Hipkins Chris; Rurawhe AdrianEDUCATION AND TRAINING (GRANTS—BUDGET MEASURES) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill.SPEAKER: That statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.This is in essence a very simple bill. It removes an ambiguity that was created in the Education and Training Act of 2020 that drew into question whether or not the Minister in specifying a funding condition around early childhood education grants could specify a funding condition relating to the employment conditions of teachers. This bill removes the doubt around that and makes it clear that the Minister in specifying conditions around grants is able to do that.This is necessary because the Government has made a commitment that we want to deliver better pay and conditions for those working in education and care services so that they are brought into line with the teachers who are working in kindergartens and primary schools who have pay parity. So we want to see that extended to the broader early childhood education sector where those teachers working in that sector get the same qualifications often have the same experience and in many cases are doing pretty much the same work but are being paid significantly less. There are some other variations around employment conditions including the hours that the centre is open and so on. That is a matter for the employer. What the Government is interested in here is the hourly rate effectively that people are being paid for that work. This provision will allow us to attach as a condition to a higher rate of funding the proviso that that higher rate of funding needs to be applied to the salaries of their teachers so that that money can flow through.Let's be very clear about what this bill is and it isn't. It is not the funding rates. Those funding rates are under discussion with the sector. There's a variety of views about what the sufficient level of funding in order to deliver pay parity should be. This bill does not deal with that issue. That issue is being dealt with through the discussion that's happening at the moment around the future rates of funding. This bill simply allows for that differentiated rate of funding to be introduced and then we are in the process now in the passage of this bill through its final stages in the House that will therefore allow the next part of that to happen which is for those draft conditions to be put out for consultation and further debate to be held around that.I also want to make it clear the Government doesn't intend to impose additional conditions not related to salary in terms of employment conditions related to those grants. I'm aware that there's been some suggestion that we're already planning to do that when in fact the two conditions being cited relate directly to salaries. So the condition for example that a person who has a certain length of tenure should be paid at least a certain amount is directly related to the implementation of salary progressions and salary steps. Both of the conditions that are being questioned relate directly to salary. They don't relate to those wider terms and conditions.If I look at some of the other wider terms and conditions there things around the amount of non-contact time for example the ratios the group sizes and so on that may exist in other collective employment agreements we do not intend to pass those through this mechanism to other parts of the early childhood education sector. Those are rightly employment matters for the operators of those centres. This is simply giving us the ability to say if we are providing more money to deliver pay parity to increase the pay of teachers working in the rest of the sector which the rest of the sector have been asking for—we want to make sure that the money that we're putting in is actually going to that thing and the ability to set this condition will allow us to do that.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.