Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is my intention to move that the bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee at the conclusion of this debate.

This bill amends the Education Act 1989 to carry out the legislative disestablishment of the education Crown entity, the Early Childhood Development Board. The Review of the Centre, done as part of the State services work of this Government, found an important issue with fragmentation and with the loss of focus on the big picture that fragmentation can cause. I considered the Review of the Centre advice appropriate, when I received the recommendations coming out of the working-party on the Early Childhood Strategic Plan—something around which there was a lot of discussion and, I think, a very large degree of unanimity politically and amongst the sector. Although New Zealand already has a relatively strong early childhood education sector compared with other countries, the plan provides opportunities to build on its strengths. One of the changes in focus required by the plan is greater involvement by the Government in early childhood education, rather than the free-market approach. I think it is fair to say that the involvement of the Government has been welcomed widely. In particular, rural communities feel that they miss out in the early childhood area under the free-market approach, because they consider that they need more resources, more intervention, and more support.

A lot of work is being done to integrate the work being done by the Early Childhood Development Board into the Ministry of Education, in order to combine the capabilities and strengths of both organisations in ways that will contribute to the overall lifting of access, quality, and collaboration across the early childhood education sector. The outcomes of the integration will be to improve the effectiveness of early childhood education delivery, to provide a combined and strong leadership for early childhood education services, and to lift the early childhood education capability of the Ministry of Education. I am the first to accept that the ministry has been very light in this area, especially in the areas of Māori and Pasifika early childhood education. In fact, I think it is fair to say that, overall, when I became Minister, the early childhood education sector in the Ministry of Education was not capable of doing the sort of intervention work and development work that I think this whole Parliament thinks is necessary in order to improve the quality of early childhood education. The outcomes will also include: developing closer links between early childhood education policy development, policy implementation, and shared strategies; developing strong links between information advice and support functions, which have been disparate until now; and maintaining national cohesion.

I want to make it clear that this decision in no way reflects on the work that the Early Childhood Development Board has done to promote and develop quality early childhood education. It has had a particular focus on Māori and Pasifika communities, which I know has been very greatly appreciated by those communities. Even in the past 12 months, knowing that change was about to occur, it has kept its eye on the ball and has licensed more non-registered services than its objectives in its annual plan required. I think the board is to be commended for that.

The integration process will transfer most of the board’s business to the Ministry of Education as at 1 October 2003. A new organisational design for the ministry is currently being finalised and is out for consultation. Early Childhood Development Board staff will be appointed to the ministry under the relevant provisions of the State Sector Act, and a transfer protocol has been negotiated with the Public Service Association.

This bill provides for the formal disestablishment of the Early Childhood Development Board as a legal entity, and the consequential matters that that entails. Just to make it clear, an interim board will be appointed to carry out any requisite legal matters until the time that this legislation passes. The bill transfers the functions, assets, liabilities, and rights to the Ministry of Education, makes the necessary amendments to legislation, and provides for the Secretary for Education to take responsibility for providing Parliament with a final report after the end of the year.

The bill also empowers the ministry to take over the payments to licence - exempt early childhood services. These are small grants to services such as playgroups. The grants allow them to pay for such things as hall hire, play equipment, and safety modifications. The Early Childhood Development Board was able to pay the grants under section 321 of the Education Act 1989 because it was a body corporate, as the section requires. Members will probably be surprised to learn that the ministry, as part of the Crown and not a body corporate, has no authorisation to make such payments. I think it is a gap in the law, and, obviously, we are taking advantage of this legislation to fill this gap.

I understand that there is a lot of support from around the House for this legislation, because people who have been consulting the early childhood sector know that it is very widely supported. Everyone out there in the sector knows that it is something that is wanted and desired, and it is really just a matter of Parliament doing the will of the sector in this case.

It might come as a surprise to the Minister of Education, but not everyone in the early childhood sector—and certainly not everyone in this House—supports this move. He might very well think it is so far down the track that we will just lie down and die, those thousands of parents indirectly affected by it will lie down and die, and those professionals working in the early childhood care and education sector will lie down and die, and accept it. But the reality is that the Minister—even with this bill—is listening to only one stream of advice. Part of the reason he is getting rid of the Early Childhood Development Board is so that he will continue to get only one stream of advice, and that is from his own people with the same philosophical drive as him. The Minister should not be surprised that the National Party will be opposing this bill, and I am happy to put up our reasons for that.

The general policy statement in the explanatory note of the bill states: “The Government has determined that the Early Childhood Development Board (ECD) should be integrated into the Ministry of Education after 30 September 2003.” The Early Childhood Development Board was established in 1990 under the Education Act, and the board reports directly to the Ministry of Education. That has been its role until now, and it has had a high degree of success. Certainly, there are opportunities to improve the way that it provides advice—there is no doubt about that—but it being separate from the ministry works very well indeed.

