Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I want to talk about early childhood education. I want to talk about why it matters and why it should matter to any Government that is actually intent on ensuring that children can fulfil their God-given potential. I want to talk about this Government's absolute failure to deliver on its promises to early childhood education. I want to talk about the impact that failure to deliver is having on Kiwi kids and their families.This is a Government of broken promises. We had here Mr Hipkins say—he had the gall to say—that it's here on this side of the bench that we have an elitist view of the world. Well if you want to know what an elitist view of the world looks like you need look no further than the fees-free policy which says If you make it to tertiary education—if you've got the skills and the qualifications to enter tertiary education—we'll reward you with tens of thousands of dollars." but at the same time says "But if you're a child entering early childhood education guess what we won't deliver on our promises to you because you are not as important as fulfilling our promise to fees-free tertiary education."So let's remember shall we what this Labour-led Government promised to early childhood education. They promised 100 percent qualified teachers. They promised lower teacher-child ratios. They promised that there would be shorter waiting times for early intervention. They have failed to deliver on every promise. Do you know what that looks like for parents who are sending their children to early childhood education? Well I'll tell you what it looked like for me this morning. When I got to my daughter's early childhood service this morning there taped to the door the minute I walked in was a poster. It said "Children are being short-changed by Government underfunding." It said "This looks like teacher shortages this looks like a funding crisis." It said "It's got to change." It said "It's time for the Government to value early childhood education."You will ask "Well who put that poster there? Was it the National Party?" No it wasn't. Who put that poster there? Was it the New Zealand Business Roundtable? No it wasn't. The NZEI—the teacher's union; Labour's good friends—put that poster on the door of the early childhood service. I'll tell you why they put it there: because they see that this is a Government that can find billions to commit to tertiary students but cannot prioritise funding for children and early childhood education.It's having an impact. We had a Prime Minister who in May last year said it was disgraceful that children were having to wait 74 days to get an early intervention appointment. These are children with additional needs who need extra help. The earlier we get that help to them the better the outcomes will be for them in their lives. Minister Martin sitting opposite knows what's happened since that promise was made. She knows what's happened. The early intervention waiting times have blown out from 74 days to 110 days. Minister Martin knows and Mr Hipkins knows what's happening in our early childhood centres. There are such acute teacher shortages that services are having to cut back how many staff they have. They're having to hire people they don't believe are suitable. They're having to have a revolving door of remedial workers and this Government is not managing to act.It's starting to show up in the quality of care and education that our children are receiving. The number of complaints has spiked in the past year and is it any wonder when services are under so much pressure; up to 440 complaints—a huge spike of 90 in a year. We're seeing more licences being downgraded and we are reading reports of centres where terrible things are going wrong and when the inspectors go to see what had gone wrong they find that the regulations weren't being met.So what's this Government saying they're going to do about it? Well we had the wonderful set of proposals that came out from the Ministry of Education just a couple of weeks ago. They said that what they were going to do about some of these issues in early childhood services was they were going to ban cheerios; that's right ban cheerios can popcorn ban marshmallows. Because rather than investing in early childhood education and prioritising teaching what we need to do is introduce more bans on the things that are an intrinsic part of Kiwi childhood.So over on this side of the House we have put forward proposals for early childhood education that we intend to deliver on not just talk about like the members opposite. We will have more spot checks. We will tackle teacher shortages. We will ensure better early intervention faster because we care about Kiwi kids we care about their parents and we know that government is about priorities. We must prioritise the early years; that's what really counts. These people opposite have not made them a priority."