health funding. Don Brash said, first of all, when he was asked about primary health organisation funding, that he did not know what a primary health organisation is. Well, he would not know, would he? He would not spend any time meeting with ordinary people about their needs. So that was his first point.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How many ordinary people know what a primary health organisation is?

DARREN HUGHES: The three primary health organisations in my electorate are making a big difference to people in my constituency. Why does Nick Smith not find out what is happening in Nelson?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because it’s a mess.

DARREN HUGHES: Oh, right! So for an old person to pay only $3 for a prescription is a mess, is it? For a senior citizen, a poor old pensioner, to be able to go out to pick up a prescription is a mess, according to Nick Smith. What National wants to do is to use that money—the money that those old people have been able to save by paying only $3 for a prescription—and hock it off to its rich Tory mates. The National members will not tell us how they would do that, because they are too embarrassed. National has no health policy. There has been no word on its tax policy. It will not tell us what it would do in respect of cataract operations, or hip or joint operations. The National members cannot tell us what they would do with regard to the primary heath organisations. It does not add up.

I say to people that National is bad for their health. If people think the flu was bad this winter, they should imagine how bad it would be if Don Brash were running the country, with no health policy and no tax policy.

Clayton Cosgrove: “Blumsky-itis”!

DARREN HUGHES: Well, I do not want to do down that path, in terms of the health policy. I am not sure whether any primary health organisation could fix those particular problems. People should vote Labour.

DIANNE YATES (Labour—Hamilton East) : I wish to speak on this whole matter of health, and I wish to thank the Government for the $200 million that is going into Waikato Hospital and Thames Hospital to improve emergency services in those hospitals. I am very thankful that my family has benefited from that money already, and so have many, many other people in the Waikato and the Coromandel. I am also pleased that Helen Clark spoke recently at a Grey Power meeting in Hamilton. The local chair of Grey Power was able to say, with his walking stick in his hand: “I no longer need this, because I have had my hip operation.” There are 7,500 people who are also pleased that they can see more clearly because they have had their cataract operations. There are people whose prescription costs are now down to $3.

Why does Mr Smith have to scream and yell on the other side of the Chamber instead of saying thank you to the Government on behalf of all the good people in Nelson who are receiving their hip operations? I probably know more people in Nelson who have received operations than he does.

We are very, very pleased that the primary health organisations are moving outwards. We had a briefing at the Health Committee yesterday, about meningococcal meningitis and how it is already apparent that immunisations are affecting health, particularly in Manukau where they began, and how they are having results. We are very, very pleased that the Hon Annette King, Minister of Health, has seen fit to continue with the meningococcal immunisation programme. We heard the National Party health spokesperson, whatever his name is—Dr—

Darren Hughes: Brash, is it?

DIANNE YATES: No, I do not think it is Dr Brash.

Darren Hughes: Hutchison?

DIANNE YATES: Yes, it is Dr Hutchison, and he was critical of the flu vaccination, but who did we see lining up to get a flu jab? We saw Dr Hutchison himself! He made sure he got one. We are very, very pleased the programme is continuing.

Another very good aspect of the Budget is the continued ring-fencing of money for mental health. Labour ring-fenced that money and will continue to do so. We are very, very pleased about that. Do we hear nurses saying how sorry they are they did not get a pay rise? No, because nurses did get their pay rise and we are pleased about that.

In the Waikato we are very, very pleased about Project Energize. That research programme is looking at the health needs of children in schools. Those children get free milk and free fruit. We are carefully monitoring the rate of reduction in obesity amongst children in our schools. This project is panning out well and making a great deal of progress. We thank the district health board and the Hon Annette King for the fruit in schools initiative, and the tremendous amount of progress on preventive health care for our children. Once again, that is a very, very good policy from the Minister of Health. I am very proud of the Government. Labour Governments always perform very well on the basic needs of society—namely, health, education, housing, and jobs. Beat that!

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Health) : I take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of my colleague Annette King, and to provide the nation with one good reason to vote this Government back in—that is, its performance on health.

I encourage National members to read the newspapers occasionally and find out the facts. The New Zealand Herald ran a report the other day stating that reduced hospital admissions in south Auckland may be an early sign that the pouring of millions of dollars into primary health care is indeed making a difference. That is a great sign. The National Party has criticised us time and time again for putting money into primary health care, but we have done that on the basis that prevention is better than cure. If National were to get anywhere near the levers of power again, this country would revert to a market-driven, blindly ideological health system. Its members believe that the market will deliver to everyone and that a competitive system will deliver to each and every New Zealander. If New Zealand ever has to face again the disastrous experiment that was tried in the 1990s, then the health of each and every New Zealander will slip backwards—except for those who are wealthy enough to buy into their own private health system. People such as Mr David Carter, Mr Nick Smith, and Mr Power, who get nice big fat salaries, will be able to buy their own health care.

The least we can do is ask the National Party for its alternative health policy. There is silence. The newspaper quotes Dr Hutchison as saying that National is not planning to unveil its health policy for several weeks, so he could speak only in principle. Quite frankly, I did not know National had any principles. That is an oxymoron. We will be watching very closely.

New Zealanders know, be they general practitioners, the elderly, or the parents of young children, that the money this Government is spending on primary health care is making a real difference. There were general practitioners who were sceptical. They were not very enthusiastic about primary health organisations. On my travels up and down the country, and around rural areas, I have asked general practitioners upfront what they think about their primary health organisation. They have said they were a little wary at the start, but now see the real value starting to flow through—not only in better health-care for their patients, not only in better support for the general practitioners themselves, but in the fact that the organisations are working for each and every community. [Interruption]

If Nick Smith showed a little more support for the primary health organisation in Nelson, and if some of his Tory mates would not try to undermine it, then I am sure we would make a whole lot more progress in Nelson, as well.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why have 50 percent Māori on the PHO board?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: I am not going to say much more. The member asks why we have Māori on primary health organisation boards. Do members know the horrible reality for a Māori adult living in New Zealand—in Nelson as well? Do members know how many fewer years a Māori adult male in New Zealand—including in Nick Smith’s electorate—lives? They do not. The fact is that the average lifespan of an adult Māori male in Hawke’s Bay is 11 years shorter than that of a Pākehā.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Keep talking about it. It is costing you votes. They see it as PC crap.

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: The one thing about New Zealanders is they are fair-minded. When they hear the facts—that if one is a Māori one lives, on average, 11 years less than a Pākehā does, they know something has to be done.

Hon David Carter: Why put 50 percent of them on the board?

Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: Mr Carter does not want them on the board, either, because he will not look after Māori; neither will Nick Smith. They will not acknowledge the reality that through the 1990s the National Government’s competitive-driven privatisation attempts in the health system led to greater disparities in health status and greater disparities in access to health services, but over the last 6 years Labour has worked very hard to close that gap.

