Stanford Erica; Salesa JennyERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I have to wholeheartedly agree with the Minister when he says that most of the changes in this bill won't set the world on fire. But what is worthy of debate—and he won't be surprised to hear this—is Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 118 around network planning. Nothing in this Supplementary Order Paper can't I would argue be done under the existing tools available to the Minister and what it will in fact do is reduce choice it will reduce quality and it will reduce the affordability in early childhood education (ECE). That has been our position all the way along and it doesn't change. There were some changes made to the bill at the select committee stage and we worked really constructively I'd have to say as a committee to get some of those changes through and I'll mention some of them in a moment. The Minister has already alluded to some of them. We worked really hard to make this SOP a better SOP. I would argue that network planning still does more harm than good but I would say that we did work really constructively and got some wins to change that SOP to make what is a bad idea a slightly less bad but none the less a still a very bad idea.I just want to go through some of the changes that we made at select committee on SOP 188 around network management. Firstly the commencement date and I have to say that having the Minister come into the committee this new way of operating where we get the Minister in before we start talking to submitters and start thinking about the bill—having the Minister come to the committee and explain what he's trying to do actually worked really well in this case because we got to give him some feedback that was I think really important around the commencement date of network planning. It was 1 August this year and builders had been given a two-year window to get their buildings completed before they had to apply for an application for licensing. The problem was that two years firstly is never long enough to build an ECE centre or even renovate one—that's the first problem and we'll talk about that more in a bit—and secondly COVID had come along in the meantime and made things really difficult. We had lockdowns we had lack of supply of materials we had people off with COVID and buildings delayed and we had council services that weren't able to come in and do inspections and that pushed out the building of so many centres that were not going to make it in time for the 1 August date. Now we made this very clear to the Minister right at the very start. It should have been frankly obvious to him. The feedback from the sector should have been obvious to the officials and to the Minister but it was the work of the Opposition in pointing out that there were going to be dozens and dozens of centres caught out and potentially put in very very difficult situations where banks were going to stop lending to them halfway through a build because they were concerned about the fact that they might not get their first licence. Now to the Minister's credit he listened and changed the date out to 1 February. We did try and move that out six weeks given that six weeks is lost over the Christmas period where councils and health authorities can't come in and do any checks over that period but unfortunately that was voted down—I tried my best.The second area that was really important—and many submitters came in and talked about this—was not the commencement date as such but the two-year period to build an ECE centre. The only part in this bill that would guarantee you a little bit of extra time was some sort of unforeseen event like a natural disaster but a lack of building products or consent times pushing out weren't included and so we made that really clear to officials that there wasn't a developer that we spoke to that said that they could get a centre built in two years under normal circumstances let alone the circumstances that we exist in right now with a lack of building products and a lack of workers. It was really hard for us to get this through to officials and I have to commend the Minister. He entertained me in his office and listened to me and went away and has said that he's going to put an SOP through extending this. We don't know what the details of that SOP are but if it's sensible and it makes the bill better we will support it. But we have yet to see the details of that.The other change that was made which kind of went maybe 10 percent of the way to making this clause better was—I call it—the clause that will stop banks lending to ECE. What this clause says is that the Minister may at any time impose new conditions on the approval or may amend or revoke any conditions. So for those out there who are listening the Minister could give approval for a pre-licence and then halfway through the build could change his mind about the conditions of that build—how many licences for example. When we put this to officials they said No no no. It'll only be if the developer's circumstances change that the Minister will make these changes." We tried to get that made clear in the bill but we were unsuccessful. The only change that was made was around the fact that now there is an explicit requirement to notify the applicant of any changes and seek their response but in the end the Minister still retains the right to make any changes that he likes halfway through a build.The other thing that was changed was excluding kōhanga reo from network planning. The question arises from this—and it's not clear in the bill and it's not clear in any of the commentary—how the Government will analyse statistics to come up with their regional plans for network planning. Do they exclude Māori from that statistical analysis if kōhanga reo aren't included in network planning? When people are putting forward their plans to try and get a pre-licence are they to include Māori in that area or not include Māori in that area because kōhanga reo aren't included or are they to exclude a percentage of Māori in that data analysis? So I think potentially there is a problem that the data will be skewed around where a centre is required and who requires that centre if we're not including kōhanga reo in network planning. I'm not saying that we should include it but I'm just saying that we haven't heard from the Minister how the data will now be analysed if kōhanga reo are not included.Probably the most important things are the changes that weren't made. One of the things that I argued really strongly for was statutory time frames for decisions to be made. I argued really strongly for this because developers clearly said to us in select committee that if a developer is putting up land for tender or they've got an option on some land they put in their network plan application and then have to wait. How long? We don't know. We argued for a reasonable amount of time so that developers wouldn't lose out on land. The problem comes if a developer has an option on some land puts in an application for approval for their licence and then it takes three months for the Minister to make his decision. Meanwhile they've lost the land and what does that mean? Does that mean they have to go back to square one and apply again? So there's all these questions that are thrown up through network planning that haven't been answered.In the short amount of time I've got left I want to talk about the Minister's strategic priorities—which have come out this week for consultation—and the problems around that and nothing in this bill explains to us how he's going to weight his strategic priorities. So for example if you have a big centre that puts in on day one a very comprehensive plan here's a new development that requires a centre and a big centre has come in and put their plan in. They've spent thousands of dollars on it they've surveyed parents they know exactly where to put it and they know exactly what parents want where they want it and on what route and then what does the Minister do? He's got now a set of priorities that prioritise bilingual services hapū- and iwi-owned services services with a distinct Māori identity Pacific bilingual—and the list goes on—Pacific language and culture. What does he do? Which one does he give weighting to?If he gets a very comprehensive set of data from one centre and then one of his strategic-priority centres comes along with not such great data and only for a small centre but the requirement is for more what does he do? Which centre does he give the approval to? There's nothing in this bill to say what the weighting is. If you take for example a new development area in rural New Zealand that requires say a centre for a hundred kids and a big centre comes along and says "We can provide a centre for a hundred kids." and say a bilingual centre comes along and says "Well there's only demand for 30. We can do 30." what does the Minister do? We don't know what the weighting is and we would argue—I argued this in the first reading and I'll argue it again at the third reading—that all this does is entrench those existing providers. It doesn't give them any impetus or any incentive to keep their fees low or invest in capital to make their centre any better because they will enjoy the licence without any competition and so that's why we've been opposing the bill. There are so many questions that we will put to the Minister at the committee stage around this because they haven't been answered at the select committee stage. Thank you. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to."