Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'd just like to pay our respects to the past speaker Camilla Belich and her family. Anybody that serves in the teaching profession is someone that's given their life to other people and to bettering our country so a big thankyou for your family's contribution in that area.This is a bill that centres on the early childhood education (ECE) sector debate in this House tonight and when we look at that the early childhood sector in New Zealand was essentially set up by Helen Clark in the great view of the left that everything should be done through Government. They would be very disappointed that the early childhood centres actually flourished and grew because what they created was the ultra-capitalist society where they gave a payment to people in the private sector to actually deliver a service. In the true heart of the Labour Party when it beats slowly at night they'll be thinking about how they actually did this: how they actually stuffed up early childhood education in their view and didn't create another form of primary or secondary or intermediate education where the State dominates the State runs the State owns and the State controls. Helen Clark got it wrong and the Labour Party that little heartbeat that flutters in the middle of the night sometimes and is on life support now—Hon Stuart Nash: What are you talking about? Hon DAVID BENNETT: —is struggling for a home is flat-lining and needs a Stuart Nash to take over the leadership to give it some leadership and some strength—the Labour Party will never admit it but they hate having a private sector part of the education system. They will hate it and this is a blatant attempt by the Labour Party to try and ratchet in that sector.Now I'm not saying that they are wrong. Our primary secondary and intermediate schools which are State-bound have served this country and generations of members of this House exceptionally well. I'm not saying that's the wrong policy; I'm just saying Helen Clark got it wrong when she was in Government and was setting up the structure.Now our education system values the most its Catholic network of course. That adds a lot of value to the system. But that had to be brought in because of all those great MPs here that came through the Catholic network—they will understand how important that is. But the Labour Party is trying to ratchet that system up. They know that they want to change the rules around ECE and they don't know how to do it and that's why you're seeing the sector being quite dormant in the last few months because people see the writing on the wall from this kind of legislation. It's going to make them very difficult to do what they're doing. They're effectively going to be quasi - Government-controlled and that's what this Government attempts to do.This will be a staged process by the Labour Government towards ECE. This will not be a one-off—Oh a little tinkering". We hear them talk about "It's only a small bill. Don't worry about it." but there will be more tinkering and more plans as they try and dominate any private sector in this country and that has been shown to be completely ineffective in other areas where they have done that.So it is a small bill but National does oppose it for fundamental reasons. The system we have in New Zealand for early childhood education is essentially a private system. Whether the Labour Party agrees with it or not they set it up that way and that's the system we have. Unless they're going to nationalise the whole thing which I don't think they're going to do at this stage they cannot change it other than tinkering with it and every time you tinker with something you distort it and it becomes less effective. If you're going to go down the market approach that we did do not distort that market approach. What they're going for is sort of a middle ground where it's a market approach but they control it and that is the worst kind of approach that you can have.So this is a bill that the National Party does not support. It's time the Labour Party was honest about its history in this area and actually fronted up to the people in New Zealand and said what they actually think and not try to do little pieces of legislation hiding the fact that they really have some issues around having a private education system in New Zealand."