Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill—and that's not Grant Robertson. The Greens support pay parity and have for a long time because we recognise that teachers' work conditions are actually our kids' learning conditions and quality affordable early childhood education (ECE) can provide a foundational learning experience for our children can help identify specific learning needs early. It can support children's positive socialisation support families with parenting and break the isolation that quite a lot of parents experience. It helps maintain women's participation in the workforce and many women's mental health by virtue of that participation. The gains from attending quality early childhood education are greatest for low-income families. There are so many social goods from quality affordable early childhood education and it's something we should all care about. I can vividly remember my first experience trying to teach a group of 20 four-year-olds and I've got to admit it was a complete disaster. I tried to teach them without having any experience of four-year-olds and once you lose your nerve in front of a group of 20 four-year-olds it's chaos. I've got to say it was only 30 minutes but it's seared into my memory as a complete horror. I hope that that wasn't the experience of the kids but the classroom was a mess at the end of that 30 minutes. So I have huge respect for the skill and the knowledge that goes into supporting our littlest learners. In the words of one of our trained teachers Holly we teach little people how to be people. It's the foundation of all future learning and relationship-building for their whole lives. We teach children expectations and kaupapa around life how to be kind and caring and respectful people and building their social skills physical skills problem-solving and building resilience. So much respect to these teachers.So this piece of legislation is basically—to be technical it will set a new section 548(5)(A) which will ensure that the Minister can direct funds to relate to matters that include employment conditions such as remuneration and be specified to help achieve employment relations aims specified by the Minister. This is necessary because at the moment our broader ECE picture is slightly I think—understating it possibly—messy. A 2020 survey found that more than one-quarter of ECE teachers wouldn't put their own child into care of the centre that they worked in. They were highlighting concerns—and this was a survey of I think over 4000 teachers that was shut off early because so many responded—with an overemphasis on occupancy rates and making money rather than providing quality care and education. Other reports as well have found that the quality of ECE has been deeply affected by the trend towards private provision in the sector. On average not-for-profit services are providing higher quality services than for-profit services. This is also consistent—not surprisingly perhaps—with international findings as well. For-profit centres tend to pay their staff lower wages and have lower ratios of qualified staff both of which are strong predictors of quality and factors that lead to higher staff turnover which also impacts children's learning. As I said at the beginning the condition of the teachers is the condition of our children. ECE centres are struggling to retain qualified staff particularly outside of kindergartens because since 2002 the Government has been funding kindergartens to pay for collective agreement costs that have been negotiated—obviously collective agreement"—collectively. That's resulted in a massive difference and inequity in pay for those working within the kindergarten sector and those outside of it: up to I understand 48 or 49 percent difference in pay between people doing the exact same job in a kindergarten or a private ECE. The Government has recognised this call for pay parity and there was a significant amount of money in the last Budget towards addressing this to get people on the same starting rate. But then not long after that we saw articles in the media where the Minister was having to speak quite sternly to some of these private providers that his expectation was that that money would be sent to and put towards the salaries of the staff because that was what it was for. But there were concerns being raised through the unions and from teachers that that money was being spent—instead of on the wages which is what it was intended for—on things like maintenance and actually shoring up the profit lines of those businesses. So when we've heard from members of the Opposition that this is—you know really there should just be high levels of trust well there were high levels of trust. We have tested the environment of letting the market solve this problem and we are living with the results and it is not serving our children. So this piece of legislation is an essential back up to ensure that we improve the conditions of our teachers and deliver on pay parity because that will deliver for our children. The Greens are pleased that this legislation is going to a select committee and will be keen to understand what powers exactly understand what powers this will give the Minister that aren't currently provided for in the legislation—I haven't quite got my head around that—and to check that this will be future-proofed through different changes of Governments to make sure that we are always consistently ensuring pay parity wherever possible. The Greens believe that we do need to go further and faster ensuring that teachers are involved with moving forward towards a centralised pay system and common core conditions right across the sector as well as doing more to ensure profit motives do not continue to undermine the quality of our children's learning."