Pugh Maureen; Hipkins ChrisMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I just want to turn my attention and ask the Minister if he could elaborate a bit about the police-vetting requirements in terms of applications for non-teaching and unregistered positions within the early childcare education environment and whether or not he believes that that's going to create an onerous burden on applicants into the system. The last thing we want to do is to place that burden on our existing police resources. Does he think that there is some leeway that can be given there? Because we see that most people will provide a police vet on their application or with their application—and whether we can streamline that process in a better way so that we're not unduly adding a cost to the application which could also then be a barrier to applying for those roles which I reiterate are non-teaching and unregistered positions. The other question I have while I've got the talking stick is in terms of the criteria around locations or localities is: how can the Minister give some reassurance to the customers of those early childhood centres that the ability to innovate the ability to be creative in how centres deliver services to families is not going to be stifled by the mere fact that they have the controlling interest in an area? And what guarantees can he give that there will be that ability for those centres to provide that innovation if you like but other ways of doing work as usual—and maybe providing what would normally happen as a consequence of competition in the market? So does the Minister believe that that might create a kind of—I don't want to use the word lazy" but maybe a bit more of a relaxed approach to the long-term future of some of those centres and that we do end up dumbing down as a consequence of that lack of competition?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): If I perhaps just work backwards through those issues in terms of the room for innovation and the room for different types of services network planning certainly does not prevent that. And in the operational guidance that will be issued and in the national and regional policy statements I think it will be clear that there is still room for innovation and for different service types in different areas where they're offering something different that its current centres don't offer. In terms of police vetting I can tell the member that the Minister of Education and the Minister of Police have had a good conversation about the police-vetting processes and there is some further development happening there in the space of police vetting which the Minister of Police is leading which will ensure that that process is continuing to improve. In terms of the issue raised by Penny Simmonds in her questions she is simply wrong. In fact in terms of her assertions around what the bill does she has a particular clause of the bill that she believes supports the assertions that she has just made. I certainly don't believe that it is in the bill that existing centres would be covered but if she has a clause in the bill that she believes does do that then of course I welcome her pointing that out."