Moroney Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Moroney Sue: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:660;Page:8755] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 I rise today in this Parliament for the first time this year to say that I was completely and utterly underwhelmed by the Prime Minister’s opening gambit yesterday. 
Paul Quinn 
: Happy New Year Sue. 
SUE MORONEY 
: I say a happy New Year to the Government too. The speech was a shame for New Zealanders because they were looking for a plan to take us forward in 2010. We know that 2009 was a difficult year right around the world. It was a difficult year internationally and New Zealanders felt they had to tighten their belts but for far too many New Zealanders that meant losing their incomes that meant losing their livelihoods because of the very sharp rise in unemployment. So New Zealanders are looking for some solutions in 2010 because they know that in 2010 our economy is recovering as it is all around the world. All of the G-20 countries are now out of recession as is New Zealand and New Zealanders are thinking: “Great! In 2010 we can look forward to some of the damage being undone.” 
What did they get from the Prime Minister’s statement? There was not one word about unemployment and not one word about job creation. That was the Government’s response coming into this year to those thousands of New Zealanders who suddenly last year through no fault of their own found themselves on the scrap heap. Now they hear from their Prime Minister that there are no opportunities going forward and no plans for job creation. They will just have to sit and wait until some miracle happens because there certainly is no plan going forward on job creation. 
I was listening very carefully to the Prime Minister’s statement and I was looking out for the areas for which I have some responsibility in this Parliament as the Opposition spokesperson on both early childhood education and women’s affairs. I thought those were areas that the Government would really highlight. Certainly last year the Prime Minister John Key in many of his official speeches said right upfront that improved participation in early childhood education was a top priority for the Government. Well that seems to have slipped right down the list this year because although it was in the written statement made by the Prime Minister it did not rate even a mention in his speech yesterday in the debating chamber. So it has certainly slipped right down the agenda and it is no wonder. 
I became momentarily quite excited when the Prime Minister started talking about “unlocking resources” because I felt sure that when he talked about unlocking resources he must have been talking about the human resources in this country. I thought that he was going to come forward with a significant plan to get hold of our young people particularly in their early years of education and actually give them a better boost through early childhood education. I felt sure that he would go on and talk about a skills agenda and a programme to maximise the potential of our most important resource in this country—our human resource our people. 
But no sadly when the Prime Minister talked about unlocking resources he was talking about digging up our playgrounds digging up our national parks and digging up our backyards. Certainly for the area I come from the Coromandel Peninsula where most people from the Waikato spend their Christmas holidays that was a direct threat. That is what “unlocking the resources” means when the Prime Minister gets up to speak. 
It is a great shame that when he thought about the sorts of resources that really do need unlocking in this country he was not focused on the early childhood education area. All he had to say about that—well there was no speech referring to early childhood education but there was a written statement at the beginning of the year—was that this year the Government will focus on increasing the number of children in our poor communities and in Maori and Pasifika populations who attend early childhood education. He went on to say that children who do not attend any form of early childhood education start school at a significant disadvantage. Then I think he really gave the game away by saying that despite funding having been poured into early childhood education in recent years we are still not picking up and supporting enough of those children. Well if the Prime Minister actually looked at the statistics he would know that the introduction of the 20 hours’ free policy—when it was free; it is not free under this Government—which was put in place under the previous Labour Government significantly improved and increased the participation of Maori and Pasifika children in early childhood education. 
That is what one calls step change. That was an example of step change; it is not what the Prime Minister had to say yesterday. He kept talking about step change and I kept waiting for it. But there was not one announcement that meant the type of step change that had been achieved under the previous Labour Government. None the less the Prime Minister set himself a target of going further than that and that is a very admirable target but it was also the target that the Prime Minister had at the beginning of last year and absolutely no progress was made on it whatsoever. In fact I would say that the opposite happened. 
We all know—or I hope we all know; I hope we all understand in this Parliament—that the importance about early childhood education is not just what it costs but the quality of that early childhood educational experience. All the research tells us that it is about children getting access to it but not access to any old early childhood education; it is about access to quality early childhood education. What has this Government done in that regard so far? Last year it spent all of its time dumbing down the sector. It spent all of its time dropping standards in the sector—actually dropping standards. Members on that side can talk all they like about national standards in education but when it comes to early childhood education the standards have been dropped by this Government. 
The very first act that the Government took was to scrap the planned improvements in child-staff ratios that were set to be introduced in May last year. In May 2009 children aged between 2 and 3 were set to get more teachers per child in early childhood education. All members in this House should know that that would improve the quality of the experience of early childhood education. But what did the National Government do? It scrapped those planned ratio changes. It pulled them at the last moment. So early childhood education providers who were gearing up for that change and who had employed the qualified staff to enable them to meet it suddenly did not have the funding to go with it. The rug had been pulled from underneath them. 
Then the second act the Government took that dropped standards in the early childhood education sector was to stop the regulations going ahead that were going to ensure that facilities had to meet certain regulations. I do not think that it is too much of an ask for our very young children that they should go to facilities that are appropriate for them—for example to have appropriate sleep facilities for very very small children. I do not think that that is a big ask at all. But what did this Government do? It said “No we do not need any of that sort of quality in our early childhood education sector. Anything will go.” So they dropped that. 
Late last year the Government also surreptitiously dumped the target of having 100 percent qualified staff in early childhood education by the year 2012. It did not just shuffle it backwards and say it was not quite ready or that it would do it at a later time; it completely got rid of that target. The Government is dumbing down and dropping the standards in early childhood education—there is no doubt about that. 
With regard to women’s affairs apparently Pansy Wong said in the House yesterday that the Government will spend more money on investigating pay equity or on some such illusion that she is under. The truth is that under Labour $2 million per annum was spent through the Department of Labour on a very very good pay and employment equity unit that was doing excellent work. But that sum was canned by the Government and replaced with $500000. I am not sure what school of accounting Pansy Wong comes from but cutting spending from $2 million in that area to just $500000 per annum is not an increase in funding; it is a significant cut in funding to that area. 
I think the best part of yesterday for me was that while the Prime Minister was giving his address the  
Waikato Times  
was being delivered to most households in the Waikato with a front-page headline that screamed “Promise on road project broken”. That was on the day that the Prime Minister was trying to set out his strategy for the next 12 months for this country. He was saying what a fantastic Government it was while it was breaking the only election promise it had made for Hamiltonians—that the Waikato Expressway would be completed within 10 years. The  
Waikato Times  
reported yesterday that the Transport Agency had come to town and said “Actually folks it is not going to be completed until the year 2024.” That was an election promise broken. 
There is no plan for the next year. There are no jobs. The Government is not keeping true to its word for the people of Hamilton. That is a disgrace.