I do not know why this Minister and his Government continue the trend of centralisation and the creation of super-bureaucracies. It seems to be key with the Labour Party. There has been a trend to move smaller Government departments into bigger ones, with the argument that there is a decrease in bureaucracy, and with the argument that such centralisation actually lowers cost, removes unnecessary personnel, and so on, yet we continue to see an ever-burgeoning public sector, particularly within the Ministry of Education. There is less money going to the schools that need it, and more money going to the bureaucracy. There was the merger of the Special Education Service with the Ministry of Education last year and earlier this year, and, of course, there has been the announcement of the merger of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Ministry of Social Development. Those mergers create two giant super-bureaucracies—one being the Ministry of Education, which we are talking about here, and the other one being the Ministry of Social Development. Mr Maharey and Mr Mallard have their kingdoms, and they are growing.

The vision of early childhood education will be further eroded simply because, with the demise of the Early Childhood Education Board, regions and small centres throughout our nation will lose the opportunity to express their views through the Early Childhood Development Board, with its advice to policy makers and with its reports on what is happening on the ground. That valuable advice from the regions will now be divorced from the ministry in practice, and it will certainly be divorced from the Minister, and we oppose that. We know that Trevor Mallard has an ideological bias against independent providers. This is his opportunity to remove their voice from the ministry, which he holds under his thumb. The only motive I can see for that is that he wants to hear only his own advice and the advice of those whose views are akin to his own philosophical bent. He prefers community-owned operators and he prefers those that can be more closely regulated by the Government; those are the only early childhood care and education centres that he wants to hear from. That is of huge concern to us.

Another concern that I put to Mr Mallard is the National Party’s belief that we should keep delivery separate from policy advice. That is our view, and it is one that we have held for some time. The Early Childhood Development Board supplies advice and support towards the establishment of early childhood education providers. In comparison, the ministry has always had a regulatory role. It awards licences for early childhood education providers, and it cancels them if it believes that the providers are not living up to their licence requirements. With the merger of the Early Childhood Development Board and the ministry, the transparency of the two roles is compromised. Delivery should be kept separate from policy advice. The ministry and the policy makers have divorced themselves from the practice in the regions. In another sense, they have joined themselves so closely together that they will not be able to have objective views when it comes to awarding and cancelling licences, and that is of concern to the National Party. It is for the second reason that we will be opposing this bill.

Thirdly, there is a restriction on streams of advice—hearing only what one wants to hear, and I touched on that with Mr Mallard earlier. I note this comment made by those in the sector when the surprise announcement was made to the sector with no consultation whatsoever: “The Minister talks of wanting a consistent approach; what he really wants is to reduce the number of opportunities for disagreement with his policies.” That is a key point. Independent providers of early childhood education are already under threat through funding disparities in favour of kindergartens and community-owned operators, and through new regulations requiring early childhood teacher registration. The Minister does not want to hear about those funding disparities. He does not want to hear about favouritism towards kindergartens. He does not want to hear about favouritism towards those education and care centres that are unionised. He does not want to hear about new regulations requiring early childhood teacher registration. He does not want to hear about any of those problems within the sector. What he does want to hear are glowing reports about what a wonderful job he is doing, and we cannot subscribe to that, because it is just not happening. The problem with this is that it restricts the streams of advice, and the Minister will hear only what he wants to hear—such is the size of the Minister’s ego.

There are practical reasons for retaining the Early Childhood Development Board, and for improving it in terms of both its performance and its objectives. It has a completely different role from the role that the Ministry of Education has traditionally had. The Early Childhood Development Board used to provide parenting initiatives, such as Parents as First Teachers and Family Start. The Minister will be seriously undermining them. I know that Parents as First Teachers programmes have been restricted throughout the country. There are fewer of them rolling out. Not a single Family Start programme has been put in place when he has been Minister. He argues that such programmes are still operative, but there is a cut-back in Parents as First Teachers programmes, and there have been no new Family Start programmes, so I do not know how he can argue that they still exist.

The Early Childhood Development Board has supported the sector, and it has had an especially important role because it knows of the diversity within the sector. It has heard representations from people right across the board—whether they are from kindergartens, private providers, or playcentres. The Minister should hear advice from all people within the sector, and not just those who will do his bidding. Given the exponential increase of early childhood education and early childhood education providers in the 1990s, it seems absurd that the Early Childhood Development Board, which was such a useful arm of the Government at that time, and which was useful to that growth, should be disbanded and merged with the Ministry of Education. It is stupid. Surely, more emphasis should be given to early childhood education. We argue that that is best done by maintaining the Early Childhood Development Board.

I am pleased to take a call on this bill this afternoon, because early childhood education is one of the most critical areas of education. As I have said for many years, it is the foundation upon which the rest of a child’s education is built. From my personal experience, the day our son started kindergarten I was co-opted on to a kindergarten committee, and I was still on a school committee when he was at university, so I served a good apprenticeship, and I gained a great deal from it. As a consequence, I have always had an interest in early childhood education.

💬 Phil Heatley: Did you do any painting?

Yes, I did occasionally do painting, and I love play dough. I have to say, after listening to Mr Heatley, that he had to struggle to find something to say against in this bill. It was arduous, and it was torturous for us to listen to him. I suspect that his heart really was not in his speech.

