Rich Katherine: General Debate 
Rich Katherine: General Debate 
[Volume:639;Page:9058] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 There were a couple of telling points in the speech made by the previous speaker Steve Chadwick. The first one was that she said the Opposition was going crazy. I can tell members that on the Opposition side of the House we are going crazy—over the issue of gangs and the total inaction coming from the Government side of the House. 
Opposition members are also going crazy over the fact that Annette King the Minister of Police until today has refused to make any comment about the gang problem at all citing that it is an operational issue. I went to look at a lot of the questions that Annette King has answered since she has been Minister of Police. I saw she has answered questions on everything from the number of burglaries to the number of annual leave hours taken in Nightcaps to whether she supports the police car pool in Horowhenua. Yet she says that the issue of gangs is an operational issue and that she will not make any comment. It is the No. 1 issue in her portfolio so at least today she made a few comments. 
The second thing is that the previous speaker said there would be something in the Budget for tax reform. Well who was the first person she paid tribute to? It was Peter Dunne not Michael Cullen—because we all know that he is agreeing to that only through clenched teeth. If it had not been for Peter Dunne there probably would not be anything in there. 
If people look at the whole issue of the 20 free hours’ early childhood education policy they will see that it is an interesting example of how to spend $140 million without pleasing anybody. There is not one group or one organisation that is happy with the 20 free hours policy and that is a result of its mismanagement by Minister Steve Maharey. He will go down in New Zealand history for being the one person who has made a once-proud free kindergarten movement into one that now charges fees. 
We have seen the kindergarten associations up and down the country say they will be moving from charging families what is supposedly a donation of $60 a term here in Wellington to up to $60 a week. In Southland the situation is worse. Parents who are being asked to pay $100 a term could be asked to pay $100 a week. The Minister can have an academic argument about what constitutes a donation but I would tell him that the effect on families’ pockets is the same. 
What an interesting weekend the Minister had his having given us a window into his thinking and into how he really feels about private provision in the early childhood sector. We saw from his comments that he does not like the private sector at all. He said his officials would be trawling through the annual accounts of certain private providers to see whether shareholders were making a return and if they were making a return then the Government would question whether the Government subsidies were appropriate. What a clear message to private providers that is. Why would any mum and dad investors look at setting up a private early childhood centre when Government members are saying that there will be no return for their investment and that they will barely be able to pay their bills? 
This Government has forgotten that had there not been such a huge growth in private provision Labour members would be in dire straits because working families up and down the country would not be able to get their kids into care. Some 60 percent of the education and care part of the New Zealand early childhood provisions is provided by the private sector and it does that well. 
The Minister had huge egg on his face because he started talking about some of the corporate chains. What he forgot of course was that one of those firms is listed on the New Zealand stock exchange. So as a result of the Minister’s embarrassing gaffe he has now been embroiled in a situation where he has been forced to be part of a formal statement to the New Zealand stock exchange because on Monday as a result of his ill-judged comments to the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 the share price for Kidicorp dropped significantly—by 17 percent in just 24 hours. It just shows how commercially naive that Minister is and how he fails to understand the make-up of the early childhood sector. 
Of course the Minister tells us he dreams that the sector will be more like the compulsory sector—whatever that means. Does that mean we will have big classrooms little choice and little variation in teaching practices? One of the strengths of our early childhood sector is its vibrancy its choice and its ability to provide a better service than a one-size-fits-all model can. So the Minister through his veiled threats to private providers has been forced to make an embarrassing back-down and he should apologise to Kidicorp immediately.