King Colin: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
King Colin: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7915] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I draw it to the attention of the speaker who has just resumed her seat that there is an interesting article in the  
Gisborne Herald 
 stating that early childhood education centres may not be able to meet demands. That is quite evident. Unfortunately the member also said that although it was not going to be easy to provide the service it was going to be free. Does that not sound like a catchline? It is not going to be easy but it is going to be free! Goodness me! 
One thing about the 20 hours’ free early childhood education is that there will be winners and there will be losers. There always are under Labour. There is Gateway the Modern Apprenticeship scheme and early childhood education. One word describes them: tokenism. We need only to look at Gateway. Many schools today see the opportunity to achieve something around Gateway yet they are not being fully funded. They have to stretch the funding that is extended to them in order to try to maximise that opportunity. I was at Fraser High School the other day. Five hundred young adults want to engage in that programme but the school is being funded only to the level of 250. There are 9000-odd Modern Apprentices at the moment. One hundred and twenty thousand people in industry are in apprenticeship-style training; Labour is funding only 10000 of them. 
Now we come to the early childhood education sector and I say there will be winners and losers. I heard the Minister ask in the House today about what is making National so angry. I can tell him that what is making National so angry is the fact that he will cause perverse effects and those effects will impact on my community of Kaikoura and on a lot of provinces and rural regions. The sad consequence of having a tired worn-out Government is that it desperately hangs on to power by trying to give away as much as it can. In terms of what sounded like a wonderful cliché the 20 hours’ free early childhood education was a cracker. However we hear the comments made by the general public who are saying that it is a disappointment when political parties do not put more thought into their promises. 
Early childhood education we know is hugely important; it is something that has to be very helpful. The big problem with the 20 hours’ free early childhood education proposal of this Government is that it is poorly designed. In fact it builds false hopes. It is a deception; it misleads parents. The reason it misleads parents is that when we get down and do the measurements around the availability of services we find there is not the capacity to deliver the service. 
For education to be teacher-led is a great thing; at the end of the day to have professionals leading early childhood education is a wonderful thing. However a number of highly accomplished and successful centres are not in a financial position to move from where they are now to where they need to be in order to be able to employ those teachers. When ministry representatives were in front of the Education and Science Committee they had to admit they did not have the answers in terms of the issues that are very evident in provincial centres and rural areas. They said they had to go away and think about them and would make recommendations to the Minister. That again is what came out at the last election. Government members across the other side of the House have not learnt the lesson and they will be punished accordingly at the polling booths at the next election. 
There is an inadequacy of capacity. Kindergartens and private providers are able to meet the criteria for teacher-led capacity. However playcentres and kohanga reo which are mainly driven as voluntary services—run by excellent mums and dads—do not qualify. The Minister’s own modelling has told him that 47 percent of the capability has little opportunity to increase numbers or no opportunity to take on more numbers and that 14 percent is unable to offer the service. My thoughts go out to a community in Blenheim with a centre built up by a very enthusiastic mother a former teacher by the name of Rebecca Thompson. She enthused enough people to get up and do it.