I am not going to say too much more other than to say we are very proud of our huge investment in health care. Annette King has worked hard to extract the money from Michael Cullen. We have endorsed that. We are going to spend that money to provide a public health system that is available to each and every New Zealander, regardless of one’s wealth, regardless of what school one went to—I say to Mr Carter—and regardless of where one lives. Because that is a basic tenet of the New Zealand way of life, and Labour is proud of it.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour) : I am a member of the Health Committee and the former elected deputy chair of the Southland District Health Board. I am proud of what this Government has achieved, and proud to have such an excellent Minister of Health as Annette King.

I was the deputy chair of the Southland District Health Board when it opened the new $70 million hospital in Invercargill last year—a facility funded by this Labour-led Government. It is one of the many new, effective, and efficient hospitals that Labour has funded, because we believe in excellence, not in old-style buildings and services not suited to modern New Zealanders.

This Labour-led Government has been exceptionally, excellently, and outstandingly good for health. We found a mess in 1999. The Tories had gone through user-pays, bed night charges, the loss of professionals, and hospital closures. May I say that the Tories had also for years done such things as tell my elderly father, for whom I cared, that he would wait years on a public health list for a cataract operation. What has Labour done? The Tories had no ideology for health, no real belief that health was absolutely a public service and a public good. Labour came in with a philosophy that health was a public good. We actually talked about health promotion and illness prevention as a goal—not just about a sickness model, as the Tories like to speak of. We have thought as a Government about the future of good health for this nation, and we have a New Zealand Health Strategy that promotes that.

What has that meant? It has meant increased access to affordable primary health care since Labour has been in Government. Now, 3.7 million New Zealanders are benefiting from being enrolled in a primary health organisation, which means that by 2007 they will all pay cheaper doctors’ fees and prescription charges. We have delivered on our promise to deliver double the number of hip and knee operations this year, and I am exceptionally proud of the fact that we have also provided funding for up to 7,500 more cataract operations in the next 3 years—something that my father would have benefited from if the Tories had bothered to think it important to provide for elderly New Zealanders. We have invested $200 million to fight back against meningococcal meningitis, because we realise how important that is for the health of New Zealanders overall. Lastly, we have funded district health boards more than half a billion dollars over the next 4 years to help them meet the costs of this year’s historic pay increase for nurses. It was long overdue and well deserved, and has now been delivered; with Government funding, it is able to be provided over 4 years.

We have been an exceptionally good Government for health. We are proud of what we have done, and we are looking forward to doing a great deal more to improve health and to turn round those disastrous years of a National Government that could not keep a Minister of Health for 5 minutes.

Hon DAVID CARTER (National) : In the dying days of this Labour Government, I hope the Minister of Agriculture, Jim Sutton, will take the opportunity to tell New Zealand what Labour’s position on public access is. What is Labour’s position on removing farmers’ rights to restrict public access to privately owned farms in New Zealand? Last Thursday Mr Chris Carter, the Minister of Conservation, said at a public meeting of his mates from the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society that the legislation was finalised, that the decisions had been made, and that as soon as a Labour Government was returned to power, the legislation would be frogmarched through this Parliament.

That contrasts completely with what Mr Sutton keeps saying. He has said to the farmers of New Zealand that the matter will now require further consultation, and that no decisions have been made. I ask the Minister in the chair, Mr Sutton, to take the opportunity to clarify who is telling the truth. Is the debate finalised? Is the legislation finalised? Is Mr Chris Carter, the Minister of Conservation, actually telling the truth, or is Jim Sutton to be believed when he says to Federated Farmers and the like that the Government is prepared to continue genuine consultation? I say to the Minister that he cannot have it both ways. New Zealanders are fed up with the trickery of this Government, which continues to prance around New Zealand saying one thing to one audience, and another thing to another audience.

That brings me to another point I want to know today: what has been the Department of Conservation’s role in the preparation of this public access policy? I ask that because during the examination we became aware of a number of consultants that the ministry had used in the preparation of reports. We asked for copies of those reports, and the Minister in the chair, Jim Sutton, agreed to give them to the select committee. He subsequently came back and changed his mind, saying that, in actual fact, there were no such reports, and that that money had been paid to staff. I became immediately suspicious when I saw that one Ann Vogle, who is a personal friend of the Prime Minister, received $35,000 for work on walking access policy. That lady, besides being a personal friend of the Prime Minister—and I acknowledge that that in itself is not a crime—had apparently been working for the Department of Conservation immediately prior to her secondment to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to collect $35,000 for this policy work.

But that is only part of it. Mr Sutton’s department spent, in total, nearly a quarter of a million dollars sourcing information from what we were told by members of that department were consultant assistants with specialist skills. When we looked more deeply at this stuff, we found that it was paid to groups like Careering Options Ltd and Wheeler Campbell Consulting Ltd, which I understand to be recruitment agencies. The Minister needs to tell the Committee how that could ever be considered consultation assistance to get specialist advice.

The Minister ought to tell us how much resource has been wasted on the development of the public access policy, how many man-hours the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has put into this, and how many man-hours the Department of Conservation has put into it.

While he is at it, the Minister might want to tell us the relationship between the New Zealand Fish and Game Council and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society in this regard, because I do not think New Zealand farmers have been told the truth. We certainly have not been told the truth when the Minister attempts to tell us that the policy is now back for genuine consultation. That is not the case, and the Minister hangs his head because he knows that is true.

This is the greatest issue worrying rural New Zealand. That is why rural New Zealand has completely lost confidence in the Minister of Agriculture. Never before in the history of New Zealand have Federated Farmers passed so many votes of no confidence in that Minister.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) : I have much pleasure in following the previous speaker. For the uninitiated out there in the real world, that was the would-be member for Banks Peninsula—the member who would like to take over from Ruth Dyson. He is the man who described the people and the area of Woolston as akin—and I will be careful what I say—to excrement. That is the technical term for a substance that the people of Woolston now realise he is full of. I invite David Carter to get on his soapbox and to go down to Woolston, to go into the footy club, to go into the Woolston Workingmen’s Club, and to use the same words that he used—I believe it was to Tracy Watkins—and to tell them to their face. To use another member’s term of reference, that member is a lion in the House and a lamb in Woolston, because he will not front up. That is the credibility that that member has. He is the—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member needs to come back to the estimates.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Indeed I will. He is the National spokesperson on agriculture. He is the man who represents a party whose leader said that we should cover up the foot-and-mouth scare—that was Dr Brash’s contribution—possibly with the substance the member talks about in respect of the people of Woolston. But Dr Brash said that we should cover it up.

In these appropriations, there are large amounts of money increased every year for biosecurity, to protect our borders—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Biosecurity is the next one.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Yes, in terms of agriculture. The money in these appropriations is to protect our farming communities, to protect livestock—and what is the greatest plank in the National Party agricultural policy? Don Brash’s original thought is to cover it up and to put our markets in jeopardy.

I want to look at the Sustainable Farming Fund and our achievements as represented in these appropriations. It was National that surrendered, waved the white flag, and sold out every rural area and region in this country. That is its legacy. Do we hear that member on the other side of the Chamber talk about that?

