Hutchison Paul: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12152] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Undoubtedly the title of this bill is hugely reflective of how little importance the Labour Government views early childhood education as having. Clause 1(1) states: “This Act is the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Act 2003.” That reflects absolutely accurately what the Labour Government has to say about the importance of early childhood education. I can think of no other area that is more important in terms of the outcomes for our children than early childhood education and it is important to have a special focus on it. It seems absolutely remarkable that on the one hand the Minister has praised the Early Childhood Development Board yet on the other hand in this bill he is callously disestablishing it. 
Let us put aside the constitutional aspects. Well we should not really put them aside at all because as my colleague Dr Wayne Mapp has pointed out there has been constitutional carelessness on the part of the Labour Government here. He is quite right in saying that Sir Geoffrey Palmer would be wringing his hands in despair over what his former colleagues are now doing in this bill. They are disestablishing a part of the education spectrum that was specifically designed to focus on early childhood education. It does seem extraordinary that as the Minister says the board was replaced a year ago and now here finally under urgency this bill is being put through Parliament. It does seem remarkable how careless the Government is how careless it has become and how carelessness is very much a trend that we are seeing in this Labour Government. My colleague Dr Lockwood Smith says it is arrogance. That is right. We must also throw in that quality and that is such a pity when this issue is all about the hugely important area of early childhood education. 
I was a bit surprised to hear New Zealand First’s Brian Donnelly say that the Government had behaved in a minimalist way in terms of the board. I think that is quite outrageous because there is nothing minimalist about it. The Government replaced the board a year before bringing in this bill and the title of the bill clearly reflects just how severely wrong it was to do that. If anything the early childhood area should be focused on strengthened and kept away from that ever-burgeoning bureaucracy the Ministry of Education. I can see the Minister smiling and he should not be because he knows about the excesses of absolute inefficiency that go on within his ministry. We have seen that up and down the country as the Minister does U-turns and weaves his way trying to defend the mistakes he has made over the last 3 to 4 years. 
The Minister cannot even tell us what sorts of outcomes there are from the interventions he has implemented in terms of early childhood education. That is an absolute outrage in itself. We should be measuring at the early childhood stage because that stage is fundamentally important for the children of our nation in terms of the chances they have to achieve their potential. But oh no the Minister intends to disestablish this board which he earlier said had carried out its functions very well. In fact let me repeat this: “I want to make it clear that this decision in no way reflects on the work that the Early Childhood Development Board has done.”