Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill

The last speaker, Wayne Mapp, is an indication of backward thinking by the National Party that proved to be disastrous in the past decade it was in power. We are supportive of this move because, contrary to what the previous speaker talked about—centralisation—this move goes towards a more effective and consistent approach to improving participation levels in early childhood education. This is critical to my communities of Pacific people, because our children have the lowest participation levels, and it is only this Government’s policies, approach, and up to date thinking that has resulted in significant improvement in those participation levels.

Under National it was around 60 percent—appalling—compared with everybody else, who had around 85 percent participation levels. This Government has significantly improved that, and it is now approaching 80 percent, which is nearly a 20 percent improvement from the situation under the National Government. So I am very supportive of this move, where there will be a more consistent approach throughout the whole Ministry of Education to work together to improve those participation levels.

I want to acknowledge the work Brian Donnelly did in this area when he was Associate Minister of Education. Unfortunately it was probably too little, too late, although it did establish some improvement in my electorate. I congratulate him on his support in the establishment of some of the early childhood education centres in my electorate. But nevertheless—

💬 Hon Member: It was done years ago.

That is right, but I also want to acknowledge the work of the current Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, because only a few months ago he set a record of over $1 million dedicated to the establishment of three pre-schools in the south Auckland - Mangere area. That is a continued approach to improving participation levels. I think that this move will significantly—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: After David Tua lobbied me I had to do it.

But I think it was justified, despite the little bit of influence from certain prominent people in the community. I would say that this move means better coordination, better consistency, and people working together to benefit everyone, and particularly our children who are not yet at school.

This legislation, I mooted, was not going to inspire or create a lot of really inspirational speeches—certainly not if members stuck to the topic—and the member from National proved my point, because he did not talk to the bill at all. It has nothing to do with public-private partnership whatsoever.

What I do have to say, however, is that there has been quite a large amount of comment recently—most of it coming from the National Party and ACT—about the misuse of taxpayers’ funds. That in fact is what this bill is about: not the misuse, but the duplication of usage of taxpayer funding. That is the situation with Early Childhood Development, or the Early Childhood Development Unit as it originally was, and the Ministry of Education essentially doing the same task. As Early Childhood Development reported to us, the irony was that it was having difficulty recruiting staff, because the Ministry of Education was able to pay a lot more money to staff who had exactly the same qualifications and experience that Early Childhood Development needed, and this seemed to be a ridiculous situation.

The genesis of Early Childhood Development was in the reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and both the larger parties were involved in those reforms. Under those reforms the Ministry of Education was to be a policy ministry. It was hands off, it did the policy making, it decided how much funding would be given, and then early childhood providers and school providers put things into practice. It was part of an ideology about how public service operated in that particular case. One Minister of Education is known to have told officials from the Ministry of Education: “Whatever you do, don’t get out there and talk to the people in the field, because it might taint your policy.” How ridiculous can one get?

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Who was that?

I will not mention his name, but I think it is well known by people in the educational field which Minister it was. Is there any wonder that by late 1996, there was a huge gap between the reality of people at the chalkface and the policy that was emanating from the Ministry of Education?

Early Childhood Development was set up as a separate entity outside the policy division of the ministry, to promote and support the development of early childhood education. That was the philosophy of the times, and I think both Labour and National would have agreed with that particular model of public service development. However, it did not quite work out that way. To start off with, Early Childhood Development had some difficulties in covering the full gamut of early childhood needs and aspirations. It was not really able to extend itself across the full range of the population with its diversity of aspirations. It is fitting that Taito Phillip Field spoke of the area of need with the population he serves, because Pacific Island early childhood education was not necessarily well served in the early 1990s as a result of the model that was put in place.

I have to give credit to Early Childhood Development, which made some very large changes, and grew tremendously by providing a much broader range of advice, and connecting with a much broader range of population groups. However, at the same time, the Ministry of Education never gave away its hands-on approach to early childhood education. As distinct from schools, where there was very much a split in the early 1990s, that never happened with early childhood education. The opposite occurred, in that as the 1990s moved on, the ministry became more hands-on, rather than less. So we ended up with two separate entities doing the same tasks, with a duplication of function and costs. The irony is, as I said, that the Ministry of Education was able to pay its workers more, and could attract the staff that Early Childhood Development needed to carry out its tasks as well as it could.