This bill is a good bill. It is forward-looking, and, as the Minister of Education said in his introductory comments, it will ensure that the Government and the early childhood development unit work closely together, and that is basically about improving young people’s educational chances. The integration of the agency staff into the ministry will enable everyone who works in the area to work closely alongside each other, and that is incredibly important. We are talking about collaboration, we are talking about cooperation, and we are talking about having a strong early childhood education unit.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, early childhood education is the foundation upon which young people’s education is based. This Government has contributed an extra $55 million over the next 4 years to early childhood education, because we recognise the importance of that part of the sector. This bill will ensure that there is a cohesive, integrated, and streamlined approach to the early childhood education strategy, with all the relevant education experts in the public service under one roof. And there are many experts in the early childhood sector. I just wish that more people in greater education circles were fully aware of the expertise that does exist within the early childhood area. I extend my appreciation to those experts.

A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting phone call from my colleague the member for Whangarei. Up in Northland we look after each other. [Interruption] Yes, party lines go out when it comes to Northland interests. I just want to report how the conversation went. He said: “Hey, Brian, what’s this bill about early childhood education about?”. I explained how the Early Childhood Development Board was to be absorbed into the Ministry of Education. The conversation continued: “What are you guys going to do?”. I said that there is duplication at the moment, there is wastage of money, and it makes sense to roll these bodies into one. The next comment was: “Yeah, but that’s your position for New Zealand First; what’s our position?”. I explained to him: “You guys have always believed that there should be a split between the policy side and the operational side of things, so you will probably be opposed to it.” Guess what? National is opposed to it, and I am going to send Bill English a bill for the policy consultancy work done by Brian Donnelly on behalf of New Zealand First.

Jill Pettis said that the National Party spokesperson on early childhood education was struggling and was mentioning how parents are outraged. I can see all these parents pushing their prams to the steps of Parliament to protest against this draconian move by this awful Labour Government. I can see Shane Ardern pushing a pram up the steps, and the police coming to get him for disorderly conduct. The reality is nothing of the sort.

I have to say that during my brief sojourn in the executive, I was delegated responsibility for early childhood education, including, obviously, the Early Childhood Development Unit, as it was called at the time. During that 1 week in which I sat on that side of the House and was a member of the executive—which Geoffrey Palmer reckoned was a constitutional outrage—I think I signed off making it the Early Childhood Development Board. So there is a bit of a sense of loss here.

But the Early Childhood Development Unit as it was, or the Early Childhood Development Board as it is now, was set up at a time when the theory of Government administration favoured a complete separation of policy and operation. In the early 1990s we did that across the field, not only in the area of early childhood education but in a whole range of education areas. In a sense, it was a sub-theme of the funder/provider split doctrine that existed at that particular time. In general, that pure theory just did not work. It certainly did not work in education. We have seen the same sort of thing occurring with the Special Education Service and some other areas. There was fragmentation, and even by 1996 it was recognised that there was a problem with that pure point of view in terms of Government administration. The policy makers were losing touch with the grass roots, with the reality of what was actually happening in our schools and preschools throughout the country. The ministry, particularly in the field of early childhood education, was progressively taking a much, much more hands-on approach even by that particular stage in time—even though it was somewhat surreptitious.

I have to make the claim that I think it was the New Zealand First - National administration that started, in education at least, deliberately to reconnect the policy with the provision. I think the Minister of Education would agree with that. In reality, some of this was already happening. During that coalition, Wyatt Creech and I recognised that we had to start reconnecting the disparate policy/operation shift or policy/provider shift that was happening. The Labour administration has come in with a deliberate policy of breaking down that split. We have to recognise that that is the policy that this particular administration has pursued, and the bringing together of the two parts has in fact accelerated. The result is we have duplication of roles between what the Early Childhood Development Board is doing and what the Ministry of Education is doing in this particular field. It does not seem sensible or fair on the taxpayer to continue to have this particular duplication.

One of the ironies of the situation is that the Ministry of Education is able to pay salaries at such a level that it has been attracting all the staff from the Early Childhood Development Board, which has been having difficulty keeping its best-quality staff. So it has been becoming more and more difficult for the Early Childhood Development Board to carry out its task.

The Minister mentioned that the board has been strong in connecting with Māori and Pacific Island populations. In fact, in 1996 or at about that time, a criticism of the board was that it did not have a strength or a capability in that area. So it is significant that it has developed that strength, and, hopefully, it will be transferred across into the Ministry of Education.

The one thing about the Early Childhood Development Board and that whole area of education is its diversity. Its diversity is its strength, because it is able to meet the multiple aspirations of different parents’ groups, but it is also its weakness. Therefore we have to set up bodies—and there are lots of bodies—to try to speak with one voice for early childhood education. Unfortunately, it is somewhat of a minefield because the different groups come with different philosophies about what good quality early childhood education is. We need to retain an entity that can bring all those particular threads together into one, so that within the regions we can provide good quality early childhood education. But it should not be through single providers or single-sector groups; in other words, we should not be saying: “Kindergartens are good so we will have only kindergartens.”, or: “Kōhanga reo is the only way we can deliver immersion Māori education.”, because that is not so. There is a whole variety of ways that we can meet the aspirations of parents, the aspirations of families, and the educational aspirations of different groups. I think kōhanga reo is probably the classic example of that.