Half my electorate in Waimakariri is rural. I am really looking forward to standing up in places like Cust, Swannanoa, and Oxford, and talking about the heartland service centres that have been put back into rural areas by the appropriations of our Government. We did not sell them out. We got heartland services back in there—there are 13 or more of them. That member will stand up with me on the stump, and I invite him to tell people in rural areas that he was part of a Government that sold them out by withdrawing services and shutting them down.

Over the life of this Government, we have seen reforms through the Primary Production Committee that I sit on, in the dairy, pipfruit, kiwifruit, hops, wine, and meat industries. It is worth noting that those issues were brought to the Government by the industries concerned, and the Government then accepted that and facilitated the reform, as did the Minister of Agriculture. That is our legacy; that is what we have done. I always say not to trust politicians by what they say but to judge them by what they do—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You’re gone!

CLAYTON COSGROVE:—and that member over there, the person with “Blumsky-itis”, Dr Nick Smith—“I cannot recall; I cannot remember.”—will be judged as well on his legacy when he was a Minister in a National Government.

We have returned services to rural areas with the Sustainable Farming Fund and with what we have done with apprenticeships, as noted in these appropriations. The rural sector is no different from any sector in this country. It has the positive problem that there is a shortage of skilled staff. It is a positive problem, because it is a problem related to expansion and growth in the industry. We have 9,000 apprentices on the go, many of whom will take up skilled positions in the rural and farming sector. So I say to the National Party that it should get up and tell us what its legacy is—tell us, through the Chair, what National as a party did for the rural sector. It should show us the reform it put through that was supported by the rural sector.

The member got it wrong on apples. Thanks to National, the apple industry was torn apart, because that party would not do what the industry wanted. National got it wrong on apples, but who fixed it? Labour did. We put the legislation through. I believe that the National member at that time, Mr Carter, the member from Woolston, was not even on the Primary Production Committee.

R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) : It is interesting for anybody listening to hear Labour and National members talk about the small things that are happening in agriculture. We are talking about the estimates for the agricultural portfolio, and I want people to think about a couple of things.

Firstly, I want them to think about the $9 billion deficit that was announced post-March this year, about how it happened, and about how it will be resolved. How did it happen? It happened because we have had a boom of consumerism in this country. Our exporters, who are mainly agricultural people, have been working away day and night, and they have been earning record prices for their produce, I must say. While that has been happening, consumers have been bringing untold produce into this country, mainly from China, and people have been spending up large. We have ended up with our overdraft—in normal people’s terms—growing to $9 billion.

In the meantime, what is the National Party talking about? It is talking about land access. Labour wants it; National does not, and neither does New Zealand First. I want to talk to members a little about land access. I was at a Federated Farmers conference last Tuesday in Hamilton, and that subject was not even mentioned. Well, it was mentioned but it was not an issue. One ACT party member, namely Gerrard Eckhoff, has been going all around this country for 6 months in a yellow bus, trying to drum up some enthusiasm by farmers for making that subject an election issue. The Minister of Agriculture was at the conference, so he knows that it was not an issue. National was—I do not think I can use the word I was thinking of—working in tandem with ACT, to make it the big issue of this election. Never mind the dollar, and never mind that the farmers will have to pay back that $9 billion! All that those members can do is run around the country trying to stir up this business of land access—for which we do not even have a bill, I might tell members. When we do, New Zealand First will oppose it, and everyone knows that.

But land access is not an issue for farmers, because the things that concern them are things like the dollar—the comparative worth of the dollar with the US dollar. The things that concern farmers are the inputs they need. The price of land is a concern to farmers, and the Kyoto Protocol is a concern to farmers. The Kyoto agreement was signed by the National Government in the early days, and was continued by this Labour Government. We are not allowed to use coal in our electricity generation. We are not allowed even to use coal in our homes, so the rumour is going up home. But we are allowed to export coal to countries that are not bound by the Kyoto Protocol.

I am talking about that because it is yet another burden for our farmers to overcome. They will have to claw back $9 billion, plus some more. That money will not come from computer software. It will not come even from wine exports, although they will be a contributor. It will come from the same industries that have set the standard of living for this country for years past, and will for years into the future. New Zealand First is concerned to talk about the real issues for farmers, which are the dollar, input costs, and the prices for their commodities.

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety) : It is a pleasure to be here today to talk on the Appropriation (2005/06 Estimates) Bill, and particularly to talk about the primary production sector with regard to the agriculture and forestry estimates we are doing. I am a member of the Primary Production Committee, and it has been a vastly more interesting committee to be on, I have to say, than I had ever imagined it would be. Coming from Taranaki, an area where agriculture is a very important part of the region’s make-up—some would say it is the backbone of the province’s income—it is certainly pleasing to me to see that record prices have been enjoyed for primary products for some time. New Zealand is doing well, but I do know that those things are dependent on the value of the New Zealand dollar and on what the markets do.

I think that it is very worthwhile to consider the work we have had before the Primary Production Committee for some time, because it shows the legislative change that the Government has been involved in. I think that by any measure the select committee has been busy. It has had some very good members working very hard on issues, and when we look at the major reforms that have occurred in the dairy industry, the pipfruit industry, the kiwifruit industry, the wine, wool, and meat industries, and even in hops, we see that we have done a lot of work on that committee in responding to the needs of the agricultural and rural constituents of New Zealand. They have made their needs and views very clear.The committee has also done, of course, a lot of work in the aquacultural area, on fisheries, and has looked into some very interesting issues. The Sustainable Farming Fund has, I think, been a really good Government initiative. I am sure other speakers will talk in detail about that, but I want to say that that fund is aimed at helping to tackle obstacles to economic, social, and environmental sustainability in rural communities. I think we would all agree that the fund has been of great benefit to the rural sector.

It seems to me that a lot of issues come into this portfolio area. So far in this debate we have heard about communication, apprenticeships, prices, the value of the New Zealand dollar, land access issues, Kyoto Protocol credits, and transport—all sorts of things come into this area. Let us just start on a few of those issues. Let us look at apprenticeships. They are something I, as a member of Parliament, have been on about, to the point of being like a needle in a cracked record, for many, many years. I am delighted to see that the rural sector, particularly, has picked up on apprenticeships.

Just this week in Parliament the 4,000th Modern Apprentice in the motor trades was presented by the Hon Trevor Mallard with a plaque to celebrate being the 4,000th young person to get a Modern Apprenticeship in the automotive trades. He is from a small rural business. As an automotive electrician from the town of Matamata, he is not a city dweller but a rural person whose company has been in business for many years and absolutely depends on a successful rural policy to remain in business—a successful agricultural policy that actually delivers for rural communities. Without the farming sector doing well, small rural businesses close—it is as simple as that. That particular case was a very good sign. The young man concerned was able to talk about the others he knew of in rural businesses, and he looks forward, no doubt, to owning a rural business one day himself. His employer had bought the business from the gentleman who had owned it when he had worked there as an apprentice himself. So that sort of generational change is going on in rural districts.