So the decision to close down Early Childhood Development is really a logical conclusion to the events of the 1990s, and to how they played themselves out. It is interesting that there was only one submission about this at the select committee stage. It was not as if people were marching in the streets saying that this was terrible. Early Childhood Development itself had come to the conclusion that a new way of organising the whole thing had to be found. Although employees were upset at the process, they worked constructively with the ministry, and we have to give them credit for that. Rather than being destructive or putting up obstacles, they worked constructively for the benefit of early childhood education, in order to bring about this legislation.

Those parties that will vote against this bill are really saying to taxpayers that they do not mind taxpayer money being frittered away on inappropriate models, because they want to play games with it. If they said that they opposed the bill because of Fitzgerald—as Wayne Mapp mentioned—then I would say that that is a much more solid ground than education or economic grounds. It has to be recognised that the changes we are now legislating for have already taken place quite some time ago.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Still on the board.

In name only. This issue did not come to the House, and it was not Parliament’s decision to make these changes—this bill should have been through Parliament before this stage. All we can say is that it was bad management by the Government, because the Government obviously had this on its work programme, but it advanced the work programme in advance of its legislative programme. The Education and Science Committee made only one change, to the date on which this bill becomes law. The original bill was supposed to become law on 1 October 2003. I do not think it was even at the select committee before 1 October 2003. This is my first experience of legislation that was supposed to become law before it had gone through its first reading. It was untidy and messy, probably because the Minister was so busy closing down lots of schools that he could not get on with pushing forward these legislative and work programmes.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: You support that work.

Some of it. Nevertheless, to summarise, New Zealand First will support this bill. We think it is a logical and sensible step. We despise the unnecessary duplication and expenditure, which certainly does not further advance the cause of early childhood education.

As the last speaker mentioned, this bill emerged from the Education and Science Committee with minimal changes that do not alter the whole discourse too much. United Future notes that both the National and ACT parties have signalled their opposition to this bill, saying that it represents “an aggregation and centralisation of function into the education bureaucracy”. To me, this is a statement of the obvious, when one of the stated goals of the Review of the Centre was, as I recall, to try to reduce fragmentation of public service agencies when they are essentially performing synonymous functions.

As we all know, the State sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s led to a multiplication of agencies, and the actual State sector shrank as part of a desire to decouple the whole area of funding from providers. I am told that, in practice, we have ended up with more than 30 ministries and more than 100 Crown entities as a result of all that reform. A very real problem is that we fail to get any coordination when ministry policy shops are split from their satellite provider entities. For that very reason, United Future supports the amalgamation provided for in this bill. Early childhood education is too important not to be addressed as part of a coordinated strategy.

In addition to the Review of the Centre, it could be argued that this merger is warranted by the Government’s 10-year plan for early childhood education, called Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki. According to a speech the Minister made to the early childhood symposium last July, 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 the context of the State reform sector, United Future does not see much sense in continuing to run two or more agencies that operate in the same field, with the possibility that policy work and provision are being duplicated, and certainly the costs multiplied.

Since it was established, Early Childhood Development has been challenged through policy changes that introduced contestable service delivery. It has been faced with issues of financial viability and has used a number of third party contracts to support its infrastructure. Hopefully, this bill will put it on a firmer financial footing. As I outlined, United Future supports the second reading of the bill and its passage to the Committee stage.

The ACT party will vote against this bill, because we think the Minister has done a really bad job in bringing this bill to the House a year after he closed down the Early Childhood Development Board and brought it into the ministry. As ACT said in the minority report, that is totally unparliamentary and unconstitutional. The Hon Brian Donnelly talked about the benefits of this legislation, in that it would get rid of the duplication of taxpayers’ money. That is exactly what it will not do, because when the Minister announced he was bringing the board into the Ministry of Education he said that no jobs would be lost. We will still have a bloated bureaucracy and more people employed, even though in April last year the chairman of the Early Childhood Development Board, Michael Morris, told the Education and Science Committee that, contrary to what the Minister had said, he did expect some staff redundancies. To date, there has not been any.

There has also been little, if any, consultation with the early childhood sector. The New Zealand Education Institute was not consulted, and the Early Childhood Council—the biggest organisation that represents those who work in the early childhood sector—has not been consulted, at all. It demonstrates once again this Government’s contempt for that most important area of children’s education, the under-6-year-olds. It gets the least amount of money from the education budget, is pushed around and ignored, and is not consulted with, at all.

As I said, the reduction to one agency will enable the Minister to exercise control from Wellington, which he loves doing. In a speech to the early childhood symposium in July last year he grandly announced that his 10-year plan for early childhood education, Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki, was: “…why I decided to integrate Early Childhood Development (ECD) into the Ministry of Education. The expertise of the Early Childhood Development agency staff will be critical to work on Pathways to the Future.”

Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki was going to focus on the needs of groups with lower participation rates. It would increase participation and quality, and promote collaborative relationships. What has it done? It has produced a rort of bounty hunters. Talk about duplication of funding! I have lists and lists of community agencies, revealed through parliamentary questions, where two or three of them are owned by the one organisation claiming several times for the same children. What did “participation” mean, as championed by the Minister bringing Early Childhood Development into the ministry under this legislation? It meant that those organisations cruised around the neighbourhood looking for children, signing them up, and collecting the money. The bounty on those children’s heads was $1,000 per child. No checks were done to see whether they remained enrolled for more than 3 months—or even up to 3 months. No cross-checks were done to see whether those children were enrolled in two or three different centres, or to see whether they actually existed. It was just a feel-good, look-good Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki. It even had a feel-good, look-good name.

The ministry had a meeting in Auckland last week as a result of the New Zealand Herald’s story on the bounty hunters. It decided to “facilitate dialogue” to try to stop the rort from carrying on. The amount of money will be reduced by $200 per child, so the agencies will get $800 instead of $200. Audits will mean that 10 percent of enrolments will be audited. I suppose that is an improvement from none being audited, but why 10 percent only? Why not audit all of them? The targets of greater participation that the Minister boasted about when he announced the disestablishment of the Early Childhood Development Board will not now be met, because the contracts have all been frozen.

I say to the member on the other side of the House who stood up and talked about how wonderful that was for his people, who would be having more of their children participating in early childhood education, that it will actually not happen, at all. Why? Because it has been stuffed up by this Minister not keeping control of what has been going on. Now, as a result of those bounty hunters, all the contracts have been frozen. The targets for 2003-04—1,278 Māori and 450 Pacific children enrolled—will not be met, and the Minister has admitted they will not be met. At the Ministry of Education’s meeting last week, officials admitted that the eligibility criterion is for people to have some Māori or Pacific Island ancestry. When asked whether they were considering extending it to other ethnic groups shown as being under-represented in early childhood education, such as Asian, they did not have an answer. That is another example of this Government’s race-based policy, when it keeps insisting that its policy is based on need.

There are people in poor areas who cannot afford the fees of early childhood education. They do not send their children to such centres. Why do they miss out? The reason is that their children are not of Māori or Pacific Island ancestry. That is the only way people can get help from this Government in terms of getting their children into early childhood education. What will the Government do? It is going to set up a discretionary grants scheme, which will mean that organisations that no bank would formerly lend money to will now get taxpayer money for new buildings in areas where there are already vacancies in existing providers.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member will come back to the bill, please.

I am. That is why we are voting against it. The Minister brought in this bill to increase participation in early childhood education. That is what he said when he announced it, and that is why I am showing why we will not vote for it. It is not increasing participation in early childhood education. It is not even increasing it for Māori and Pacific children, because the Minister stuffed it up so much. Instead, what will he do? He will give out taxpayer money to build more buildings in areas where parents cannot even afford to send their children to early childhood education, because that Minister has raised the standards for qualifications and brought in pay parity for kindergarten teachers. That is why we are voting against the bill.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not interrupt while my colleague was speaking, but I do not think it is acceptable for the Government whip to be shouting out abuse at you while someone is speaking in the House.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I do thank the member, as always, for telling on somebody else in the House. I have already chided her and told her she was wrong.

I rise to support the second reading of the bill. It comes from the work the Government has been doing on the Review of the Centre, to make sure Government services work more efficiently together. The key driver in this bill is to bring all the people who are working on early childhood education together in order to implement the Government’s very good strategic plan in that area: Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki, a 10-year strategic plan for an area of the education sector that this Labour-led Government takes very seriously indeed if we are to give all children a good start. I support the bill. It is about getting the structure around early childhood education policy right, and I look forward to its speedy passage through the House.

May I read to members the minority view stated in the commentary on the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill, because I think it best encapsulates what the ACT party and the National Party are saying regarding it. It states: “The New Zealand National Party and ACT New Zealand oppose this bill. It represents an aggregation and centralisation of function into the education bureaucracy. Moreover, the actual disestablishment occurred before the enactment of the legislation. It is a breach of constitutional principle for the Executive to implement a legislative policy without specific legislative authority.” I did not know, before Deborah Coddington spoke, that it has actually been a full 12 months from the time that that occurred in practice to the present, when we are passing the bill that establishes the mechanism for that to occur. I would find a few weeks disturbing, and I would find a few months of great concern, but 12 months, I fully agree, is a complete breach of constitutional principle, and is quite obscene.