We need to be able to retain that diversity yet overcome some of the duplication. I think that by overcoming duplication, by bringing the Early Childhood Development Board into the Ministry of Education, we will get better cohesion within the programme of development of early childhood education across the country. New Zealand First members believe that we should not be duplicating resources and wasting taxpayers’ money. We can have all the philosophical arguments about which is better—the provider/funder split, or whatever else there might be—but in reality New Zealand First takes a very pragmatic view. In other words, we want what actually works and delivers to parents and families in the diverse rural areas and cities of New Zealand. We believe that this move is a positive and constructive one in terms of making sure that we do have high-quality early childhood education across the nation. Therefore we will be supporting this bill.

It is interesting that we are having the first reading of this bill today, because if we look at the recruitment page in today’s Dominion Post we see that all the positions are already being advertised for this new entity and have already moved into the Ministry of Education. So on the first reading of a piece of legislation we are trying to catch up with what has already happened. The Minister is being specious if he thinks that he has to pass this whole new bill just to cover a gap in the legislation—that is, clause 6, which has the new funding mechanism that will enable the Minister to channel funding to the childhood centres that are not bodies corporate. That could have been done without taking the Early Childhood Development Board into the Ministry of Education.

The Minister, Trevor Mallard, said on 12 March that public servants should not be frightened for their jobs due to this amalgamation. He said: “This is not a Ruth Richardson let’s-fire-everyone type review.” However, a month later the Early Childhood Development Board’s own chairman, Michael Morris, told the Education and Science Committee during the financial reviews that he did expect some staff redundancies. He also told the New Zealand Press Association that the merger would take place by 30 September 2003. As we know, it is now 10 September, and we are debating the first reading of this bill, and, anyway, it has already happened.

The Minister was also incorrect when he said that there had been consultation with stakeholders in the early childhood sector. There has been very little consultation with stakeholders. The New Zealand Educational Institute and the Early Childhood Council have not been consulted. It just shows the complete contempt that this Minister has for the sector. I agree with the member over there who said that there are some experts out there in early childhood education. They are mothers and they are fathers. Why are they experts? They are experts because the Government keeps its clammy hands out of their lives and lets them get on with them. The best thing that this Government, or any Government, can do for early childhood education is to just leave it alone, apart from being there to protect contract and the rule of law.

We had a situation where parents could choose, and we still have a situation, to a large extent, where parents can choose. This Minister is doing his damnedest to get rid of that. He will create one big bureaucracy in the Ministry of Education, rather than allow the sector to develop within local communities, and local communities are what can be truly responsive to the needs of communities who use early childhood education. Sure, they do not always get it right and do make mistakes, but local communities can respond a helluva lot quicker than a great big behemoth of a bureaucracy in Wellington can respond. To take one example, members should look at the disastrous result we have of the great experiment of look-say reading. We have a whole generation of children who cannot read or write, and we are starting to go back to phonics. If that had been run by parents, communities, and teachers without a directive from the ministry it would have been corrected very easily.

The Minister referred to the fact, and it is also in the commentary, that the decision to do this merger draws on the Government’s decision to increase its involvement in the management of the early childhood education network of services and the 10-year strategic plan for early childhood education, Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki. Let us look at some of the results of this plan. I asked the Minister a number of parliamentary questions a month ago. I wanted to know about the target for increasing Māori participation in early childhood education that the Minister has claimed as a great success. If we look at the results of that we see that the target for increasing it was 4,500. It deliberately was not made in percentages, so it would be easier to turn round and say that it has been a success.

Four thousand one hundred and five Māori children were placed with early childhood providers during this time. It sounds good does it not? In fact, those children would have been placed with early childhood providers just because of population growth. It would have happened regardless. What has been spent on these contracts? It is $8.2 million; $15,555 per child. That would have bought quite a lot of good private early childhood education.

There is almost no monitoring of this scheme. Some contractors have been paid, even though there is no record of their even placing children with early childhood providers. I have some of the lists here. Let us look at some of these amounts of money: Te Whare Akonga Open Learning Centre, $600,000; Te Pua Waitangi Ltd, 270,000; Manaaki Management Services, $202,000. How many children have stayed in early childhood education as a result of this $8 million? We do not know. There is no accountability. As the early childhood advisory committee noted at its committee meeting, there is no follow-up on duration of participation, or monitoring of retention. Fourteen out of the 50 contractors that the education ministry had paid this money to had failed to meet specific performance measures.

It is just not good enough. What should that come under? That is $8 million that was targeted to get children into early childhood education. We do not know where it has gone. We do not know how long those children have stayed in. They are not monitored after 3 months. We do not know whether it is the same children enrolling and re-enrolling. It is for those reasons that the ACT party is opposing this bill.