How does access to broadband fit into that? We need to have good communications, in an increasingly technological world. In the select committee we have often talked about the need for good communications and access to broadband.

Just recently, we have seen the very successful work done by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in the containment exercise in relation to the foot-and-mouth scare on Waiheke Island. We saw a report in Parliament earlier on the very good exercise that occurred prior to that in the Wairarapa, looking at how we can prepare for any major disastrous incursion of a disease like foot-and-mouth, or perhaps an outbreak of tuberculosis amongst cattle, etc. Those preparations can only be made when there is funding to do so. Funding depends on taxation, and National has not told us where its tax reduction would come from.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : I want to raise this afternoon some very serious issues in respect of the forest industry, which depends on the Government to regulate properly the treatment of timber and to ensure that New Zealanders can have confidence in timber products. That matters because thousands and thousands of New Zealanders have investments in the forestry sector.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that on 11 July, after being approached by a number of players in the timber industry, the Government’s Department of Building and Housing approved a timber product, quite fraudulently and quite wrongly, that is causing huge disruption within the timber industry. My concerns at the time were threefold. The first was the way in which the T1.2 timber was being quite wrongly marketed as the equivalent of H—

Simon Power: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I apologise to the member for interrupting him, but the Hon David Cunliffe has, while out of his seat, been volleying a barrage at my colleague during the course of his contribution. I ask you to consider the fact that, although this is a robust debate, Ministers who shift their seats to advantage themselves—and we are used to Mr Cunliffe doing that—should be careful when interjecting on members who are trying to make a valid contribution to the debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I thank the member, but I would just point out that there has been a fair degree of constant barraging from the Opposition side on many—

Simon Power: Out of their seats?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Mr Power, I am ruling on this point of order. I ask the member to continue.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I raised three serious concerns about the T1.2 product. The first was that it was being grossly mismarketed as being identical to fully treated timber—timber that has been treated all the way through. My second concern was that the product had not been properly tested. My third concern was that the conditions put on the use of T1.2 timber were totally impractical—this idea that when a builder cut the timber, he would have a paintbrush handy with which to paint over the surface, to make sure the timber was properly treated.

When I raised those concerns the Government came out with a number of statements. The first thing it said was that this was the very first it had heard of this problem. In fact, five times on the Close Up programme the Government said that this was the first it had ever heard of this problem. Well, I have a letter in my hand from the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors, dated 3 June last year, which states: “This product in its accreditation, with only a light covering of boron to the outer timber, has been given the same status and standing as a fully core-penetrated timber product, and this is obvious nonsense.” Greg O’Sullivan said: “I am very concerned about the situation of this envelope treatment of timber. It is going to lead to a future disaster.” That is what they wrote to the Government and said.

Later in that interview the Government’s Minister said: “Don’t worry, the timber has been extensively tested.”, and that is where I want to take things a step further today. The testing was done by a Dr Mick Hedley of Scion, which was formerly the Forest Research Institute. He is the person whom the Government is relying on in backing the T1.2 product. Let me quote what this email stated: “T1.2 is a misnomer invented by Tenon which is totally misleading, mischievous, and which I disagree with entirely.” That is from the scientist whom the Government is relying on in backing this timber product. [Interruption] Mr Cunliffe says it does not matter; I tell him it does. It matters because 10,000 homes out there are being built of this timber, and the scientist whom the Government is relying on in backing it says that.

Let me tell members what else the scientist stated: “We tested the active ingredient as a brush-on formulation. We were never asked to test the commercial product.” Thousands of homes around New Zealand are being built with this timber nicknamed “Agent Orange”, and it has never ever been tested. What is worse is that after the billion-dollar leaky home scandal the Government had a duty to ensure that in future timber was properly treated and safe, and it is not doing that. Again I quote Dr Mick Hedley: “I believe the real issue is that the conditions of use, of which I was not consulted at any stage, are impractical from a building perspective, and are probably incompatible with conditions that prevail on many building sites. This is where the Government probably got it wrong.” So the scientist behind this product is saying that it is all very well for him to do the testing, but if we set conditions that are totally inappropriate for the average building site, his testing proves nothing. Members should remember that builders, on cutting this product, are meant to open a tin of paint and paint over the areas they have cut, and that the timber is not meant to get wet. Well, a building about 100 metres from here is made of this “Agent Orange” timber, it is getting wet as we speak, and this Government does nothing.

Now I raise the most serious concern, which is the scientist’s last quote: “I also have concerns that the Government was empowered to approve alternate solutions for preserving timber when there are perfectly adequate standards available. I have a particular concern that there was no public consultation on this action, which is a requirement of all New Zealand standards. It undermines the purpose and the status of standards.” The very scientist whom the Government is relying on in approving a product involved in 50 percent of houses constructed in the last 12 months is saying that this product undermines the standard of treatment in New Zealand. I say “What a disgrace!”.

Three weeks ago the Minister said that the department would have a review of how that product got accredited, and that the review would be completed within a fortnight. Well, that was a week ago; why have we heard nothing? I will tell people why. It is because the Government wants to wait until after Parliament has risen before it fesses up. What is wrong with that is that builders and homeowners are again being left in the lurch by Government members, because they will not come clean and say “We cocked up.” The reality is that the Government cocked up. We have an “Agent Orange” timber out there that is totally inappropriate and is not supported by even the scientist whom the Minister quotes to back it. It is a disgrace!

The Government should come clean today, say it got it wrong, stop this product from being used, and de-accredit it, so that the industry can move forward. We also need an independent inquiry into how it is possible for a timber product to be approved in breach of the new New Zealand standard for treated timber, and when the scientist who supposedly did the treatment work has no confidence in the naming of the product or in the conditions under which it is meant to be used.

This is a very serious issue. Thousands of builders and homeowners want to know the answer. The Government has let the side down. That email is absolutely damning, and it is time for the Government to come clean, to admit that it got it awfully wrong, and to provide some security for those homeowners.

Hon David Cunliffe: Who deregulated the industry?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I ask whether Mr Cunliffe can tell me why this product was approved. I ask whether anyone on the Government benches can tell me why the Government approved this product. Those members cannot tell me; they do not care. The department is having hula parties, kava drinking, and Cowboys and Indians theme parties while people’s homes rot, and, most seriously, the Government has not even ensured that future homes are built to a proper standard. I look forward to a Government member providing an explanation as to why it approved a product in breach of the New Zealand standard, which was adopted only in 2003. Why has the Government ignored the scientist who investigated this product, who has such serious concerns about it?

I seek leave to table an email from Scion, which was formerly the Forest Research Institute, in which the scientist whom the Government has quoted as evidence for it backing the product expresses very serious concerns about this product.

• Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister of Agriculture) : I will deal first with the issue raised at great length by the member who has just resumed his seat. He spoke about the leaky buildings issue, and there is one thing that seems to have escaped his attention: properly designed and properly constructed buildings do not leak. Now it is all very well for Dr Smith and his colleagues to try to make excuses for the jerry-builders of Auckland, the sloppy architects, and the sloppy building inspectors who have not done their jobs properly, and blame it all on the wood, but it does not wash. Those people, including Dr Smith, whose Government was in power when most of these buildings were constructed, should reflect on their own performances instead of trying to pass the blame on to others. Wood is wood, and if it is allowed to get wet and dry, and wet and dry, and be left in a wall full of water, it is going to rot sooner or later. The member should realise that.

Now I go back to members who raised issues concerning rural New Zealand. Harry Duynhoven pointed out the value of training, education, and economic development policies to rural New Zealand. He hit the nail right on the head there. I am proud when I go through my own electorate. The towns of Timaru, Geraldine, Temuka, Waimate, and Twizel have never looked better. They are looking in great shape. They have had 5 years of booming prosperity on the basis of the policies of this Labour Government. They have done well because farming has been doing well, because tourism is doing well, because niche manufacturing is doing well, because industries adding value to the products of our land are doing well, and they are doing well with the enthusiastic and energetic assistance and partnership of this Labour-Progressive coalition Government, and long may that continue.

If members do not believe that they are doing well—because one can probably always find a farmer who has some complaint to make, whether it is about having to pay ACC insurance levies, pay his or her income tax, or fill out his or her GST form, and all those things that make compliance such a chore doing business in the modern world—they should note that according to the statistics derived from the monitor farm survey, the average pastoral farmer in New Zealand has increased his or her net worth over the last 5 years by something closely approaching $400,000 a year. Whoops, $400,000 per year almost, each, per farmer, tax-free capital gain! That is not doing badly, and that is a vote of confidence in the future of farming by the people who are investing their savings, and their profits, in expanding their investment in that industry.

They are not taking the money and running. They are bidding the prices up and up because they know how great the future is looking under the policies that are at present in place. It is a pretty exciting future for provincial and rural New Zealand as a result.

I want to say this in respect of Clayton Cosgrove’s question. He asked a very serious question, and I sat back and waited for someone to answer it, and nobody did. So I will give it a go.

Clayton Cosgrove: Good on you.

Hon JIM SUTTON: I have had reports, you know! He asked what National’s legacy to rural New Zealand was. I think National sort of answered that in its agricultural policy this year. National’s policy does not mention agriculture. Everything in its policy comes from other portfolios. There is nothing about agriculture in it. It is a nothing policy, and its legacy is nothing. We inherited a neglected mess and we have been trying to fix it up. When we get to biosecurity I will deal with that part of it, and biosecurity is a pretty important part for agriculture in New Zealand. But we will have another go at that, and we will not miss that opportunity.

Doug Woolerton asked how New Zealand’s balance of payments deficit—pretty dramatic in its size—would be resolved. He said New Zealand has been spending up large, and there is some truth in that. New Zealanders have been spending up large. New Zealanders are not great savers, I have to say, although the present Government is prudently setting aside money to ensure that the bare essentials will be there for the member and myself, and others, when we reach retirement age. It will be possible to continue New Zealand superannuation at present real levels through the bulge of the retirement of the baby boomers, because we are being prudent and investing now. If individual New Zealanders are also doing that, it will be great, but the Government is making sure it is underwriting the efforts of individual New Zealanders, and so we will do it. As I said, the farmers’ net worth has been going up. So farmers are keeping their investment in their properties, obviously with a high state of confidence that they will increase their incomes accordingly as a result.

The Budget 2005 is great news for agriculture. It builds on a great foundation that has been laid over the previous 5 years. It allocates a further $31 million over 4 years to complete trade agreement negotiations, and that is extremely important to rural New Zealand, because rural New Zealand produces most of New Zealand’s export products, and earns most of New Zealand’s export income, and farmers know the value of getting those markets opened up to creative opportunities.

The Sustainable Farming Fund is now part of mainstream and core Vote Agriculture and Forestry funding. The Sustainable Farming Fund is one of the aspects of Government policy that I am most proud of in connection with agriculture because it backs the innovation, the energy, and the brains of rural New Zealanders when they have good ideas. It provides a bit of seed money to get them started and to give them an opportunity to put together community-based programmes, to do a bit of relevant research, to make use of the information gained or the information that already exists but has not been translated in a form readily accessible to farmers, and it supports sustainable environmental management and sustainable and thriving rural communities.

I think that is great and I want to mention that an independent assessment of the Sustainable Farming Fund that analysed a sample of the more than 300 projects that have been funded throughout New Zealand estimates that those projects potentially will contribute between $350 million and $500 million a year extra to the New Zealand economy. That, of course, will not happen unless further investments are made by the people in a position to make them, or who are motivated to do so, but it does indicate the value of well-targeted research money, even in the relatively modest amounts we have made available in that particular programme so far, the value of that, and how that can multiply for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

It was great news in this year’s Budget that that was baseline. It will be there unless the Nats get back in and cancel it the way they cancelled its predecessor programme, the farm partnership, which the National Party, when trying to get into office, had promised that it would keep going. However, in its first Budget, the “mother of all Budgets”, it cancelled the funding. The programme was kept going on a purely voluntary basis, with no funding, and, of course, the inevitable happened. So much for National Party promises! Rural New Zealanders should remember that history when they vote next month.

Hon DAVID CARTER (National) : It will certainly be my hope that a vote that is so critical to the New Zealand economy is a vote on which all parties in the Chamber will work constructively to achieve the best outcomes. I take this opportunity to thank my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee for the way that we conducted a debriefing this morning into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s biosecurity exercises. I am referring to Operation Taurus, which was a simulated exercise that took place a couple of months ago in the Manawatū, and also to the hoax scare on Waiheke Island immediately following that. During that select committee process, all members of the committee worked diligently with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to make sure that we did our best to help to identify the inadequacies that had been shown to exist in our response to what was a hoax scare.

I want to talk specifically about two issues. One is a concern that the Primary Production Committee has expressed on numerous occasions over the time I have been involved with it, which is over the availability of a standing army to respond to a major disease incursion, particularly of foot-and-mouth disease. In the past, though we have been unsure of the availability of that standing army, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has taken the opportunity to assure us that it did exist. The debrief this morning showed clearly to the committee that there are inadequacies in the availability of that standing army. I am pleased that the ministry acknowledged that and will be looking at ways and means to make sure that we achieve far better cooperation with sectors such as the stock and station industry, the meat-processing industry, and the dairy processing industry—people who obviously have the skills and the manpower resources to be muscled into any genuine response.

