Franks Stephen: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12143] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Part 2 of this bill has the operative parts. It has a number of what the Minister has just explained as rationalisations—cutting the delivery chain short. He says 30 or 40 percent was getting consumed in transaction costs. It really must have more explanation than that. New sections 311A and 311B inserted by clause 6 allow grants to licence-exempt centres. These exempt centres can be created by the Minister simply gazetting that a centre does not have to have a licence. When it does not have to have a licence it appears to me that it does not necessarily comply with the stipulations that go around grants. 
Ordinarily this might be seen as something that was to give flexibility that did not matter but we have had experience of the ministry’s very poor performance in dealing with flexibility. My colleague Rodney Hide has mentioned the rort that has been associated with chasing up and enrolling Maori and Pacific Island children. Perhaps a million dollars has gone west through failure to specify contracts properly in the first place failure to supervise them and failure to check that the children are actually registered and attending or that they even exist. 
Section 311 of the principal Act stipulates the administrative requirements for early childhood centres—that is they must keep a register keep the date of birth keep the attendance keep a record of all fees and charges paid and keep evidence that the parents have regularly examined the attendance record. I wager that virtually none of those requirements is being observed by some early childhood centres and I would be very surprised if some of the exempt centres the Minister wants to be able to favour with his ministry’s direct grants are any better administered than the contractors the Minister’s servants engage to chase down unregistered children. 
When the Ministry and the Minister come forward with a proposal to replace an independent organisation—an organisation that has a board of directors who supervise knowing that they could be personally liable for malfeasance or misfeasance—with people in a ministry that does not even know whether it will chase the fraudsters with the police; that 10 days after the story broke still does not know whether— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: The story broke in 2002! 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Well why did the Minister not know more about the background and the facts? If that is 2002 why is the Minister sitting on the Official Information Act material—the file. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Because I am re-reading the old material. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: If it is that hard why has the Minister not handed it over to someone who can read it? He has had 2 years to do it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: There are four boxes of the rubbish. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The Minister has 1890 civil servants to read it for him. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No no— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Order! The Minister will take a call. He is not to interject like that— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It’s an exchange of questions. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The exchange of questions will be handled during a call. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The Minister has just told us it was 2002 which brings us to another point in this bill. The effective date is the date the bill is passed. We understand that the legal dissolution might not have occurred but the functions have already transferred. Can the Minister tell us just how many reporting requirements and grants to licence-exempt centres have already been made and how many the ministry intends to make? Can he give the Committee an idea of just how significant this is going to be—what kinds of conditions does he envisage for licence-exempt early childhood centres? Is this provision to get around requirements that are onerous and imposed on the private sector to advantage State-sponsored organisations that could not hack it? Just exactly what is proposed by new sections 311A and 311B? Surely that is a matter the Minister can give us clarification on when he must know that we would have to come to this bill very suspicious of the ministry indeed.