Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Very happy to respond to that contribution which seems to have demonstrated nothing other than that in the brief period of time that the bill was at the Education and Workforce Committee—and I acknowledge it was a brief period of time—the member who just spoke Hon Paul Goldsmith made no effort to read it or understand it. It's only a couple of pages and so I would encourage him to pick it up and have a look at it because he made some extraordinary claims in that brief rather boring contribution including that centres were being asked to take on extra costs with no extra funding to meet those costs. The whole point of the bill is so that the Government can provide centres with the extra funding in order to meet the extra costs that the requirements will put in place. So I think he might have missed the whole point of what the legislation that we're debating is about. He also asks why we're not using the attestation mechanism to do this. This bill means we can use the attestation mechanism in order to achieve the thing that the member is speaking about. So I'm not sure he's clearly been listening.But he did raise some serious questions and so I'll respond to those. What feedback have we had from the sector? The feedback from the sector on the bill—as opposed to on the issue around sufficiency of funding to meet any potential requirements for pay parity—has been relatively limited. And the feedback from the sector basically is: would we envisage any circumstances under which we would use this to achieve an employment-related outcome that didn't relate to pay parity? And I have given the sector an assurance that that is not the Government's intention. So in terms of the legislation that is the key piece of feedback on the key question from the sector. Most of their other feedback and other questions don't relate to the legislation but relate to the potential application of the legislation which is particularly what will the funding rates be and what would be the conditions that would be attached to those rates.In terms of what percentage of the sector might take it up it is voluntary and so ultimately we will know what percentage of the sector take it up when they have that option and they have the opportunity to exercise it or not. Does the Government believe that this should lead to higher fees or changes to ratios? That is of course a difficult thing to predict because all of the models that are in existence in early childhood services now—and it's private sector entities; all of the different models that they have in place at the moment—lead to different cost structures.It was interesting in the weekend when I had a very robust conversation with representatives of the sector many of them were saying We want to be like kindergartens. We want the same funding as kindergartens." When asked if they wanted the same conditions as kindergartens there was less appetite for that particular discussion. So I guess the point I would make is: Government is not telling these centres how to operate their businesses; ultimately we are giving them the option of additional funding and we're saying that if they want to take up that option of additional funding the condition will be that that funding flows through into better pay for their teachers. Those centres have been reporting now for several years—as a result of the nine years that National was in Government where early childhood education service funding was frozen—that they have been having difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers because they cannot afford to pay them sufficiently or pay them a competitive salary. So we want to step towards pay parity with kindergartens so that they can recruit and retain teachers. The gap between what they have now and what they will need to get to parity would not be as big if the funding had not been frozen for the nine years that National was in Government."