The second issue the committee was certainly concerned about was the accuracy or, more correctly, the inaccuracy of the initial database as to where farms existed and where livestock existed, and as to the numbers of livestock on particular properties. Again, the ministry has acknowledged that more work needs to be done. To be fair to AgriQuality, which has over a long period of time supplied the agri-base data, it has a reasonable system of accounting for those who are genuine farmers. But the incident on Waiheke Island showed a glaring inadequacy in the boundary between genuine farmers and lifestyle farmers who held a few livestock. They have as much ability to assist with the spread of foot-and-mouth disease as has any genuine farming operation located adjacent to an outbreak.

In my opening comments I said that I hoped biosecurity would be treated seriously and in a more apolitical way. Already we have had an interjection from Clayton Cosgrove that Don Brash had suggested the original response to the scare on Waiheke Island should not have been carried out in the way it was. That is absolutely not right. For the record, I confirm that on the day when Mr Brash was interviewed by Television One his first comment was that the incident was very serious for New Zealand. His second comment was that if it were a hoax, he was surprised that the Government was responding to that extent, and his third comment—the most important comment—was that, however, he wholeheartedly endorsed the Government’s response. Although Government members enjoy playing cheap, incorrect politics, I remind them that biosecurity is of far greater importance than that.

While I am on that point, I also ask the Minister to start being more honest in his press releases. I remind him of his press release immediately after the Budget, with the headline “Government boosts biosecurity again’’, which stated ‘“Biosecurity funding has been boosted again’, Biosecurity Minister Jim Sutton said today”. Yet when Audit New Zealand came before the select committee in preparation for our examination into this vote, it was able to tell us that the total appropriations of $157 million were less than those in the 2004 Budget, which were $164 million. I want to make sure that Mr Sutton will take the opportunity to assure this Committee that he and his spin merchants will start to tell the truth.

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister for Biosecurity) : It is certainly a good indication of the level of desperation in the National Party that its spokesperson on agriculture should spend his call in the biosecurity estimates debate trying to paint some whitewash over the comments made by his leader Dr Don Brash when we found we had the threat of the release of the foot-and-mouth virus on Waiheke Island. There is no question that Dr Brash was caught out in public saying that he was very surprised that the New Zealand Government would make this matter public. Frankly, subsequent events proved that that was entirely the wise thing to do. The Government had responded completely appropriately, and Dr Brash had put his big foot right in his mouth, put the other foot in there after it, and danced a jig to the acute embarrassment of his troops back here in Parliament. They had to take him outside to explain the whole matter to him in words of one syllable. Subsequently, after that, he kept his mouth shut. I think those words were all of one syllable: “Keep your mouth shut, Don”. That was sound advice, but of course, he has been following that advice only spasmodically every since, which gives us some confidence in the approaching election.

I want to speak on the matter of biosecurity, because the one thing that I do agree on with the member who has just resumed his seat—or who has beaten a hasty retreat—is that biosecurity is extremely important to New Zealand. The New Zealand economy is founded upon exotic species— both plant and animal species—that are not indigenous to New Zealand. Fortuitously as much as by good management, those species were imported largely without the serious pests and diseases that accompany them and limit their productivity in other parts of the world. We have to put a lot of effort into trying to maintain that comparative advantage, and we do.

When this Government took office we found an absolute mess. We found a growing number of tourists and crew coming into this country without being examined or inspected to make sure they were not bringing in risk material. Research showed that tonnes and tonnes of meat products that could carry foot and mouth disease were coming in unchecked in pockets, in cabin bags, and in hand bags of passengers coming to New Zealand, and being distributed around New Zealand. They were being chucked out car windows, and so on. The incursion of fruit fly in Auckland some years ago was caused by someone bringing in a capsicum with fruit fly larvae. No doubt the passenger whistled his way through the airport because the Government of the day had not put enough quarantine officials on the job to do it properly.

We have done the job. We have made New Zealand’s quarantine system the most rigorous system at the border of any country in the world and we will keep it that way. We now ensure that every sea-freight container is opened in the presence of a properly authorised, trained person. We have stemmed the flow of new incursions, in the face of an ever-increasing torrent of freight and travellers, and we will make the system better and better. Continuous improvement is the only rational, responsible response to the situation and the challenges that we face. It was not happening before we took office and now it is.

If the member who spoke before me is saying that from now on this will be a bipartisan policy, I would say that is great; it is good to see a man big enough to admit his failures and mistakes and undertake to mend his ways in the future. I hope he is speaking for all his colleagues, although it will be some years before we find out.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) : Probably the worst report I have ever seen on the public sector is the June 2005 report called Education Sector Review. Those who take an interest in education will find it a very useful summary of the stewardship of the current Minister of Education. The report has been done by the three top civil servants in New Zealand. It is a 64-page saga of a leaderless, confused, demoralised, and chaotic bureaucracy—and not a cheap bureaucracy, I might add; it is one on which the Government spends over $100 million a year. After 5 years of this Government, the leading civil servants of New Zealand have said that this bureaucracy is in such bad shape that we should not do anything to it because it will make it worse. They say we will make things worse if we try to fix it. I invite anyone with an interest in education to read .

I also invite anyone interested in the effect of interest-free student loans to visit two websites. One is the Labour Party website, which has a calculator on it that tells people what their overall savings will be. The other is the Inland Revenue Department website, which has a calculator that tells people about loan repayments. One would think that if people went to the Inland Revenue Department website and used its calculator, then went to the Labour website and used its calculator, they would get the same answer. But they do not. They do not get the same answer. [Interruption] No, they do not. They get a completely different answer. I do not know why people get completely different answers, depending on whether they use the calculator on the Inland Revenue Department website or the one on the Labour Party website. I am asking the Minister in the chair, Trevor Mallard, to explain it to us, because 78,000 students have been to the Labour Party calculator to work out what they will save with interest-free student loans. Unfortunately, some of those students also went to the Inland Revenue Department calculator and tried to compare like with like.

These people are not economists with degrees in econometrics; they are not accountants. They are just normal graduates who are trying to work out what they will save with an interest-free student loan. If they have the average loan of $15,000—that is the average; not $60,000, as the Labour Party official who appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Herald said; the did not say he was a Labour Party official, and nor did he, I understand—and are on an average income of $35,000, and they put those numbers into the two respective calculators, they get completely different answers.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Do you know why?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Minister has a chance to take a call and tell us why. All I am saying to the Minister is that any student who goes to the websites and tries to compare the results gets a big difference. The Labour Party website tells him or her that it takes 18 years and 4 months to pay off the $15,000 loan, and the Inland Revenue Department website says it takes 11 years and 11 months. That is a big difference. Clearly, someone is misleading the people who use the calculators.

I do not know how Labour’s calculator is set up, and I do not know how the Inland Revenue Department calculator is set up. All I know is that there is public interest in what one can save from having an interest-free student loan, just as, I think, there would be public interest in what one could save with an interest-free mortgage on one’s house. I suggest that if Labour members genuinely believe that removing interest from student loans means students will borrow less, why do they not try legislating against interest on mortgages, because then we will all borrow less and we will be better off? So why do they not do that? This is Social Credit recharged with 21st century atomic energy. The Minister should explain why those numbers are so different.

BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) : I rise to speak in this estimates debate particularly on the issue of teachers. The largest line item in the estimates concerns teachers. Because of the largeness of the monies allocated in the estimates in that regard, I would like to talk a little about teachers. Teachers do matter. I do not think anyone would deny that teachers matter, but we are talking about quality teachers. Quality teachers matter. This morning one or two of us, including the Minister, were at Newlands Intermediate for the launch of a national school strategy. That school promotes its teachers and the quality of those teachers. I was impressed by that event, and I know that a lot of really good work is going on in schools around this nation.

In order to get well-qualified, quality teachers we need to bring at least three matters into the equation. I would like the Minister and others to realise that we need to have more strategic direction in teacher recruitment, in order to attract quality candidates into the profession and support them throughout their careers. When it comes to strategic recruitment, we need to have a system that will look at increasing the numbers when there is a shortage of teachers. Right now, there is a shortage in the early childhood area and in some parts of the secondary school sector. At the same time we need an ability within the ministry to see that the number of funded places is reduced when there is an oversupply. I think that is the case at present in the primary sector. So a juggling in the strategic recruitment balance needs to take place.

We want to help hard-to-staff schools to attract teachers. They need them, and I think one of the ways of looking at that—and I am not sure whether this is in the projections in the vote—is to pay more in order to attract those quality teachers. May I also suggest that United Future recognises there is a huge difference, or that a huge difference can occur, when principals are properly recruited, especially for those schools we know are struggling at the tail of the educational queue. Offering higher salaries, and making positions more attractive for exceptional candidates to lead those schools, are issues that I think need to be targeted in these estimates. United Future feels that one of the ways through that for teacher trainees is to bring in a bonded scheme, whereby they are recruited and bonded through scholarships and student loan write-offs—through those types of programmes.

We must make sure that the trainees recruited for schoolteaching are quality trainees. When the Science and Education Committee looked at that issue and at the teaching profession last year, we noted that the minimum entry standards require aptitude, as well as suitability, for teaching. We noted, I believe, that we need to raise the esteem of the profession by appealing to high-performing graduates. Having stated that in that report, the evidence regarding the importance of teacher aptitude is, we noted, far more compelling and clear than any existing evidence about teacher training as such. We heard many discussions from many providers as to what makes a good teacher training programme, but there was a commonality that teacher aptitude was one of the issues that should be developed as part of the assessment of trainees. The pre-service programme should give greater recognition to prior learning, as well.

LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) : I am really pleased to take a call to talk about education in New Zealand. I spoke the other night in the Chamber and it was really good to celebrate all the major achievements of this Government. In particular, I spoke about Modern Apprenticeships and how successful that scheme is, and I am really heartened today to see yet another announcement from our Government that we will be bringing in yet another 5,000 Modern Apprenticeships. That scheme was shelved, was scrapped, under the previous National Government.

Mark Peck: Really!

LYNNE PILLAY: Yes, it was scrapped under a National Government. So it is really good to see that those quality apprenticeships that Labour has brought back will grow, in the next term of a Labour Government.

Also, I cannot go past talking about the wonderful feedback I have had about our announcement of no interest on student loans. That has been a major success. I am really heartened by the young people who have rung me and said that they remember when Labour lifted interest while they were studying, but this is just too good to be true. They said that this gives them hope to look towards their future, and then once they have finished their studying, they know they have employment opportunities in this country under a Labour-led Government and they also know they will have things like paid parental leave when they have their children.

We have quality early childhood education. That is another thing I really want to comment on. When I look at our early childhood education policy I feel really proud. We know how successful children are when they have quality early childhood education. That is what we in Labour are absolutely committed to delivering. When in 2006 we bring in 20 free hours per week of quality early childhood education in community-based centres, that will give tremendous opportunity to young children, but also to young parents because they can go to work or take time out from their children, knowing that the children are getting quality education, education that will give them a good grounding for when they move on to school.

I have to comment about how proud I am of our Government’s commitment to education. I think it is a 40 percent increase that we have put into funding. I just look at my own electorate. When I look at the new developments, extensions, and halls, I see a real celebration of education. It is something I feel really proud of.

Something we in Labour hold very dear is the right of every kid in New Zealand to go to his or her local school. We are absolutely committed to that. What do we hear from the other side? We hear that they would abolish school zoning and abolish the right for any child to go to his or her local school. Whilst we are going down that same old tired, failed policy line, we hear that they would reintroduce bulk funding, but this time make it mandatory.

Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s right.

LYNNE PILLAY: Maurice Williamson says that that is right. He is proud of it. I know that going backwards to the failed policies of the tired old National Government of the 1990s would not find favour with people who are visionary and forward-looking about education in New Zealand.

When we look at special education, we see the extra funding that this Labour-led Government has put into special education to support children who need added assistance to set them off on their path in life. We in Labour can hold our heads very high and feel very proud about the things we have delivered, but we know there is much more. Much more will be delivered in the next term of a Labour-led Government.

Hon Paul Swain: Hear, hear!

LYNNE PILLAY: Paul Swain has a new baby, and he is looking forward to that little girl getting quality early childhood education under a Labour-led Government.

Hon Trevor Mallard: She’ll be a tertiary student under a Labour Government, too.

LYNNE PILLAY: Exactly; that is right. And as a tertiary student, she will not be charged interest on her loan. As a tertiary student, that young, hopeful Kiwi will be doing very well.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) : Firstly, I tell the previous speaker, Lynne Pillay, that in fact the extra funding this Government has put into special education is miserly, compared with the increased amounts that the New Zealand First - National coalition put into the 1997 and 1998 Budgets. Secondly, I say to the Minister that it was a good launch today, but that I am the one education spokesperson who genuinely can give a guarantee to the people there that, following the election, that strategy will be continued. Perhaps it would have been good if the Minister had told people where the $30 million of building money that he has taken out of the code development funding has gone. That would have helped. Nevertheless, it was a very good launch.

I say to the people who are listening to these proceedings that out on the hustings I keep hearing National Party candidates and members say that they are really indignant about the burgeoning bureaucracy that has formed under this particular administration. They often refer to education—they use education as an example of that. People hear the story that 2,000 extra bureaucrats are working for the Ministry of Education. I say that those Nats are being fairly loose with the truth. The reality is that the Special Education Service, which used to include speech therapists, psychologists, and all those things, was absorbed into the ministry, and it had 1,600 people. The Nats call them unnecessary bureaucrats, and say they will cut them. They say they will cut all those bureaucrats, so we will not have psychologists and the people who work in special education. Other people were absorbed into the ministry from Early Childhood Development. There had been a duplication of services, and for efficiency gains that group was put back into the ministry.

