Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm happy to rise to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2). The one good thing about the early childhood sector—well there's many good things but one of the most important things—in New Zealand is that we are spoilt for choice. Parents can take their child to a kindergarten a Montessori a play centre a day care a crèche a community centre. They are spoilt for choice and that is one of the most important things about our early childhood sector in this country. You have a centre that suits your child's needs and your family's needs in a location that you want. It might be close to your work. It might be close to where you live. It might be close to where your family live. Arena Williams: Not in South Auckland.ERICA STANFORD: It might be close to your children's schools. That's a great point. So the point was just yelled at me Not in South Auckland." Well that's really interesting because this bill does nothing—does absolutely nothing—to encourage centres to set up in areas where there aren't already centres. There's a reason that there are areas of New Zealand where there aren't existing childcare centres and that's because it doesn't make financial sense to put them there. This bill doesn't address that. I asked the Minister about that in his office and I said "Hang on a minute. This bill all it's aimed at doing is stopping the proliferation in wealthy areas where there are lots of centres." And the Minister agreed. And I said "Well what about centres like South Auckland?"—to the member who just yelled out at me. And I said "This bill doesn't address that." and he agreed with me and said "Yes no we're going to have to use the existing Targeted Assistance for Participation (TAP) funding to make sure that we address centres in those areas." which is already a measure that we use. So this bill doesn't actually address that at all.So now we've put that to bed I'll go back to my point which is that there is incredible choice: where you want it and the type of centre that you want. This bill destroys that. This bill gives the Minister the decision as to what centre what type of centre will be placed in which location. Now the problem with that is it takes choice from local people local communities as to what they want and where they want it. The problem—and I've brought this up so many times—is that the Minister doesn't have any data to tell him where people want centres and what kind of centres they want. I asked him about this a million times and also at the committee of the whole House stage and he didn't answer my question. The reason he didn't answer is because he doesn't have an answer.The ministry doesn't have a rich set of data that says parents in this area really want a play centre and a Montessori. He doesn't have access to that. He also doesn't have access to where parents want their centres. He might know that yes there's a big new development here but he doesn't know whether or not those people—say in Ramarama—want their centre close to where they work in Auckland or if they want it close to where they live. He doesn't have that data. So what's he going to do? Well I guess in the end all we can deduce is that he's going to rely on data from those applicants. So he will expect an applicant to come to him with a full set of data that they have gone out and spent thousands of dollars on that says "We know from surveys and from the data that we've collected that people in this area want this type of centre in this location because it's on a route to where they work or where their kids go to school or whatever."Now the Minister is going to have to rely on that. We know that from the bill which says that he's only able to undertake a high-level assessment of the relevant attributes of the area to be serviced because he only has limited data. That means he's going to have to rely on the data provided by the provider that turns up. So the question then becomes: how is he going to analyse that data? How is he going to verify that data because what happens if he has two providers turning up to him saying completely different things? What if he only has one provider that turns up with data but he doesn't really like them because it doesn't fit his ideology and he waits however long—we don't know because he wouldn't answer that question—for a number of other centres to put their applications in? But what if they don't have data but he picks one of them because he likes them better based on the data that company A who got theirs in first spent thousands of dollars on?So you can see what a complete mess we're going to be in by letting the Minister decide what he wants where he thinks it should be based on data he doesn't have based on an ideology that he's bringing to what kind of centre that he wants and that is problematic. Furthermore—and I made this point to him; again he didn't answer in the committee of the whole House stage. It was around quality. Now he talked at length in his opening speech today around the fact that he is modernising and updating the education sector and his big problem was the proliferation of centres having a reduction in quality. Well my argument is that if this is true which I don't believe it is it's only going to get worse because you can imagine if you are a centre given that golden ticket in your area to be the only provider of that service because that's deemed to only need one centre well what is there for you to upgrade your service to offer different things to be better? Because there's no competition. No one can move in and set up a centre next door to you. So what incentives do you have as a centre to upgrade any of your services to offer any additional services or to improve your quality? Well the answer is that there is none. So we are giving a golden ticket to centres not to do anything extra over and above the minimum standards if that's what he's worried about. Well clearly he's not worried about that.The issue with quality is a big one. I put this to him and he didn't answer. The other question that I put to him that he didn't answer which this legislation clearly brings up is that once a licensed early childhood education (ECE) centre has got that golden ticket in that area what does that do to the value of their business? How does that distort the market and the value of those businesses? Again he couldn't answer that question.The one egregious thing in this piece of legislation that we tried desperately to fix but is still in there in the final bill is new section 17A(2) inserted by clause 5B where the Minister may at any time impose new conditions on the approval or amend or revoke any existing conditions. Let me make clear to this House and those people listening what that means. That means the Minister can grant a licence to a provider. They can go away and start building start the process and then the Minister can turn around under this and say "Actually I've decided to reduce the number of licence places you can have." or "I've decided that you can't do this and you must do this." in the middle of a build. The question we put to officials and we put to the Minister was "What bank will lend on this?" And the Minister said "Well banks haven't come to us. They haven't mentioned anything." My question back to him was "Well did you go to any banks and ask? Because we did and they clearly told us that this is a problem." The Early Childhood Council said this is a problem. If we are trying to make sure that people can get set up with early childhood centres they have to have finance and under this bill it's going to make it very difficult for them to get it.One of the other issues that we had with this bill that's still there is that there is no time frame. I mentioned earlier in my speech today about how long the Minister might wait after he gets the initial application in for an early childhood area in one place before he waits for a few others to put their applications in. It could be months. We don't know because there's no statutory time frame required for him to have to make a decision. Now in "Real Land" out there where people are actually doing business the developers put up land for tender in new subdivisions. Typically the applicant has got six weeks for that process to happen. Now the question I put to the Minister is: is he going to make a decision within six weeks to give that licence? Because if he doesn't that applicant is going to miss out on that land that's put up for tender by that developer which means that potentially it'll go to someone else which won't be an ECE centre and that new development won't have an ECE centre in it. So we're talking about new-build areas new subdivisions which may not end up having ECE centres built in them because the six-week time frame the developer puts the land up for tender—the Minister won't be making a decision in that time frame. I find it highly unlikely that all of this process is going to be done within six weeks.This all goes to the point that the Minister and his officials did not go out to the sector and talk to them about the implications of this legislation. We know this because he admitted today that he made a number of changes. It was great that he made a number of changes but the fact is that I had to go to his office and sit down and practically beg for them at the last minute because officials in select committee wouldn't listen to me. The Minister wouldn't listen to me in select committee. I had to go to his office and beg for them. Now that indicates to me a massive lack of understanding of this sector on the part of the Minister and on the part of the officials because they aren't talking to the sector. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you can't get a resource consent in anything less than about 15 months and the Minister was previous to my going into his office only giving people two years to complete the whole build. Finally at the last minute in a Supplementary Order Paper he said "OK we'll make it three years." But the point is that I shouldn't have had to do that. He should have been in touch with the sector and he's not and the whole bill reflects that from beginning to end when it comes to early childhood centre licensing. That is why we will not be supporting this bill."