If the Minister were doing his job he would be using taxpayers’ money to ensure that those children were getting an early childhood education and that that taxpayers’ money was being used for the reason for which it was designated, and that taxpayers’ money was not being wasted in going ahead with this merger when it is absolutely not necessary. I argue that the Minister is just using this merger as an excuse to cut funding to the sector. We will end up with a single bloated bureaucracy. The bureaucracy will be the inspection and the enforcement agency, as Phil Heatley has already pointed out. It will be the funding administrator, it will be the provider of advice and support to centres, and it will be the researcher and the policy adviser to the Government.

So it is to advise the Government, it will do the research, and it will be handing out the funding, but it will also do the inspection and the enforcement. It is exactly what Trevor Mallard said he would do to the Education Review Office before he became Minister. He went out and he publicly said he would close down the Education Review Office and take it into the ministry. With pressure on him, to his credit, he actually did listen that time. He consulted. It was his early days as the Minister of Education—

💬 Simon Power: Those were the days!

Those were the days! He listened to people out there who said: “If you get rid of the ERO, there will be absolutely nothing for parents to monitor schools.” At least with the Education Review Office they can go on to the web and see reports from the Education Review Office. The Minister is capable of consulting and listening, if he really, really tries hard—and that does not mean going round to places like Wairoa and Kawakawa, and listening and then closing the schools anyway. It means listening to good advice, not from his ministry officials, but from parents out there, and it is the parents and the teachers in the communities who know what is best for their children, not the politicians and the bureaucrats.

I rise on behalf of United Future to support this bill’s progression to the select committee. The move to disestablish the Early Childhood Development Board, which we all understand is a Government body, emanates from two main sources. The first, of course, is the more general review of the State sector, now known as the Review of the Centre. One of the stated goals of the Review of the Centre is to try to reduce fragmentation of public sector agencies when they are essentially performing synonymous functions. We all know that the State sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s have led to a multiplication of agencies while the State sector has actually shrunk.

One of the rationales for this explosion was a desire to decouple, as others have said, funders from providers in what was essentially the staging post for an era of contractualising. However, in some cases this process went too far, and it was clear that coordination was becoming a problem for ministry policy shops, and certainly their satellite provider entities. As a consequence the most significant outcome of the Review of the Centre to date has been the announcement that the Ministry of Youth Affairs will be merged with the Ministry of Social Development, although I notice that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs seems to have survived.

💬 Simon Power: Why is that?

I have no idea. Of course there was the announcement that the Early Childhood Development Board would be integrated with the Ministry of Education.

The second source for the decision, of course, to integrate the Early Childhood Development Board was apparently the release, this year, of the Government’s 10-year plan for early childhood education, called Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki. According to the Minister, in a speech he made to a symposium in July this year, the goals of the plan required a cohesive, streamlined approach with all the relevant early childhood education experts in the public sector under the same roof. In general, the approach of United Future has been one of trying to get some common-sense solutions.

In the context of the State sector reform, we do not see much sense in continuing to run two or more agencies that operate in the same field where there is the possibility that public work and a provision is being duplicated and costs multiply. But we would like the select committee to approach this bill with several other thoughts in mind. The first, we feel, is whether the merger will be in the interests of early childhood education—something that United Future thinks is critically important if we are to continue growing into a nation whereby every child has the opportunity to achieve his or her potential. The committee, therefore, will have to turn its mind to whether the fact that the Minister in charge of this bill is also the Minister of State Services is a happy coincidence, or whether the Early Childhood Development Board is really a guinea pig for what is essentially a wider public management reform. In other words, this change must be driven by educational imperatives and what is the best for our children, rather than just administrative niceties.

Another aspect that I think the committee should address is the broader question of the role of the Ministry of Education. By the way, the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission wanted to see the commission established as an autonomous entity at arm’s length from the ministry. Unofficially its reason was that it had insufficient faith, I think, in the capacity or the capability of the Minister to achieve what it thought was necessary to steer and shape the tertiary sector. Yet, under the Tertiary Education Reform Bill passed last year, the Ministry of Education’s role as the principal policy adviser to the Minister on tertiary education matters was retained.

I note that in terms of early childhood education the Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki document recommends that the ministry be given “responsibility for the coordination of advice and support for governance, management, and professional leadership.” Although this helps to give the Minister something of a mandate to make these changes, I would ask the committee to ask some serious questions, and I will be doing that, of the ministry about its capacity or capability for its expanded role. I hesitate to suggest that the flip side of State sector reforms that intend to reduce fragmentation is, as we all know, and could see, to encourage empire building.

Finally, I would like to suggest to the committee that it take a long look at how this bill will impact upon the activity of the Early Childhood Development Board as it stands at present, because it still exists. The committee will need to know what will happen to the 85 staff, for instance, and how the transition itself will be managed correctly. What will be the fiscal impact of this change?

I note that the explanatory note to the bill makes no mention of compliance costs. I am somewhat suspicious, as probably many others here are, that there will be at least a one-off expenditure associated with this integration. It strikes me that unless this merger achieves some economies in the long term, then there seems to be little point to it on that count.

