David Seymour

So Christchurch North College was actually set up by four state school principals who said we have students that our schools can't reach. They're not showing up at all. There needs to be something different for them. And I actually admire them for doing this because most of the state school sector just thinks charter schools are some sort of anti-Christ, but these guys embraced it. And now this school is engaging kids who were completely disengaged. So are there numbers below the target? Absolutely. But for a year where they started off with a very small number of students, and then each term uh they met, they added more students who had barely been attending uh at all. And so as the years gone on, uh at an individual level, uh they're getting more and more students to attend, but they're also adding uh new students who had who don't have a good history of attendance and improving them. So, you know, that this these numbers will be analyzed with that full context that it's their start-up year. And I actually think overall uh they're gonna end up looking pretty good in years to come once you acknowledge the the the foundation, the reason they exist and the way the stats have come together in their first year.

Um, look, it's it's probably mastery. And again, you know, mastery are a school in Christchurch that have not met their target. However, uh they uh have been almost explicitly set up for students with dyslexia and other, you know, specific diagnosed learning disabilities. Sixty percent of their students have those types of challenges. Uh and yet they're pretty close to meeting their target in their first year. So that to me uh shows the difference charter schools can make. I'm not going to talk about all the other ones that smashed their targets in their first year. I mean, that's great. But the ones that are taking children who, you know, their alternative uh was basically to be disengaged, written off, consigned, and now they're showing that they can work towards those targets and in many cases making them.

Oh, I look pretty reasonable. Um I've got to say, I think there's a lot of things there. Uh resource management reform. Yep, uh what we're doing with that new law, I I think is going to be a game changer for New Zealand. Um bringing in uh more activities into farm environment plans that don't need any resource consent in the meantime. Yep, well, you know, Andrew Hoggard is is doing that.

There's a lot of well, you know, if you've done well, it's probably just luck and we're gonna whack you for it. Um if you haven't done well, we're gonna subsidize you till you start moving. I think at the end of the day, uh the difference between us and the Labour Party is that we actually do believe you get one shot in your time on earth, and you've got to make the most of it. Uh similarly, you should be responsible for your actions. The other direction, so you you know, that's that's really the difference here. Um, and so whatever, whoever their list is, whatever policies they eventually uh release. Uh we know that the net effect of a Labor government is that the harder you try, the more you get whacked. Uh they drain the joy from life, and that tends to hit rural New Zealand the hardest because if you're rural, uh you tend to take more risks, live by your wits in a bit of good or bad weather more than most.

Oh, look, pretty reasonable. Um I've got to say I think there's a lot of things there. Uh resource management reform. Yep, uh what we're doing with that new law, I I think is going to be a game changer for New Zealand. Um bringing in uh more activities into farm environment plans that don't need any resource consent in the meantime. Yep, well, you know, Andrew Hogarth is is doing that.

There's a lot of, well, you know, if you've done well, it's probably just luck and we're gonna whack you for it. Um if you haven't done well, we're gonna subsidize you till you start moving. I think at the end of the day, uh the difference between us and the Labour Party is that we actually do believe you get one shot in your time on earth and you've got to make the most of it. Uh similarly you should be responsible for your actions. The other directions. So you you know that's that's really the difference here. Um and so whatever, whoever their list is, whatever policies they eventually uh release, uh, we know that the net effect of a Labor government is that the harder you try, the more you get whacked. Uh they drain the joy from life, and that tends to hit rural New Zealand the hardest because if you're rural, uh you tend to take more risks, live by your wits in a bit of good or bad weather more than most.

It's a huge sum. And you might you might ask the question, how does that fit into the debate about rural versus urban? Uh so it's possible that's the same. I'm just asking how they would pay it. Yeah. That's the question I would ask. Well, it's it's basically 70-5 cents an hour. So um, if you're earning 28 bucks an hour with some sort of median wage requirement, and we made that 2725, that's the seasonal workers. That's still a pretty good deal if you're coming from Salar, say for seven months. Uh, but it would also make a contribution to New Zealand's infrastructure. Very difficult to pay up front, though, for a lot of this. Yeah, and so like I say, I mean you work out we'll we'll release a full manifesto with that level of detail. But I think the basic idea that's you know, we can't keep widening our capital base by trying to accommodate more people, more roads, more hospitals, uh, if we don't have some way of paying for that.