I have three issues that I would like to raise in the debate on the second reading that outline in more detail the general reasons why we oppose the bill. The first issue is that we have seen a drive by the Labour Government to see its philosophical desire to have centralisation and central control. We saw it in the merger of the Special Education Service into the Ministry of Education a few years ago. There was no real reason for that, but the two were merged. The Special Education Service no longer stands alone. It is part of the ever-burgeoning Ministry of Education. Then there was the announcement, members will recall, of the merger of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Ministry of Social Development, creating another super-bureaucracy. Again, there was the issue of an agency, the Ministry of Youth Affairs, being off to the side, author of its own destiny, then becoming part of another superministry, looked over by another Minister building his kingdom. Lastly in that series, of course, we see the disestablishment of the Early Childhood Development Board, which also is being brought into the Ministry of Education.

The argument of this philosophical drive is that it will bring a decrease in bureaucracy, but I have never seen a decrease in bureaucracy in the term of a Labour Government since I have been on this earth, and that has been for some time. We always see an increase in bureaucracy. The Government also argues that centralisation will lower costs, yet we hear from the Minister of Education himself that he will raise the amount of money he pours into the sector and the bureaucracy. He also says this measure will remove unnecessary personnel. That is the usual argument for centralisation, yet we have seen a growing Ministry of Education. In fact, percentage-wise, the funding going into the Ministry of Education far exceeds the funding going into schools, universities, and early childhood education centres. So that is what we are seeing—a trend in the last few years to centralise and control, under the banner of a decrease in bureaucracy, lowered costs, and removing unnecessary personnel. In practical terms, we have seen an increase in bureaucracy, increased costs, and more employment of unnecessary personnel.

There are some big issues facing early childhood education, in particular the independent providers being hugely disadvantaged by this Government’s bias towards State-owned providers. We thought this merger would be used as an excuse to cut funding or divert attention from some of the big issues facing the sector. But in fact all we see is more funding being poured into the sector, but not into the front line, into educating kids; as I said before, we see more funding going into bureaucracy and unnecessary personnel. We have been watching this merger. It has gone on for some time now, and we can report back that that is certainly all that we have seen come out of it.

The second overriding issue, apart from that philosophical drive to centralise and control, is a concern that the Minister, through the disestablishment, is actually now listening to only one stream of advice: his own little people. When he has a query or a concern, whom does he run to? He runs to his little elves. He is not prepared to go to anyone else in the sector and listen to him or her. He does not get advice that is considered and he does not get advice without a bias. He talks to his own people. That is why a single, bloated bureaucracy that is the inspection and enforcement agency, the funding administrator, the provider of advice and support, the researcher, and the policy adviser can only lead to confusion, conflict, and poor decisions. There is no accountability, there is no contrary view, and no one calling in the wilderness is being listened to by this Minister, who wants to centralise and control. We point that out as one of our major concerns.

The third concern is to do with resources. The country, this sector in particular, is quite confused about the messages sent out from this disestablishment and merger. We hear from the Minister that the integration would provide more cohesive service delivery in the early childhood education sector. In fact, he said there would be more resources. In his press release of 12 March 2003, he stated that early childhood education is to be “boosted” by the merger. What did he mean by that? Did he mean more money for kindies and early childhood education centres? They do not have any more money. Did he mean more resources? They do not have those either. Did he mean more choice? He certainly did not mean that—and I mentioned that before—because of his love for public providers and his apparent hatred and distaste for private education providers.

He said there would be more money and more jobs, but, according to a press release on the New Zealand education review, the Education and Science Committee was told that job cuts would result from the Early Childhood Development - ministry merger. Early Childhood Development’s chair, Michael Morris, and its chief executive, Caryl-Louise Robinson, told the select committee that redundancies would result from the integration of the agency into the ministry. So has it been job cuts and unnecessary personnel laid off, or more jobs for the boys and girls—as John Tamihere refers to them—in this ministry? We do not know. All we know is that in the last 12 months, and even before that, we have had an ever-burgeoning Ministry of Education, with more resources going into the ministry and bureaucracy, and fewer resources going into the front line, into the teaching of our children.

That is of serious concern to us. During the Committee stage, members will hear detailed, clause-by-clause arguments on these issues, but those are the three concerns to us in the National Party, and that is why we do not support the bill.

