Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Chair. This has been quite a technical debate but I have to go back to basics for the people of my electorate in Taieri and ask what on earth—what on earth—was the Government thinking when it introduced this kind of complicated rebate that people who do not have internet connections because they have an average annual income of $26000 a year—many of them cannot afford to have home computers or internet. How on earth does this serve them? And it's interesting to see members opposite sniggering. I find that incredibly patronising to the people that I have the privilege of serving people who have a family average household income of $26000 a year. For many of them they struggle to put food on the table. They struggle to get their kids to school. And now we are saying that they need—in order to get this rebate that is supposed to be helping them—to have an internet connection and to have the ability to do complicated paperwork when they are just trying to survive day to day.Wouldn't it have been better to look at some of the policy options that are listed in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) under section 19 such as reducing ECE fees through a direct subsidy to providers"? Now I'd like to know if the Minister even considered that because for many of the parents in my electorate the ability to have the paperwork taken away and to have the really good early childhood education (ECE) providers in Taieri in the rural communities who are listed in the RIS as also being one of the population groups that would be disproportionately disadvantaged by this that would have a barrier around it. It would be so much easier for the ECE to have a direct subsidy and those parents not to have to worry about this. Did the Minister consider that or because of the speed and the time by which they are trying to do this did they just ignore that possibility? Did they not consult?And I note that the Minister said in his previous contribution that he talked about process and the status quo. Well the problem with doing something like this is it looks like a fix and it kicks the can down the road for the people that will not be able to access this subsidy. So when the Minister made this trade-off about trying to introduce something that he said was speedy and was going to make a difference did he consider the risk that those who would not be able to access it for many different reasons that are being raised by colleagues on this side of the House—did he consider the risk of now looking like there is a fix when in fact it is kicking down the road a real solution that could have been consulted on properly?I note Madam Chair that in section 18 of the RIS it talks about the fact that there were options that could not be examined in detail because of scope and time. I've talked about the ECE fees but what about also regulatory price controls or changes to reduce the impact of other regulatory systems that increase operational costs for providers? For example the play space requirements. That is a piece of really important policy work in the ECE sector. That is a strategic approach—if this kind of approach had been taken to look at what could be done to support ECE providers to be able to make the difference that would be passed on to the parents. It really breaks my heart to think that not only are these families forgotten—the families of the deep South who do not have the means to be able to do this or access to the internet—but that somehow now it's being portrayed that there is a well-intentioned Government that is trying to look after them. They are deliberately making it difficult—or perhaps they live in an alternative reality where everybody has a whole lot of time to sit around in their homes accessing their many computers and doing their paperwork. Well that is not the reality for many of the rural families in my electorate and it is not the reality for the families that live in Corstorphine for the families that live in Calton Hill and for the families that come to my electorate office and ask for support for any kind of paperwork for pretty basic things. You have just put another door in their face. So my question—and I have asked questions. [Interruption] Great to see the Government members engaging so much with this—obviously they're very very interested in this debate. I would like to hear those answers because clearly this has just been a once-over lightly.Finally "increases to incomes of families utilising ECE through other government support and/or wage growth." What did the Minister do around value for money and targeted support to say how this intervention was going to help low-income families and rural families in Taieri and other places across New Zealand instead of just trying to get this out the door?"