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 second time. This bill is one that has been sitting around for a period of time. It is one around which there is very little controversy. The Early Childhood Development agency had around 85 staff and had operated as a Crown entity since 1990. I think it is fair to say there is general agreement that it did not help with the coordination and the quality of work in the early childhood area to have it at a distance. That is not to say there was not a lot of very good work done by the board. A lot of good work was done, but it was complicated by the fact that it was quite a long way removed from the policy area.

The decision flowed from the Review of the Centre, and it became clear there were a number of anomalies. The classic one was in the delivery of Parents as First Teachers services where the Ministry of Education would contract Early Childhood Development to deliver the services. We discovered that the board would then subcontract the delivery of services—in some cases for a big chunk of it to Specialist Education Services, which was another Crown entity. However, that agency did not deliver those services. They were further subcontracted to community groups. That was something I did inherit. I looked at the transaction costs, because at each stage it went down the chain there was less money available for the delivery of Parents as First Teachers services, and that was a real complication.

I want to report to the House, because the actual integration took place some time ago. It is working well. It is clear that the Early Childhood Development staff who have come into the Ministry of Education have added a lot of value to the ministry. It is also fair to say there has been some real progress in the regularisation of some of the arrangements that were made.

Early childhood education is a major priority for this Government. We have made real progress in participation in early childhood education with a significantly higher proportion of children now having experience in the education system before they go to school. Early Childhood Development was a big part of that; the workers are an even bigger part of it now.

Readers of the commentary on this amendment bill will have noted there is a minority view, and that National opposes the disestablishment of the Early Childhood Education Board. We do so for two basic reasons. The first reason, which is essentially constitutional, is that the board was disestablished and the employees therein transferred to the Ministry of Education prior to the intended enactment of the bill. So it seems quite extraordinary—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Why don’t you let Phil Heatley speak? He knows about early childhood development.

Because I am on the Education and Science Committee. It seems an extraordinary step for the Government to pass legislation that is, in effect, retrospective. It is its usual scant regard for constitutional principle that we are seeing in operation here, whereby the Government acts without legislative authority. They are the very sorts of things that I am sure were raised in a particular case back in 1976 where the Government of the day acted without constitutional responsibility. Here, once again, we see an example of a Government that ought to know better, because it proclaims itself as the authority on constitutionalism, yet it has fallen into the trap.

So now it is wanting this Parliament to rectify its egregious behaviour by, effectively, retrospective legislation. I find that, and so does the National Party, quite appalling, that this Parliament is called upon to rectify an appalling constitutional breach.

The second reason for our position is based on educational philosophy itself. It is not surprising that the Minister of Education is a centralist. He is the sort of man who is focused on union politics. He, no doubt, was an active member of the Post Primary Teachers Association, and the New Zealand Educational Institute—their fellow travellers. The Government’s whole style of operation is to centralise and bureaucratise. That is the way it views the education sector. It cannot stand the thought of a stand-alone unit. It simply cannot stomach the sense of some form of autonomy. The Minister wants to be able to sit in his office in the Beehive and control things from the top. That is the philosophy of education that the Minister brings. So it is not surprising the unit was disestablished. No one has ever, and the Minister has certainly not, put up a case as to why it had to be disestablished—on the basis of poor performance or something of that nature.

No, this all stems from a zealot’s approach to aggregation and centralisation. National’s view of education is fundamentally different. We say: “Trust the people.” Let the people determine how to govern the educational sector, and if that means independent and autonomous units, well, so be it. That is how it should be, because that is how one effectively delivers education in the way that citizens want.

This will be an issue that will be tested at the election: the choice will be the centralising, bureaucratic, control mentality that is such a feature of this Government; or trusting the people and letting parents decide—letting people who send their children to pre-school, primary, secondary educational institutions have the say.

Frankly, I am surprised that this kind of legislation does not have mandatory kindergarten provisions in it, because that is the sort of thing one would expect from this Government. Government members do not like the idea of private educational providers in the pre-school sector. They know full well that when people have the ability to make a choice, there is diversity, and that is why there has been such a growth in the early childhood sector away from the kindergartens. That is not a critique per se of kindergartens, but, having visited them, I would make this one observation about them. They simply lack flexibility. They simply lack the necessary flexibility that recognises the way people really live, with rigid starting and ending times. They have no flexibility about starting early to take into account that many parents have to work. One has to bring one’s child to a very particular place. That is very different to the private providers, who have understood what parents want.

I want to conclude on this point. The reality is that the Government needs to take note of the desire of people to control their lives, rather than having the centralisation and bureaucratic control of this bill, which, though in a small part only, nevertheless represents the deep-seated motivation within this Government to centralise, to control, and to stamp out initiative.

Debate interrupted.