Stanford Erica; Rurawhe AdrianERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to take a call on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. The National Party voted in favour of this bill at the first reading to give it the chance to go to select committee and have a full—well a semi-full process. It was obviously a very truncated process that we ended up with but I'll talk more about that later. But we did vote for it at the first reading to give it a chance for us to scrutinise it and hear from the sector and indeed hear from the sector we did. Now the Minister has predetermined a number of things that I'm going to bring up and indeed I will bring up those things but before I do I want to just say that early childhood teachers are extremely valuable. Those formative years between one and five before children go to school are extremely important and the role that teachers play in those formative years is so very important. When we see teachers that are overburdened overworked stressed out leaving the sector something has to be done. And I want to put it on the record that the National Party certainly broadly supports paying teachers what they are worth and that we do recognise that there have been some issues with kindergarten teachers being paid more than their counterparts in early learning centres. What the National Party also wants is quality of service and the ability for people to be able to afford to send their children to early childhood education (ECE). That's important and I'll come back to it later.The Minister described the bill today—and indeed he did so in the committee when he appeared before us—as a relatively simple bill not long or complex and he made it seem like a small technical change that would be relatively non-controversial. But indeed we heard from over 550 submitters many of them who were very concerned about what this bill would mean. We only had time to hear from 14 in person. I want to say today that I believe that the Minister probably knew that this actually would be very controversial which is why we ended up with an extremely truncated process where we only had 14 days for submissions. Now if you think about the ECE sector right now under intense pressure with massive staff shortages 14 days to be able to understand what is being sold as a really simple bill but actually has a number of unintended or potentially intended consequences is not a very long time for centres who are stressed out trying to manage their way through winter flus and staff shortages. Then there were only three days in select committee for those submitters to be heard and if they couldn't make those days well then that was tough. Now those days and those times that were selected coincided with the times that the ECEs were open. Given the staff shortages it's no wonder that we only managed to hear from 14 of the submitters who mostly spoke against the bill. I want to refer to just some of the comments from the submitters speaking on the time frames. Firstly the Early Childhood Council said We are concerned that the Amendment Bill has been designed and presented without adequate consultation with the ECE sector." And they also commented on the time that centres had to submit on the bill. We mentioned this at the first reading. We said that the sector had not been consulted and the Minister disagreed and said "No that's not true. I've consulted widely about pay parity." Indeed he has consulted widely about pay parity but he did not consult on this particular bill. The Early Childhood Council and many of the centres mentioned the fact that they were blindsided by this bill—they had no idea that it was coming—and then 14 days to get their thoughts together to understand the bill and to submit wasn't enough time. Now the Early Childhood Council mentioned that as did a number of other submitters. There were many of them but one of them I'd like to quote in particular was out of Arohanui Early Childhood Learning Centre who said "there has been a lack of consultation with the ECE sector and the Bill is being rushed." The City Kids Childcare Centre said "We need more time to respond with due consideration and it is difficult to respond to the proposals without more time." Those are just three of the many submissions that talked about the fact that they didn't have enough time to fully understand this bill. There was no consultation with the sector on the bill. Yes around parity; not around this bill. And I'm not surprised even with the short time frame we had many in opposition. For a relatively simple and non-controversial bill I actually was surprised at the number of people who submitted. The way in which the bill was originally worded has some clues in it as to why the sector were so concerned and upset because new section 548(5A) in clause 4 said "conditions or purposes—(a) specified under subsection 5(a) or (b)" may relate to matters that include employment conditions "(for example remuneration)." So you can see that the first thing that jumped out to the owners of these early childhood centres or in fact the Early Childhood Council was: what employment conditions? Because remuneration was just a secondary thing in brackets. Rightly so the submitters said "Well what else is the Minister planning? What other conditions and terms is the Minister planning to impose upon us? And at what cost to us? And will we have a grant to cover those?"So what ended up happening with the bill was it was changed to try and make it clear the Minister's intention was not actually to impose any further conditions. But what we ended up having was—what we have in this bill is much the same. The Minister came to committee and said "I don't intend to impose any other conditions. Trust me I won't." was basically what he said. But when they reworded the bill he made it very clear that although the bill's being reworded he still has the ability to impose any conditions that he likes. So although the bill has been reworded he has made it very clear that if he does want to impose other conditions he will. Now this is important. The Minister today talked about two of the conditions relating to remuneration that will be attached to the grants. Now these two conditions were never discussed not by the Minister in his first reading speech not by the officials. It wasn't until members from my party—me actually—questioned them on some of these conditions that they did actually admit that yes it will be the case that the teachers will go up the scale by tenure and not by performance. That's something that was never mentioned. The second condition is the fact that the centres had assumed that where a teacher would start on the scale would be decided by them. Again it wasn't until we questioned the officials—who admitted that actually no the condition will be that it will be decided upon via length of service overall. Now these things are important to the sector. And although the Minister says "Oh well we'll worry about it later; we'll kick the can down the road and we'll discuss it later." it's integral to this bill to know what kind of conditions will be imposed on centres. It matters because of the cost that will be imposed upon them. And I know the Minister's saying "Don't worry about the cost. We'll talk about the funding down the track." but actually this bill is setting up the mechanism that will impose huge costs on centres because the grants will not fully account for the teachers' pay. So what's going to end up happening is that the centres will have to make up the difference either by reducing their ratios reducing the number of good qualified teachers or upping fees to parents. Now going back to what I said really early on the National Party has always said that the quality of centres and the ratios that they offer is important as is the ability for parents to be able to afford access to ECE services and this bill is going to compromise those things. And while the Minister downplays it and says "Don't worry about it; we'll work on those things later." they are integral to this bill which is why the sector does not—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."