Really, in this case National needs to be honest with the people it is trying to portray that story to. I have had a look at what is included in the $423 million increase for education in this Budget, and at what has actually gone towards what we may call bureaucrats: those responsible for the administration of regulations, the administration of education sector resourcing, ministerial services, policy advice, and all those sorts of things. The total increase is $26.7 million—the funding has gone from $227 million to $253.7 million. In most of the areas there has been no increase at all, or there has been a reduction. The marked increase is in the provision of information, funding for which has jumped from $45.9 million to $61.7 million.

Then we can look at what comes out of that output class. What is it? It is work arising from the curriculum stocktake—and National would stop that. That work is critical. In fact, the stocktake was set in place by the previous National Government. It is work on the development of an Internet-capable assessment tool—that refers to asTTle, one of the finest assessment tools that has been developed in the whole world. Will National cut that? It will cut the implementation of an education information programme for families and communities. There is work on effective teaching initiatives and initiatives for adult literacy. When we really look at what National is talking about, we see we have to ask some very serious questions. Listeners should not be sucked in by National’s spin, and National should be a lot more honest with the people out in the electorates.

However, what the public should be concerned about—and this is something the Hon Bill English referred to—is the Education Sector Review. The problem is not one of the numbers that have been exposed through that review, but of the actual quality and operation of the bureaucracy. That is a really damning report. I do not think that the Minister can be very proud of the report. It demonstrates a whole pile of things. It demonstrates the real reason why Simon Power rolls his eyes every time the education bureaucrats come to the Education and Science Committee and start to give off all their verbiage.

Simon Power: I frown, you know.

Hon BRIAN DONNELLY: Oh, no. I say to Mr Power that there is a distinctive rolling of his eyes. The report shows a total non-alignment of the different agencies, and a lack of progress towards any goals established by the present Government. It questions the leadership in the sector, and asks some very serious things, as Bill English said. It states that things are so bad that the agencies should not be realigned at this point in time, because we have to get things on track. It states that the agencies do not listen effectively. That is what we have continually heard from submitters and stakeholders at the select committee—they say that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, in particular, does not listen. In general, the agencies do not have the essential capability, and, let us face it, that has been the Minister’s responsibility for almost 6 years now. His own Education Sector Review states that the education agencies do not have the essential capability at the level required to support the magnitude of the changes that this Government has required of them.

No one else but this Government can be blamed for that. The present Government has to be blamed for saying that those were the changes it wanted to have put in place, but for not putting in place the bureaucratic resources or the capacity for lining things up in a way that would make them happen.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) : The Minister has a number of questions to answer. When I read the Education Sector Review I see that he has more questions to answer, in fact, than any other Minister I have come across. I want him to answer this one: the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) has been something of a controversial matter—particularly this year. In fact, it has been controversial since it started, but there was a major scandal at the start of the year about scholarship. Given the extensive publicity given to that scandal, I would have thought that any Minister who cared about the young people of New Zealand, and the qualification they get for all their hard work at secondary school, would pay some attention. One would think he would round up all those thousands of officials and tell them that it needed sorting out. The tells us that he did not do that. On page 41 it states: “There is an urgent need to stabilise NCEA,”. I suppose that is why we pay senior civil servants $300,000, to figure that out! They should just ask sixth-formers.

It goes on to state: “and there is a view that greater Ministerial involvement and drive would assist this.” That is bureaucratese for saying that he is doing nothing. It was the State Services Commissioner, who was responsible to the Minister, who said that. For his own chief official to say that he is lazy is a huge risk, but he said it. He put it in print. I have never seen that before—the most senior official in a department says that a Minister is lazy.

What could be more important than stabilising the NCEA if someone is a Minister of Education? What could be more important than 130,000 young New Zealanders turning up to classrooms every day, working hard, full of aspiration and ambition? Well, they have found out—no one has told them yet, but we will—that the Minister’s senior official thinks he was not doing anything to stabilise NCEA.

I am sure he had plenty of ministerial involvement and drive to get to the test matches, and to get to China to destroy our overseas student market—the more he goes, the quicker the numbers drop. But he was not stabilising the NCEA. That is just one of the sad tales that is laid out in vivid detail in the Education Sector Review.

There are a couple of other ones, and I will hold the Committee’s interest with just one. We have had 2 years of debate about the quality of tertiary courses, and this is what the officials conclude about the Government agencies that overlook quality in tertiary education: “it”—meaning the 10 pages of description beforehand—“means that there is no independent assurance of either the quality of these courses or the credit value which is a key driver of costs”.

So we have spent $100 million on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Tertiary Education Commission, and bits of the ministry per year—I do not mean $100 million over 5 years; Labour always inflates its figures—and the conclusion, having spent that $100 million, is that there is no independent assurance of the quality of courses.

I say to the Minister that he may think he is the toughest, smartest, smoothest political operator, and the pride of a generation of the left. That is what he thinks. The only one who thinks more in terms of that is Steve Maharey, who was equally responsible. But Minister Mallard has left the most appalling mess in education, and when I say “left”, I do so advisedly.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) : I congratulate the member who has just sat down. I think that was probably the best speech of the year from the Opposition. As we are sitting here, a lot of us are contrasting the quality of the questioning from the former and the current Leader of the Opposition. Bill English is the former Leader of the Opposition, and he gets up on his hind legs in the Chamber and asks questions. He is the one whom the whips let speak. Murray McCully says to Don Brash that the National whips will get Bill English to speak, because they really know that Don Brash is not good enough.

I want to get back to some of the questions that have been asked. I thank Bill English for suggesting that I am smooth. He is the first person who has ever suggested that, and it is not something that I have ever claimed. In fact, some people are of the opinion that the opposite of that is true.

I want to make it clear and put it on the record, though, that I stand by the student loan calculator on the Labour website. I want to run through the assumptions that are in that calculator, which shows the massive savings in student loans according to the policy that was announced on Tuesday. First, it is assumed the repayment threshold will increase each year at the rate of inflation. That is the current Government policy. That may not be built into the Inland Revenue Department assumptions, but that is not the responsibility of the Labour Party—it is a matter of looking at that website.Second, the current—[Interruption] John Key is the six-house man, who talks about productivity. The current interest rate is made up of 7 percent—an inflation adjustment of 2.8 percent and base interest of 4.2 percent. That is in the Labour Party system; I do not know whether the same assumption is built into the Inland Revenue Department system. Income growth is set by the user. It is something that works according to what actually happens. People’s incomes grow. The automatic setting is 3 percent, because that is about what income growth has been over the years.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: This is an explanation.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, people do not like it. I know that the Tories hate it. They have an inkling of what has happened in the last week, and they know why Don Brash will not get up in this Parliament and ask questions, so I am explaining to them why that is happening. [Interruption]

That member wishes to become the Minister of Finance, but I understand that his colleagues already say that his tax cuts do not add up. [Interruption] No, no—I tell the member that they say his tax cuts do not add up. The reason the National Party is not prepared to release information on its proposed tax cuts is that some of its members, including a former Minister of Finance, say that they do not add up.

• Progress reported.
• Report adopted.