But the last and most important point that needs scrutiny is how this change will impact upon the services that the board provides today, and how this will affect the early learning and development of our children. I do hope that the committee is responsive to these concerns that I have raised.

I commend this bill to the House and make a number of comments as follows. We went to the last election with regard to the Review of the Centre policy. Make no mistake about it, unlike the National Party, we did have a policy in this area. We did campaign on it, and we are starting to implement it now. What is the Review of the Centre? Put quite simply, the ideological bent and drive for provider-funder splits that occurred in the 1990s is just that. We should always be looking at what is the most practical and pragmatic way to achieve an outcome—not whether it is an ideological process, and be wedded to it, as the National Party and the ACT party speakers are. This is a clear litmus test that differentiates us from them in terms of being business savvy—the best bang for the taxpayers’ buck with regard to getting the best possible outcome for the early childhood centres up and down this country, regardless of whether they are kindergarten, playcentre, kohanga reo, or others.

I also wanted to note that whilst 44 percent of Māori babies still do not get into early childhood centres, early childhood centres per se cannot be the panacea for that. That is an issue with regard to communities, parenting, etc. It is not an issue that the early childhood centres movement or the Early Childhood Development Board could have sorted. It is a very clear way of accounting and measuring participation performance; there is absolutely no doubt about that. So I am always gobsmacked when members of the National Party and ACT party get up and speak in this House and have no business case foundation in terms of cost-benefit analysis with regard to what we are doing in the Review of the Centre. We do need far more seamless delivery systems into our communities. The duplication of costs in terms of separate leaseholds, separate information technology, and separate human resources: all of these for what rationale and what outcome?

I commend the bill to the House and to the select committee in this regard. I am sure that when the bill is reported back on a number of these issues a cost compliance statement and a regulatory impact statement will be there, and members of United Future will be able to confirm the bill in the second reading, and third reading thereafter, so I commend the bill to the House.

One thing is pretty clear from that contribution of the Hon John Tamihere—which is that he just does not believe a word of that stuff. John Tamihere, I am sure, believes that early childhood education, like every other form of education, is best dealt with out of the reach of grey suit - wearing bureaucrats in Wellington, and in communities where people understand exactly what their communities require in the way of education.

I tell Brian Donnelly that I listened with interest to his contribution. I generally listen pretty carefully to what he has to say on education matters, but I was very disappointed about his coming to the House and telling us about a private telephone conversation. That is not really the done thing for a member who is hugely credible in the education area and generally brings a lot of sane argument to some pretty robust debate in that area.

I want to reiterate what my colleague Phil Heatley said. National will be opposing this bill. The closest I have come to a close relationship with the early childhood sector were my own kindergarten days back at Milverton Kindergarten in Palmerston North, which was not—

💬 Hon John Tamihere: Only 6 months ago.

That is right. I have read through the bill. I spent a bit of time on it last night. I am not an expert, so I wanted to make sure that I would be able at least to hold my own against Brian Donnelly. I was not too worried about John Tamihere, because I knew that he would agree with whatever I said. What we are seeing here is in direct contrast to what we saw in the tertiary sector. We are seeing the Minister signalling that he wants to disestablish a Crown entity, integrate it into the ministry, and recentralise control over this part of the education sector, so that matters, I guess, are more firmly in his grip.

In the tertiary sector, quite the opposite happened. A separate Crown entity was formed to be the Tertiary Education Commission, which was charged with independently overviewing the tertiary sector outside the realm of the Ministry of Education, specifically so that the sector would see that the Crown entity, allegedly, had that independent credibility so crucial in the Minister’s mind to the steering of that sector in either a light-handed or heavy-handed way.

I tell the Minister of Education, and the Associate Minister of Education, Steve Maharey, that it cannot be done both ways. The Government might have the view that all sectors should be centralised into the ministry—into that monster bureaucracy that will drive the future of this country, because that is what education does. In fact, education is the engine room of the growth not only of the economy but of the nation. On the one hand, the Government cannot say that the Ministry of Education is best equipped to centralise sectors in the early childhood area—by which it will wipe out a separate stand-alone entity and bring it back into the fold of the big behemoth bureaucracy, the ministry—then, on the other hand, sell the view to the tertiary sector that what is required to gear that sector appropriately is a stand-alone Crown entity.

There is just no consistency in the way in which this Government applies its basic philosophy to education. I just cannot understand what has created two roads running side by side—that is, early childhood education in one direction and tertiary education in another. The Minister came to the House and said that the bill was about tidying up a few funding mechanisms, getting a few things in order, and getting the house tidied up. Quite the opposite was done by the Hon Steve Maharey in the tertiary sector, and I do not believe for one second that both can be right. It just simply makes no sense.

