Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I rise to speak against this bill. National is not supporting the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. We've heard a number of speeches already from the other side which is to say Oh this is not a significant change. It's only a minor little technical matter—nothing to see here nothing to worry about. Everything's fine don't worry. It's all steady as you go." and of course that's not the case. What we're talking about here is the Minister giving himself—or maybe later herself—the power to set conditions. What's been mentioned is pay rates but it could be all sorts of other things and we've seen every day every week from this Government something new some new idea that's dreamt up on the backbenches or in the union rooms or wherever their ideas come from for new costs to be added on to employers. And this Government will no doubt dream up some more.What we've seen time and time again is this Government coming into this Chamber and trying to rush through legislation under urgency and not giving New Zealanders the opportunity to sincerely and properly engage in the laws that affect them. I just want to take a little bit of time to tease that out because a lot of people tuning into this debate mightn't follow the intricacies of the parliamentary process. But what's meant to happen when Governments are changing laws that affect New Zealanders—and in this area it's affecting the people who run and operate early education facilities and there are many of those. Tens and hundreds of thousands of young New Zealanders' children go to these centres and their parents rely on them to do a good job look after their kids get them started on the process of education and to do it in a good way. Many do. Some can do better. And it's a very important sector setting New Zealand kids on a path towards educational attainment in order that they may be properly equipped to thrive and succeed in the modern knowledge economy. So it's important that we get it right.Now what's supposed to happen when the Government decides that it wants to change the rules is that it's supposed to consult the sector and then ideally put out some draft legislation so that people can comment on it and then once those comments have been carried out they introduce legislation into this House. Then it's sent off to a select committee and the usual time is around nine months or so so that people have the opportunity. The committee calls for submissions and then everybody comes in having had a chance to look at the bill and plenty of time to consider it and give some consideration—Jo Luxton: Speak to the bill.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well the process is important Mrs Luxon—Luxton whatever sorry; I was getting confused there. Anyway that's what's supposed to happen but what's happened here and has happened time and time again from this Government is they come in and say "Oh no we're in an urgent rush. It needs to happen quickly. Here's the piece of legislation. In fact we're only going to give you a couple of weeks to make a submission. We'll listen to you for a couple of days and then whoomph—we'll pass it through." There is always some urgency requiring this and that's what's happened here. So even in the very short period of time they allowed for discussion of this legislation some 558 submissions were made indicating that there is real concern around this.We heard the submissions and we heard the concern that was being outlined. The obvious point that was being made by the sector was that if the Minister was genuinely focused on ensuring pay parity in the sector he has the tools available to him to do that and that is through the processes available to him right now in the way that there is an attestation by the providers about what they have done. So that process is available now and the Minister could have availed himself of it. But instead he's trying to rush through this legislation in an extremely truncated time.What the submitters were worried about were all the additional conditions that may accompany the parity remuneration and we've already suggested a few of those. They're not funded at a higher rate to reflect the terms and conditions of these collective agreements that are reached with kindergarten teachers. There's no extra funding coming through so there's one of two obvious things that can happen. A number of early childhood centres came in and said that effectively this will cost them about $40000 a year for example in some of them. They're not getting any extra funding to go with this and so two likely consequences are either that the fees will have to go up to parents and that's the last thing parents need at a time when costs are going up everywhere or centres might be inclined to slightly reduce the student to teacher ratios. A number of them have it higher than they need to have and they'll squeeze and so the children will get less focused attention on them.So what we'd have as a consequence of this legislation—and this is just yet another example of how this Government operates. They make big gestures "Yes we're going to help this group." But when you look into the details of the consequences of the legislation that's rushed through under urgency without due and proper consideration the most likely outcome is that there will be higher fees for students and parents to have to deal with or lower ratios and more kids per teacher. That doesn't seem to me to be a good outcome. So what we have is the Government wanting higher pay rates across the board for teachers which is a worthy object—they're not prepared to pay for it and so the assumption is that parents will pay for it. I suppose parents may or may not thank them for that but what they would have liked is for Parliament to have a proper opportunity to consider this legislation.I suppose the broader question is: is this going to lead to better educational outcomes? Now if you were to look at the evidence that the Minister came to the House with to indicate this legislation is going to lead to better outcomes by X Y and Z you'd be struggling to find it because he hasn't really. It's just based on a decision that they've made. They want to give the Minister greater powers to direct independent private early childhood education centres about how they pay their staff and about the terms and conditions in which they operate. The outcome of that as I said is most likely to be higher fees for parents.I suppose the question that many struggling working families will be asking themselves when they're faced with higher costs in so many areas—inflation is starting to rip in this country and the higher cost of living is affecting many families and there is difficulty affording housing and rents—and with all the other pressures that are piling up on New Zealand families is: "Why is it the priority of this Government to ram through legislation quickly in this House which is most likely to have the outcome that my fees are going to go up? Why do they see this as a priority?" It's a fair question to ask and I'd very interested to hear from Government members as to why they think that's a good idea.Normally in the normal democratic process that we have we have several months and an elongated select committee process where people who are the most directly affected—that is the early childhood centre owners and controllers the parents and the staff; all the people involved—have the opportunity to consider the impact of what is being proposed and to then have their say and for that to be properly considered.We on this side feel that it is wrong that they haven't had that opportunity and we are worried that this bill will have the opposite impact to what it's intended to have and that won't be the first unfortunately or the last that we see from this Government that is like that."