Moroney Sue: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12086. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I would like to take the opportunity to speak on the early childhood education part of the Vote Education estimates for this year. In doing so I just want to correct a statement that was made by a previous speaker who actually I think accused teachers of being dishonest. Again it is the National Government having a crack at teachers. I do not know what it is that the National Government has got against teachers but it was actually early childhood education where it started the war on teachers.The Government started it back in 2010 under the then Minister of Education Anne Tolley when there was $400 million cut out of Vote Education for early childhood education. That $400 million that was cut out at that point has never been reinstated. That is why teachers complain about funding cuts in early childhood education. If any of the National MPs opposite dared to go to their local kindergartens and into their early childhood sector and ask them about whether they are funded to employ 100 percent qualified staff any longer they would be told very clearly that they are no longer funded for that because that Government cut the funding for 100 percent qualified staff.That is where the dumbing down of education started. It started in early childhood education and of course what we know is that once the Government thought it could get away with dumbing down the quality of education for early childhood education it then started to attack the compulsory education sector. The Minister of Education may laugh. She thinks she has got away with it. She thinks she has had a great old time actually dumbing down the quality of our education but New Zealand parents and children are going to be the worse off for that Minister. It is not in fact a joke for those families who immediately faced an 11 percent increase in the early childhood education fees that they paid in the year immediately after the 2010 cuts to qualified staff in early childhood education.We are still waiting to hear the outcome of the Early Childhood Education Task Force report recommendations. It has a recommendation sitting in front of the Minister to this very day that actually says that the universal subsidy for 20 hours’ free early childhood education should be cut. That is what a Government task force has recommended to the Minister. That recommendation has been sitting before the Minister for about 18 months now and the Government has not been brave enough to move on it. So we wait with bated breath to see whether there are further cuts coming up in early childhood education and whether parents will in fact be paying even more in fees. The Minister may find it funny that parents are having to struggle to find more money to pay for early childhood education for their children but I can tell the Minister that families up and down the country do not find it very funny at all.There is a big question mark over where the slight increase in participation is coming from because it appears that it is coming from unresearched non - evidence-based supported playgroups. We do not know what the quality outcomes are for children using supported playgroups but this Government does not care. All it cares about is whether it can put the numbers on the page and the bums on the seats. It is not interested at all in the quality of the early childhood experience for those children. That is a real problem for the future of this country because all of the research and evidence tells us—yes we on this side of the Chamber look at that—that it is quality early childhood education that makes the difference not fly-by-night early childhood education not a bit here and a bit there—Hon Tau Henare: Name one fly-by-nighter—name one.SUE MORONEY: —and not supported playgroups Mr Henare which we have absolutely no information on. We have no evidence about what the quality is of the outcomes for those children. Yet that is what the Government is pinning all of its hopes on. It keeps going on about the 70 percent increase that it has apparently put into early childhood education funding for about a 2 percent increase in participation. Well I ask the Committee whether that is a good spend of money.