Help us settle into beat. We're the ripping for full of funny, even if we're all creatures of heat. It's a fine line that we're working together for better pushes and the temptation to a rearing. Let's take a note of the corners we stand in. There's many points as the hairs on the chinny chin chin when the news that we're watching is hairy. No one all the things that we need to be wary of. Like the rich have the hand up for rewards, while the many have to work out what they can't afford. And the rest of us need attention. Or maybe have questions for tomorrow intervention. Other media are still dwelling and trivial facts. It's gotta come down to a welcoming vibe. I'll have a lean either this way and that will be in a lies by what you pass with the evil in the world trying to mess with your head, and you're sitting on the catch of thick chivalry stand. Each night tonight's the gonna sing you to bed.

Well, let me get to that. But I mean, first of all, Farmac's whole job is to make sure we're getting the best bang for buck, and I I trust them to do that. But so far as the um uh diabetes, look what's happening is there's a proposal. It's open to consultation uh until next Thursday. It's not actually final, but the proposal is to change the clinical criteria for getting diabetes prevention drugs. And that means that you'll no longer have stories like I've heard many, many times. I went to my doctor, they said, yep, if you were Māori or Pacific, you would qualify for this for free. But because you're not, you have to pay. We've got to stop that. It's so divisive. So instead, uh Farmac are changing the clinical criteria. So around 10,000 more people overall will qualify. About a third of those people uh will be Māori or Pacific anyway. Anyone who's currently on these drugs uh will continue to get them, so nothing's been taken away from anybody. But of course, all the loves and your dear old uh Tianuah uh at one news uh she's misreading the the studies uh from Waikato Uni and and getting into a ladder. But this is actually a positive thing. No discrimination, more access, nobody loses anything.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Now I see the dangers of doing morning media. Um look, but you you're you're you're right. Um you know, the the we you we talked about this a few weeks ago, the operating costs per student day by day once the school's set up. The data we're releasing today shows that if you want to start a new school of a hundred students, uh, there's a cost to doing that for a state school, and there's a cost to doing that for a charter school. We actually give charter schools a much harder start um by about two hundred thousand dollars in their first year in terms of what they get to set up uh for a state school, they get funding for a principal, for example, for their first five terms, they get funding for a certain number of students for their first five terms. We basically fund them uh pretty generously for their first term. After that, they get uh paid for the number of students that go through the door. Uh and so as a result, uh those start-up components are actually lower for charges than for state schools. And I hope that if we keep just releasing hard data like this, we might even win over the union side.

No, that there's no right number, but when you consider that this means we've basically got a regulator of some sort for every town the size of fielding uh in this country. It does feel like we're a small country with far too big a government. And then you look at some specific examples. We we drilled into dogs because it's just a bit of fun. I mean, there's five different government agencies that regulate dogs. There's 11 different laws uh that regulate dogs, uh, and then there's a bunch of sub-agencies. I mean, then there's the the police, the SPCA, and so on. Um, so there's actually just a crazy number of people involved in regulating dogs. Now, why does that matter? Because the minister for the local government is currently trying to, you know, deal to dog attacks. The number of people he has to deal with if he's going to do anything meaningful. I'm not saying he won't succeed, but you just feel that a lot of things would be easier if we looked at these and said, hey, maybe we need fewer agencies focused on doing things that are essential. We get better results, less costs, and it'll be easier to fix things.

Uh, because it didn't happen when I promised it because there's three parties, and of course, you know, you can be there every day harassing the other two, but at the end of the day, uh, you know, you lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink. I think what has made them drink is the financial reality, and this is another thing I've said that sooner or later uh financial reality is going to drive us towards the sum of the things Ax's been saying. Uh, and the other reason I believe this will happen is that the Treasury has now put it into the books. So if we don't do this, and frankly, heaven forbid it, another government got in and didn't do this after November, then they are going to have to adjust up their spending forecast, therefore borrow more money, run bigger deficits uh for longer. And I think that is simply not credible uh for any government in a country that's already on watch from the ratings agencies right now.