Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION AND TRAINING (GRANTS—BUDGET MEASURES) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move That the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 1 July and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 193 195 196(1)(b) and (c).ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you Madam Speaker. This is a very simple bill. It allows for pay parity to start being delivered for teachers working in early childhood education centres in which the State is not their employer. Kindergarten teachers have had pay parity with their primary counterparts for some time. Those working in education and care services such as a privately run centre or a community-based centre have seen the wage gap between what they earn and what their kindergarten counterparts earn increase steadily over time. A variety of factors have contributed to that but probably the single biggest one is that for the entire time they were in Government the last National Government did not pass on any of the pay increases that kindergarten teachers got to those teachers working in those other centres. Our Government has made the decision that we will adjust early childhood education funding rates regularly so that they keep up with the cost increases and we have adjusted them every year that we have been in Government. Last year we delivered the first significant funding increase around pay to ensure that the pay rates of those working in non-State or non-public sector education and care services were lifted up to at least the minimum step on the kindergarten teacher salary scale. And we've announced in this year's Budget the next big steps which is to add new criteria to funding that says that centres will get higher rates of funding if they agree to pay their teaching staff their registered qualified teachers at least step 1 to 6 on the kindergarten teacher salary scale.Under the current system I can specify a minimum rate of pay for an early childhood education teacher but I can't go further than that without stretching beyond credibility the criteria for which I can attach funding decisions and so this allows me to attach an additional funding condition to that extra funding so that it goes where it is intended to go which is paying those teachers more.The ultimate goal of this Government is to get to full parity. In order to do that last bit steps 7 8 9 and 10—there's a 10-step salary scale—we're going to have to probably further redesign the funding system to make sure the funding gets to the right place. This bill allows us to deliver quickly the funding increase the pay increase that we know those teachers need.In terms of the timing we want to get this bill back into the House very quickly so that we can then work to develop the funding conditions required. We can make sure the sector is familiar with those and then we can get those funding rates flowing from the beginning of next year. That's quite a tight time frame to do that. We do want to do that in a collaborative way so that the sector's consulted on those additional funding conditions and that's why we need the law change to happen quite quickly.The select committee will have the opportunity to hear from the sector. I imagine that the main people who are interested in this won't so much be the teachers who will be receiving the pay increases but the centres and so the centres I'm sure will be submitting to the select committee because ultimately they will want to know more about what those funding conditions are. That's one of the reasons why we want to move quickly so that we can give them that certainty.Pay parity for early childhood education teachers is long overdue. This is something the Government wants to make haste on; these teachers have waited long enough.