Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Madam Speaker thank you very much for the opportunity to talk on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill second reading. I obviously stand on behalf of the National Party and as the member of Parliament for the North Shore. National oppose this bill. And I'll tell you what as a father of two young boys that have been through the early childhood system I do want to compliment all of those early childhood teachers and support staff that work throughout that sector particularly those in my home electorate of the North Shore who do an absolutely wonderful job for our tamariki our young children in equipping them well for the challenges of the future. In particular around this bill our challenges are very much around the fact that the significant I guess strength of the current early childhood system is that it provides parents and participants within that system with flexibility and choice—all right? The system allows me as a parent or others to decide where we send our kids and what type of institution. It also provides that flexibility for those businesses to be able to deploy the revenue that they receive in the areas that they believe is going to provide the best outcome. From my interaction with a number of these private centres particularly in the North Shore they are hugely focused and motivated around ensuring that they provide absolutely best-in-class services to our young people. They are hugely passionate and hugely care about that. One of the challenges around this bill in particular is that this is going to bring in additional constraints on those businesses. It is another example from the other side of the House here of overreach of regulation trying to tell business how to run their business. Well I'm sorry; with respect businesses know how to run their businesses right? They don't need a Government telling them This is how you spend your money. This is where your money needs to go. This is what you need to do." You know sort of that parent-child relationship which I think is very much where this side of the House sees how they should treat State control: overreach and regulation. That is a significant burden that is placed within and across our small-business communities across this great country. I think it's a travesty. I think it is really really another example of what has been a difficult year for our small-business community—and particularly those within the education and training area because of the impact of COVID and the changes with lockdowns and all the other stresses that have come across. And now what they're seeing from this Government is additional processes procedures regulation and at the end of the day cost on them in order to do that. What I want to also refer to there is around the 560 submissions that were received on this bill. The majority of these submissions were opposed to the Minister having significantly more influence particularly around the employment conditions related and aligned to those collective contract arrangements. This is estimated—in terms of if I talk about cost burden on these businesses—somewhere in the region of an additional $14000 to $110000 per business. And some of these businesses aren't big but there is a complete disregard from that side of the House in terms of the imposing of additional costs significant costs—110 grand; that is a heck of a lot of money for some of these small businesses—and this is what I refer to as another sea anchor being thrown out of the back of the boat to drag along and slow down our business community when they should be being unshackled from regulation and allowed to get on and prosper and share that economic growth with this country. But what is very clear from this Government is that that's not how they operate. That's not their modus operandi. They want to do everything within their power to overregulate to overreach with regulation and to impose additional costs on business and I think that is an absolute disgrace.I want to finish—again to those staff out there working within the sector I'm sorry but I think this probably is going to go through no doubt but we are very firmly opposed to this bill. Thank you."