Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this second reading of the debate on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. As the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee that considered the bill I just want to start off knowing my manners thanking our wonderful Clerk's team—the Minister's officials Parliamentary Counsel Office—for their hard work to help us report this bill back in time to the House. I also would like to pay gratitude to our submitters. I know that Ms Stanford talked about the time line but yet 558 people managed to submit on this bill and also we heard 14 oral submitters. We heard from a variety of parties in the industry. We heard from early childhood education (ECE) service owners or managers we heard from teachers who work in or have previously worked in this sector and we also heard from representative bodies and I want to thank all of those individuals as well as the representative bodies for submitting on this bill.Now I know that the Minister spoke about a relatively simple bill not overly complex—basically making a small technical change that is needed for clarification on the subject matter. I know it's easy when it's a technical bill to convolute issues and try and make something more out of it and get the conspiracy theories going but really what this bill is is it is actually just clarifying a simple provision.And so what it is is it actually turns on whether the existing and very broad condition-making power which is in place and which has been in place since the 1990 Act is actually sufficient to be able to impose the salary-related condition on what is an existing bulk grant funding for early childhood education.So to make sure that there is that clarity and nobody can be in any doubt about that this bill makes that small technical change to section 548 of the Education and Training Act an Act which underpins the funding system for early childhood education in New Zealand. Now Ms Stanford did mention the submitters expressing some concerns and I would like to dig a little bit further into that because some of our submitters actually spoke about the proposed funding condition relating specifically to pay parity between education and service teachers and kindergarten teachers so that's what they submitted on rather than the actual amendment of this bill.So on pay parity or teacher conditions in general we had teachers tell us their stories of financial insecurity and hardship and at times their difficulty in finding jobs. But I would like to say that contrary to the National Party member who's just gone on record to—and I quote verbatim—broadly support paying teachers what they are worth" our priority actually is to completely support paying teachers what they are worth—there's no putting of any qualifier on that particular statement.Now there's also been a mention of kicking the can down the road. I think that is rather disrespectful. We've always said from the start that this is a small step; it's a first step. We have in fact already made some steps in our previous Budget but with this particular step we are showing that work is continuing it's not the end—we are very much looking forward to working with the sector as the Minister has pointed out in working towards pay parity in the last term of Government as we have been doing for some time now.Erica Stanford: Then why didn't he consult on the bill?MARJA LUBECK: And listening to the comments from the other side given how fundamentally National seems to be objecting to placing conditions around remuneration on ECE funding one has to query whether National is actually committed to achieving pay parity. Not only do they frequently vote against these bills but now they also seem to be making a lot of noise with regards to that particular aspect of this bill.So again we've always said that this funding will be an interim step: the funding system for ECE will need to be reviewed in order to achieve pay parity. Again we look very much forward to working with that sector and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Mr Speaker."