We are looking here to create what is essentially a new funding mechanism that enables the Ministry of Education to channel funding, and that is the key point of the whole bill. It enables the ministry to channel the funding, whereas, of course, the Tertiary Education Commission does that separately by way of charters and profiles, and the Performance-based Research Fund does it separately again. With early childhood, however, it is a case of—“No, no, the ministry knows best.” It will control and channel funding to licence-exempt early childhood providers. At present, funding is channelled to those providers from the ministry via the Early Childhood Development Board, which provides a buffer organisation. In my view—to recall Brian Donnelly’s comments about policy and operation—that is probably an appropriate way to operate in the sector.

I want to know from the Minister what will happen to those people currently employed in or around the Early Childhood Development Board. Bernie Ogilvy touched on that ever so gently, but pulled back at the last minute from making an issue of it. He said the Minister of Education also holds portfolio responsibilities concerning the State sector, and 3 or 4 weeks ago we saw the passing of a State Sector Amendment Bill that dealt with the issue of Christine Rankin’s liability. Some would say that it was a question of merging two ministries. Clearly, it was designed to create a redundancy void. I have a very strange feeling that this legislation is designed to do exactly the same thing that we saw in the social development area.

I spent some time looking at the bill last night—and if Brian Donnelly wants to take another call, I would be very happy to hear from him on this—and I saw that it is very light on the detail of the contingent liabilities of the people who work in the current Crown entity. What will happen to those people? Have they been guaranteed that they will be swallowed into the Ministry of Education—there is a future to look forward to!—or will they be put in some box somewhere, issued with grey suits, and told never to come out to see the light of day again?

I want to know where those issues are dealt with in this bill—because they are not. The bill is strangely quiet over employment and technical redundancy matters. My reading of it is that the State Sector Amendment Act, passed through this House 3 or 4 weeks ago, deals expressly with the issue now raised in this bill, and that there will be no provision for technical redundancies under this bill. The State Sector Amendment Act will apply to the merging and the disestablishment of that Crown entity.

The Minister should answer these questions. Those members opposite who were elected to this House to represent the workers of New Zealand should be concerned that this bill they are about to vote for will do exactly this: it will wipe out any opportunity for those employees to create or find any redundancy—technical or otherwise. I am extremely concerned that the State Sector Amendment Act will effectively introduce into this legislation a pay-nothing clause for those people leaving the Early Childhood Development Board.

We heard very briefly from other speakers in this House that this legislation is part of a trend. We have seen the Special Education Service merged with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Youth Affairs with the Ministry of Social Development, although, as the honourable member Deborah Coddington quite rightly pointed out, the same thing did not happen to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. It is very tricky to work out why a Government would do that to the Ministry of Youth Affairs but not to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

I have to say to the Minister John Tamihere that he lost that one to the sisterhood. The Ministry of Youth Affairs was merged, but the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was not. I would be very interested in hearing that Minister’s view, because now he is left with the portfolios of land information and statistics. I hope he does not get too bogged down. I see that he has some light reading from the library on the pedestal in front of him, which he obviously checked out to fill in the afternoon. Once the Ministry of Youth Affairs has gone, let us be clear, there will be a huge growth in the bureaucracy around education.

I finish with this message to the House: beware the bureaucrats. They do not know what is best for the children of this country. We should be making sure that they are held accountable. During the select committee process and through the rest of the process of this bill, National will be making sure that two groups are looked after—those who currently work at the Crown entity about to be disestablished, but who are about to lose their jobs through technical redundancies being wiped out, and the children of New Zealand, so that the education afforded them in the early childhood area does not lose the quality standard it now has, because it is going to be absorbed into a giant bureaucracy promoted by that Minister.

It is a pleasure to stand in this House in support of this bill, along with most members who believe that childhood education—indeed, education right across the board—is the most important issue facing a lot of New Zealanders. I was very pleased to hear the previous speaker alert the House to the fact that his education started at preschool level. Certainly, he has leadership qualities, so I think that it is very important for us to be confident that he does have that experience.

The bill will ensure the integration of the Early Childhood Development Board into the Ministry of Education. For many years, many of my constituents have been very concerned about the lack of cohesion across the education sector. Although there has been a high level of participation in early childhood education in my electorate, for almost a decade there has been a high level of non-participation, and that is the crucial issue we do not appear to want to discuss in this House. I am sure that this bill will ensure greater participation right across the board, and I look forward to the Minister going round the traps and promoting this legislation amongst all those features in education.

What a pathetic contribution from the previous speaker on an issue as important as early childhood education. I want to reinforce the points that have been made by National’s forward-looking early childhood spokesperson, Phil Heatley, and the comments by Simon Power, because members on this side of the Chamber take early childhood education seriously and want to see young New Zealanders getting the very best for their futures.

The first point I want to make is that members opposite seem to believe that we should put all of the power and responsibility with the State agency, the Ministry of Education. This bill is about killing off the Early Childhood Development Board and handing over authority to the Ministry of Education. I ask the House whether we are confident that the Ministry of Education, a bunch of bureaucrats in Wellington, will be able to deliver the quality of early childhood education that we need. When I look at the chequered track record of the Ministry of Education, it would be the last agency that I would want expanded and given even more responsibility.

