McAnulty KieranKIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): I'm astonished and I've got to give the previous speaker Nicola Willis credit because that is a remarkable ability to stretch out very very scary outcomes from what is essentially a technical bill. What this bill will do is clarify something; that's it. It doesn't introduce new powers. The powers already exist—they have since 1990—but it clarifies that the bulk funding can be used for the purposes of wages; simple as that so that there is no confusion.What I heard over there is the same sort of rubbish we've been hearing from the National Party for generations. We hear a lot of lip-service because of course they will want to go to their local early childhood centres in their electorates and pose for pictures and post them on Facebook. So we hear a lot of lip-service but what we don't hear actually is a commitment to pay parity. What we don't hear is an acknowledgment that if we're going to get there we actually need to do something about it rather than just stand there like they did when they were in Government for nine years and say We value early childhood education."—then when the discussion came to actually doing something about it what did they do? Nothing. Did it achieve anything? Nothing. And they can get as angry as they like but the facts stack up. And even the claims in the previous speech don't stack up. They ignore the fact that there was $170 million over four years in the 2021 Budget building on the $150 million that was in the Budget before and they use the age-old scare tactics of "The Minister is aligned to the unions." Hello we're the Labour Party. Everybody knows that we're aligned to the unions because we are the party that lifts wages and improves conditions.Nicola Grigg: And crushes productivity.KIERAN McANULTY: We hear the scaremongering tactics of those yelling over there and saying that intervention is not the way to achieve good wages—the free market that's what that is. That stuff was debunked years ago. The trickle-down theory is what we're hearing. If we took the alternative approach that's being proposed to this bill here what we would see is wages going backwards in real terms conditions being dismantled like we saw over many many years. And this bill brings in a very simple technical change that allows the Government to then actually achieve what that party has been giving lip-service to for many many years and that is pay parity.The question that I want to pose is: why are they satisfied with people working in an industry with the same qualifications the same skills and the same experience getting paid less than others? Why? They don't have an answer because they cannot justify it. We are not satisfied with that. This technical change in this bill will allow this Government to actually do what other parties have promised and never delivered. We are not satisfied and it's not just in early childhood education; it is across the board that we believe that people should get paid a decent wage and good conditions and have the ability and the right to be able to negotiate for that and actually have the provisions in place set by this Parliament to allow them to do that. And in an industry like early childhood education it is this exact provision and this clarification that will allow the Government to achieve it.Now if I am lucky enough one day to be a father and my children go to an early childhood education centre I want the confidence that their teachers' skills and experience and qualifications are being valued. Now we heard all sorts of scaremongering around diversity of choice. The question I pose is: where in this bill does it say that diversity is going to be undermined? It doesn't. It's a fantasy. We heard all sorts of talk of nationalisation of the industry. Where is it in the bill? Again it is a total fantasy. We hear again lip-service—too many teachers are not being paid enough that's what they said. Too many are not being paid enough but what did they do about it? Nothing—absolutely nothing. They hear a lot about values and a lot about support but it's just talk.We heard the quote a couple of times in the previous contribution from the last speaker: National supports the notion—the notion the idea the theory. They don't support it; they support the idea. New Zealanders are sick of hearing about support for ideas; they want action. That is why this technical change will enable that to occur.I commend the Minister for introducing this bill. I commend the members on the Education and Workforce Committee for clarifying what this is about for those that may have heard some of the stuff that we heard on the other side tonight actually believed it and got worried came into the select committee to submit got the clarification and have gone away satisfied that this is actually going to achieve our mutual goal of valuing early childhood teachers and ensuring that we actually achieve pay parity. It's been talked about for too long; this Government is going to deliver it. The National Party had an opportunity to join us and they've just sent a message to all the early childhood teachers in their electorates that actually all they are is talk."