Heatley Phil: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Heatley Phil: Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8556] 
PHIL HEATLEY (NZ National—Whangarei) 
: 
 It might come as a surprise to the Minister of Education but not everyone in the early childhood sector—and certainly not everyone in this House—supports this move. He might very well think it is so far down the track that we will just lie down and die those thousands of parents indirectly affected by it will lie down and die and those professionals working in the early childhood care and education sector will lie down and die and accept it. But the reality is that the Minister—even with this bill—is listening to only one stream of advice. Part of the reason he is getting rid of the Early Childhood Development Board is so that he will continue to get only one stream of advice and that is from his own people with the same philosophical drive as him. The Minister should not be surprised that the National Party will be opposing this bill and I am happy to put up our reasons for that. 
The general policy statement in the explanatory note of the bill states: “The Government has determined that the Early Childhood Development Board (ECD) should be integrated into the Ministry of Education after 30 September 2003.” The Early Childhood Development Board was established in 1990 under the Education Act and the board reports directly to the Ministry of Education. That has been its role until now and it has had a high degree of success. Certainly there are opportunities to improve the way that it provides advice—there is no doubt about that—but it being separate from the ministry works very well indeed. 
I do not know why this Minister and his Government continue the trend of centralisation and the creation of super-bureaucracies. It seems to be key with the Labour Party. There has been a trend to move smaller Government departments into bigger ones with the argument that there is a decrease in bureaucracy and with the argument that such centralisation actually lowers cost removes unnecessary personnel and so on yet we continue to see an ever-burgeoning public sector particularly within the Ministry of Education. There is less money going to the schools that need it and more money going to the bureaucracy. There was the merger of the Special Education Service with the Ministry of Education last year and earlier this year and of course there has been the announcement of the merger of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Ministry of Social Development. Those mergers create two giant super-bureaucracies—one being the Ministry of Education which we are talking about here and the other one being the Ministry of Social Development. Mr Maharey and Mr Mallard have their kingdoms and they are growing. 
The vision of early childhood education will be further eroded simply because with the demise of the Early Childhood Education Board regions and small centres throughout our nation will lose the opportunity to express their views through the Early Childhood Development Board with its advice to policy makers and with its reports on what is happening on the ground. That valuable advice from the regions will now be divorced from the ministry in practice and it will certainly be divorced from the Minister and we oppose that. We know that Trevor Mallard has an ideological bias against independent providers. This is his opportunity to remove their voice from the ministry which he holds under his thumb. The only motive I can see for that is that he wants to hear only his own advice and the advice of those whose views are akin to his own philosophical bent. He prefers community-owned operators and he prefers those that can be more closely regulated by the Government; those are the only early childhood care and education centres that he wants to hear from. That is of huge concern to us. 
Another concern that I put to Mr Mallard is the National Party’s belief that we should keep delivery separate from policy advice. That is our view and it is one that we have held for some time. The Early Childhood Development Board supplies advice and support towards the establishment of early childhood education providers. In comparison the ministry has always had a regulatory role. It awards licences for early childhood education providers and it cancels them if it believes that the providers are not living up to their licence requirements. With the merger of the Early Childhood Development Board and the ministry the transparency of the two roles 
is compromised. Delivery should be kept separate from policy advice. The ministry and the policy makers have divorced themselves from the practice in the regions. In another sense they have joined themselves so closely together that they will not be able to have objective views when it comes to awarding and cancelling licences and that is of concern to the National Party. It is for the second reason that we will be opposing this bill. 
Thirdly there is a restriction on streams of advice—hearing only what one wants to hear and I touched on that with Mr Mallard earlier. I note this comment made by those in the sector when the surprise announcement was made to the sector with no consultation whatsoever: “The Minister talks of wanting a consistent approach; what he really wants is to reduce the number of opportunities for disagreement with his policies.” That is a key point. Independent providers of early childhood education are already under threat through funding disparities in favour of kindergartens and community-owned operators and through new regulations requiring early childhood teacher registration. The Minister does not want to hear about those funding disparities. He does not want to hear about favouritism towards kindergartens. He does not want to hear about favouritism towards those education and care centres that are unionised. He does not want to hear about new regulations requiring early childhood teacher registration. He does not want to hear about any of those problems within the sector. What he does want to hear are glowing reports about what a wonderful job he is doing and we cannot subscribe to that because it is just not happening. The problem with this is that it restricts the streams of advice and the Minister will hear only what he wants to hear—such is the size of the Minister’s ego. 
There are practical reasons for retaining the Early Childhood Development Board and for improving it in terms of both its performance and its objectives. It has a completely different role from the role that the Ministry of Education has traditionally had. The Early Childhood Development Board used to provide parenting initiatives such as Parents as First Teachers and Family Start. The Minister will be seriously undermining them. I know that Parents as First Teachers programmes have been restricted throughout the country. There are fewer of them rolling out. Not a single Family Start programme has been put in place when he has been Minister. He argues that such programmes are still operative but there is a cut-back in Parents as First Teachers programmes and there have been no new Family Start programmes so I do not know how he can argue that they still exist. 
The Early Childhood Development Board has supported the sector and it has had an especially important role because it knows of the diversity within the sector. It has heard representations from people right across the board—whether they are from kindergartens private providers or playcentres. The Minister should hear advice from all people within the sector and not just those who will do his bidding. Given the exponential increase of early childhood education and early childhood education providers in the 1990s it seems absurd that the Early Childhood Development Board which was such a useful arm of the Government at that time and which was useful to that growth should be disbanded and merged with the Ministry of Education. It is stupid. Surely more emphasis should be given to early childhood education. We argue that that is best done by maintaining the Early Childhood Development Board.