I am going to take only a very brief call on this bill, because in effect the intent of the bill is already in action anyway. It is about reflecting this Government’s desire to increase significantly participation in, and the quality of, early childhood education. Comments from members on the other side of the House that they will not be voting for the bill because of this or that reason are absolutely naive in the extreme. They are not voting for the bill because it is a Labour bill and they are ACT and National. For goodness’ sake, they should get real. This is a very, very good bill. It is about promoting one of the most important areas of education, and that is the early childhood sector, which is the platform on which education for our young people is built. It is a good bill. Let us get it passed through the House because, after all, it is for the young people of New Zealand, not for politicians’ egos.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Education (Disestablishment of Early Childhood Development Board) Amendment Bill. As my colleague says, sadly, that is exactly what it does. It is taking away something that focused on early childhood education, which is so hugely important to this country. Yet the Labour Government is prepared to have this area, which should be distinctive, absorbed into the burgeoning bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education.

There do appear to be some mild constitutional outrages in the way that the Government has done it. We have just heard that this bill is being brought in 1 year after the board was disestablished without consultation with the sector itself. I understand that neither the New Zealand Educational Institute nor the early childhood sector was consulted. That is the sort of excess we have seen from this Labour Government; it just takes things on without consulting the sector.

It is particularly an outrage when it is to do with early childhood education, because we all know just how important it is for the future of New Zealand, and how very important it is to have choice in this area of education. As an obstetrician, I am hugely aware of how important those first 5 years of life are, particularly those years between 0 and 3, where there is no State sector involvement to ensure that all our children have the chance to achieve their full potential. If ever there is an area where there should be some degree of measurement to ensure that kids get a chance to achieve their potential, it is the area of their first 3 years. We should be making sure that the outcomes of those kids are measured at that very early stage. I know of little work by the ministry, despite its size, to ensure the quality of the various programmes provided.

But I think it is important to look at what the Government is doing in terms of the axing of this board. If we go back to look at the board’s function, we see that it was “to promote and encourage the development and provision of high-quality, accessible, and culturally appropriate educational and development facilities and services for the benefit of children who have not yet enrolled at a primary school.”, in accordance with the board’s document of accountability, which the Minister must periodically negotiate. In that we have an instance of an absolutely appropriate function; a distinctive board concentrates on one of the most important areas of New Zealand’s education—early childhood education—yet the Minister wants to absorb it into the huge Ministry of Education.

There are some remarkable conflicts in terms of what the Minister has to say. I look at his first reading speech, when he stated: “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.” Well, already in New Zealand the State has a wide range of facilities that it resources. They include kindergartens, playcentres, education and care centres, home-based services, the Correspondence School, te kōhanga reo programmes, and a variety of others. They are all there already, but he is suggesting that by absorbing those functions into the ministry he will make them better. In actual fact, the chance is that the very reverse will happen. We should have a distinctive early childhood area that we can focus on and can measure, and to ensure there is continuous quality assurance and accountability, so that that very important area will only improve, rather than it being absorbed and made less distinct.

In that speech, the Minister went on to say: “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.” That is not fact, because what was set up by a very good National Government over 10 years ago—the whole variety of programmes that I talked about—was not a matter of being light in this area; it was a matter of having choice and diversity. But the Minister went on to say: “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.” Well, he cannot have it both ways. After all, on the one hand he is asking us to see that the Early Childhood Development Board has done a very good job, and on the other hand he is saying he wants to disestablish it.

He went on to say that the board “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.” There he goes, praising the board on the one hand, and seeking its disestablishment on the other hand. One cannot imagine anything more contrary than that! It is absolutely inappropriate.

To make matters worse, the Minister stated that during the process of disestablishment, “just to make it clear”, he would form an interim board. That is classic Labour Party complexity—“We will axe the board and we will make an interim board.” Labour is up to its old tricks: “Let’s make it complicated.”

Finally, the Minister said: “I understand that there is a lot of support from around the House for this legislation …”. Well, why was there only one submission on this bill? It is absolutely remarkable. The Minister did not consult with the early childhood sector. He did not consult with the New Zealand Educational Institute. The only response he got was one submission on this bill. How can he possibly say there was a lot of support?

This bill is an affront to the aims of the Government, in terms of it wanting to focus on the great importance of early childhood education. It is an affront to early childhood education, which is something we all believe should be focused on because of its huge importance to New Zealand, yet here we have the Labour Government doing the very opposite—absorbing this very important, distinct entity into the ever-burgeoning Ministry of Education.