Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. First of all I'd like to acknowledge all of our teachers and learning support staff and school leaders and principals and our communities who have been doing it tough over the last couple of years. They really do have our tamariki at their heart and our children at their heart as well. Whenever I meet teachers you know it's not about the money—they're not going to make heaps of money anyway—it is about the passion and commitment to our children to our tamariki to our whānau and to our families and I just wanted to start off by acknowledging them. At 9 o'clock tonight if any of the teachers are out there watching this and listening to this debate I would say Why?" —two words: work-life balance. But if you are out there listening kia ora tēnā koutou katoa.The House has been moving pretty quickly tonight. It's been kind of whizzing through and I can only imagine it's because the Labour Party can't wait to release all the goodies—the education budget goodies—for teachers and those out there in the learning sector. I know I'll be interested to take a look about what's going to be showing up in that Budget. We know—and it's been talked about a bit in the House tonight—about the pay parity gap in early childhood education (ECE). The solution there is that you actually need to put some more funding into those steps. It was a start but it was a start that actually needed to have more funding and it needs the sort of funding where you actually can get a line of sight and a long-term vision as to how we're going to actually decrease that gap in ECE because it is massive. With a plan it signals to the sector "You know what? Actually this Government is serious about sorting that out." and I will be looking for that and I'm sure some of the teachers will be looking for that.Also I'm mindful of some of the learning support staff that I have met over the past year as well and I'm hoping that will also feature in this Budget as well because they do an amazing job. I will be looking at the operational grants part of the education budget as well to see if there is going to be anything there for those learning support staff but particularly our teacher aides our resource teachers of learning and behaviour our resource teachers our clinicians and everybody who supports our tamariki to do all those things.Anyway this bill is about none of that. The Minister of Education talked earlier today about all the different things. This bill won't put the house on fire—people were excited over there. It is one of those bills which is designed to sort of pull together and tidy up a bunch of things: things such as having better alignment for police-vetting requirements strengthening and streamlining the Teaching Council's disciplinary processes giving the Government more flexibility to regulate compulsory student services fees by tertiary education providers enabling student numbers enabling the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to exercise discretion expanding the Education Review Office simplifying qualifications and other credentials and ensuring that learner wellbeing and safety arrangements and dispute resolution schemes for international and tertiary students are fit for purpose. A Supplementary Order Paper did show up. I had a look at it and I was just going through some of the submissions and I think it's a good thing to be honest. What the ECE sector needs is consistency. We have talked about pay parity; we do talk about pay equity. We do talk about how it's incredibly patchy out there within the ECE sector as well so we feel that this will actually give a bit more of that consistency across the ECE sector.The introduction of network management for early learning is a provision for early learning services which to be honest has been left to the market resulting in an oversupply of services in some areas while other areas remain underserved. It is often those communities that are disadvantaged due to location and socio-economic status who suffer from an undersupply. So good on the Government—it's good to see this proactive approach. I do note the submission from the New Zealand Educational Institute who said that the "Private provision has been shown to encourage a 'race to the bottom' around wages and working conditions opening a wide pay gap between teachers in early learning and their colleagues with the same qualification in the schooling sector. This has created barriers to the provision of quality early learning and has contributed to a critical shortage of teachers in the sector. This is confirmed by the experiences of teachers in private early learning over the past few decades as well as a proliferation of research reports and reviews identifying the failures of market-based provision." Capitalism is what I think the general term for it is and I do like how they sum it up here because yes this is a good step but there is more to do—and this quote here is—"However while the new network planning provisions in the bill are an important step in moving away from market-based provision and preventing further damage they do not offer a pathway for undoing the damage market-based provision has caused. The proposed provisions are akin to a halting of the tide but not of a turning [of the tide]." So I'm hoping there's going to be a bit more in this Budget which will help to not only halt the tide but turn the tide.My final reflection is on supporting our kōhanga reo. It is always important that we build those relationships and build those connections with our kōhanga reo with our kura kaupapa and with our wharekura understanding that commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi but also understanding that they are servicing and committed to a different need out there. It's not like we are building kōhanga reo on top of each other—they're not as prolific as that. It is built around those whānau that have that commitment to te reo Māori have that commitment to tikanga and have those roots within the community or families that want to participate in that so it does make sense that there is a different way that you engage in that. So I do take the Minister's point in having a bit more of think-through about what that relationship would look like in terms of this management process. So on that we support this bill."