Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): This is a bill that was sold all those weeks ago as small and insignificant technical fix a mere minor change that actually has turned out to be a nightmare for the Minister—a nightmare of such epic proportions that I think it surprised even him.Just a few weeks ago Minister Hipkins was in a perfectly presented presser at an early childhood centre with smiling children happy teachers and centre owners that were beaming from ear to ear. He announced that pay parity was happening and he was fulfilling his election promise. There was one throw-away comment that he mentioned on the day—that he would need to make a minor technical change to the law to achieve his goals and here we are.So much has changed since we saw those happy smiling faces at that press conference. On to the Early Childhood Council conference on Saturday just gone where the Minister was skewered to put it mildly. Where angry and frustrated early childhood centres—while they absolutely want and support pay parity and want to pay their very much valued teachers a lot more—were angry upset and frustrated with the Minister for the way in which he has gone about his pay parity promise. There were many reasons that were talked about.The first thing about this bill is the time frame and I mentioned this all the way along—the fact that we're doing this in urgency the fact that we only had a few weeks to think about the bill to have submissions and the fact that we only had three days during early childhood centre hours where submitters to the bill could come and talk to our committee. Now we know that the sector is short staffed. We know that they're under a huge amount of pressure and what did we do? We put the submission times during the time that the centres would be open making sure that they would not have the chance to talk to our committee in person. But they did make themselves heard loud and clear through the written submission process—over 550 of them and most of them opposed to this bill.They were upset about the lack of consultation. They were blindsided by this bill. The Early Childhood Council which is the sector representative said that this had never been discussed with them. The terms and conditions of pay parity that were outlined which had been outlined to the committee were never discussed with them. The third thing that they were upset about was the term employment matters" in the bill and while it was cleared up somewhat in the bill and the Minister tried to talk his way around it the fact is that "employment matters" is still the term that is used in the bill. This worries privately owned centres who are worried about what the Minister will do what terms and conditions he will impose on them that are outside of just pay.As I said in my second reading speech and it was said again on the weekend by all of the early childhood centres that were at that conference they were never talked to about the fact that pay parity the money that was going to be granted would be attached to conditions like the fact that it would be a tenure-based scale rather than performance based and the fact that the centres themselves wouldn't get to decide where in fact their own staff started on that scale. These things were never mentioned. In all of the lead-up to this bill and during the bill and during the select committee it was never mentioned until we dragged it out of the officials and said "Hang on a minute. What other terms and conditions of the kindergarten teachers collective agreement will be imposed?" The Minister said "Oh no none at all. None at all." and the officials said "None at all." but then they did actually have to say "Well there will be a couple of conditions that will mimic the KTCA." and those will be the fact that the centres will not get to decide where their staff start on the scale nor how they go up the scale. That will not be up to them; that will be as per the kindergarten agreement—never mentioned but confirmed. They were blindsided by this and the feedback from the conference was "We are private businesses. You are foisting a collective agreement on to private businesses who want to manage their own employment affairs." They do not want to have it put on to them in such a manner that it's done under urgency without any consultation and sort of slipped in at the last minute.Therefore these centres at the beginning of this process were not able to work out actually how much this was going to cost them. They're looking at this bill going "Do we support it? Do we not? Let's have a think about if we can opt in. Can we opt in?" They weren't able to work out how much it would cost them because they didn't realise they wouldn't be the ones to decide where their staff would start on that scale. When it was made apparent and they were able to do the calculations it was a pretty dire situation. Most of the centres—in fact every single one at the conference—when they were asked to put up their hands as to who could afford to opt in not a single hand went up. Not a single centre could afford to opt in.Now the Minister can play games and say "Oh well but the funding is completely separate to this bill." He could be a bit tricky and clever and say "We're not talking about that. We're just talking about the bill and the technical amendment." Actually those two things are inextricably linked. The centres that were there on the day were standing up almost in tears saying "What are we supposed to do? You're putting us between a rock and a hard place." In fact those were the Minister's words. The Minister said "You are between a rock and a hard place."The teachers' expectations have been massively raised—"We're getting pay parity."—and yet a minuscule amount of money has been put forward to actually fund it. So where does that extra bit get made up? Well I'll go into that later. So many questions were poised at this conference that the Minister was not able to answer about this bill. The early childhood centres were saying to him "What happens when our staff go? Even if we can't afford it but we manage to make things work in the first year what happens in the second year when all of our staff on all the different levels go up? What happens then? What if we are massively out of pocket? Will you commit to paying?" The Minister was very clever with his words and talked about the bottom rate but he never talked about all of the other people on the higher levels of that scale.They also said to him "Well what about the kindy agreement. If the kindy agreement rates go up will you make our grant match that"—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not the Speaker.ERICA STANFORD: I'm sorry Madam Speaker. They said "Will the Minister increase the grant to match that so that centres wouldn't get further and further and further behind?" and he could not answer. He says "Well it's my intention that we will." but there's no promise and there's nothing in this bill to guarantee that while a centre might be out of pocket in the first year but manages to make up the difference—in future years will they be able to keep their doors open?This whole issue is in my opinion the worst possible outcome for the quality of early education and the reason for that as I said is the Minister is pitting centres against teachers and the centres know and want desperately to increase pay for their teachers—they want to opt in; they desperately want to—but they're not funded enough to. So what do they do instead? If they opt in they're going to have to increase the ratios to the bare minimum which international evidence shows is not the best thing to do. They desperately don't want to do that. What else can they do? They can reduce the amount of resources. They can hire less qualified or unqualified teachers or they can increase fees to parents which many are loathe to do.The worst thing about this is the centres who will be the most adversely affected—and the Minister even admitted to this in committee—are the ones that are in highly deprived areas who can't afford to charge fees or charge very very low fees. They certainly can't afford to increase those fees because those parents and families won't be able to afford it and will pull their children out and we desperately want those children in early childhood education. So if they can't do that what will they do? They will increase their ratios—so one teacher for 10 two-year-olds—and nobody wants that. These are some of the most vulnerable children in our society who need the best ratios and we are forcing these centres into a situation where they will have to choose between teacher pay and quality. If they choose teacher pay the quality will go down and those kids in those highly deprived areas will suffer the most. They will have to cut back on food they will have to cut back on resources and the biggest jump is for these centres in deprived areas because often their teachers aren't paid like teachers are in more affluent areas. So they've got the biggest jump to get on to those steps. They will have the biggest cost to get to pay parity but they don't want to lose those teachers. They want to keep their teachers so they'll opt in and the quality will reduce.All the submitters on the bill said the same thing: quality will be reduced if people opt in. I suspect now that Minister Hipkins is going cap in hand to Minister Robertson to ask for more money because he knows centres can't opt in. He knows that at that conference no one raised their hands. Even in committee when I asked the Minister how many centres would opt in he couldn't say. This is a bad bill that jams a collective agreement model into a private business model with no guarantee of future funding to meet the increased teacher pay. That will see kids in the most deprived areas suffer the most and the Minister admitted to that himself. We cannot support this bill. The Minister should have just used the existing attestation rate to increase teacher pay."