Let me share these figures with the House. Over the course of this Labour Government, we have seen a 38 percent increase in Budget funding for the Ministry of Education. At the same time, we have seen only a 9 percent increase in funding for schools. Where does the money go the furthest? Do we want to spend that money on bureaucrats or on kids? We on this side of the Chamber want to see the resources going to children, because the level of funding increase that has been provided for schools and early childhood centres has not even kept up with the rate of inflation. We have had 11 percent inflation since this Government has been in office, but only a 9 percent increase in funding for schools and early childhood centres. We know that that amounts to a real cut, but members opposite care more about bureaucrats than they do about kids. This bill will only further expand the bloated bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education.

I have a second question for members opposite, who are going to get rid of the independent Early Childhood Development Board. Why do they want to get rid of the board?

💬 Phil Heatley: They don’t want to hear what it has to say.

I know. My colleague Phil Heatley, the MP for Whangarei, has it exactly right. He says they do not want to hear from anybody else. If they are ministry bureaucrats, they can just be puppets for the Government. If one does not agree with the Government, one ends up like poor old Shane Ardern, who has been dragged before the courts, or like myself, who raised some legitimate questions about the Family Court.

Members opposite will do everything they can to silence any independent point of view. It is part of socialist dogma, which is that the only way is the Government way. Once Government members get their hands on power, they will use every instrument at their fingertips to silence those who disagree. Getting rid of the independent Early Childhood Development Board is just part of that agenda.

💬 Hon John Tamihere: Get on to the debate!

I say to Mr Tamihere that it is all just part of that agenda, but we welcome a diversity of views. I did not say that I agree with everything the Early Childhood Development Board has said, but I want to listen, and I want its point of view. I want that kind of non-bureaucratic point of view and expression in the development of early childhood policy, because it is through diversity and open debate that we get the best policy possible for our children.

Then we come to the provisions in this bill that further centralise decision-making. We all know that Trevor Mallard does not want anybody beyond the control of his fingertips. He knows that if the policy advisers within that early childhood development unit are not under the control of an independent board, but are right in the lap of the ministry, then he has them under control.

It is just like the Special Education Service, which was an independent body. When parents came to me as a member of Parliament with legitimate concerns about their special-needs children not getting services, I used to be able to go directly to the Special Education Service and sort it out. Do members know what I am told now? I am told that I cannot talk with that service; I now have to go through the Minister’s office. It is then 3 or 4 months before I get answers from the Minister’s office, whereas previously, as a local constituency member of Parliament, I was able to get a response from the Special Education Service within a week.

💬 Simon Power: It’s exactly the same with the Land Transport Safety Authority.

As my colleague says, it is exactly the same with the Land Transport Safety Authority.

I want to ask another question: is the Early Childhood Development Board broke? Let us look at the record over the last 10 years. Over that time, there has been a doubling of the participation rates in early childhood education. That is a stunning result. There has been greater growth in investment in the early childhood sector than in any other part of education—bigger than in schools, and bigger than in the tertiary sector. Why would we want to break something that is not broke? Surely that sort of performance—a doubling of participation rates over the last 10 years—is something that members across the House should be celebrating. Why do members opposite want to break up that role, which has proved so successful in improving participation rates in the early childhood sector? We have heard nought from members and Ministers opposite about why we would want to get rid of a structure that has delivered such a stunning performance over the last 10 years.

Let me expand on what I think is the real agenda. In early childhood, we have the benefit of a diversified sector with a large number of—dare I say it—non-State providers. Government members—whether in relation to school funding, tertiary education funding, or the early childhood sector—hate the private sector. If anybody tries to provide a good early childhood service that is not part of the State, this Government goes after that service. That is why we have this nonsense whereby a kindergarten gets a different level of funding from another sort of provider, even though the teachers may be absolutely identical. I have yet to hear from any Government member what the rationale for that is.

I am absolutely in favour of funding quality, and our spokesperson, Phil Heatley, has expanded on that. Funding quality makes good sense, but whether the provider is a State provider, a community provider, a Māori provider, or an independent private business should make absolutely no difference at all, because it makes no difference to the child. We on this side of the House are not interested in the interests of the State, or in trying to provide some job for some teacher. The most important thing to us is the children, and that is lost sight of in this bill. I ask Government members again why they want to get their sticky little fingers on everybody. Why do they want to control every single element of the education sector? Why do we have to get rid of an independent early childhood education board? Why do they not value the input of people from other parts of New Zealand, rather than having the whole thing controlled by bureaucrats?

The last challenge I give to Government members is this: how far will they go in expanding the Ministry of Education? I ask how come, during this Labour Government, schools have gone backwards in real terms, yet the Ministry of Education has had a 38 percent increase in funding. The message this Government is sending to the people of New Zealand is that bureaucrats matter more than children or teachers. The people of New Zealand are waking up to the Government’s statist approach. [Interruption] I tell Mr David Benson-Pope that the people of New Zealand have had enough of this sort of legislation, which just gives more and more power to the State. They know that children and teachers matter more than bureaucrats. They are looking forward to a change of Government, when the priority will rest with children and teachers, not with bureaucrats and politicians.