Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House, and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 1 July, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, 196(1)(b) and (c).

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a very simple bill. It allows for pay parity to start being delivered for teachers working in early childhood education centres in which the State is not their employer. Kindergarten teachers have had pay parity with their primary counterparts for some time. Those working in education and care services, such as a privately run centre or a community-based centre, have seen the wage gap between what they earn and what their kindergarten counterparts earn increase steadily over time. A variety of factors have contributed to that, but probably the single biggest one is that for the entire time they were in Government, the last National Government did not pass on any of the pay increases that kindergarten teachers got to those teachers working in those other centres.

Our Government has made the decision that we will adjust early childhood education funding rates regularly so that they keep up with the cost increases, and we have adjusted them every year that we have been in Government. Last year, we delivered the first significant funding increase around pay, to ensure that the pay rates of those working in non-State or non-public sector education and care services were lifted up to at least the minimum step on the kindergarten teacher salary scale. And we’ve announced in this year’s Budget the next big steps, which is to add new criteria to funding that says that centres will get higher rates of funding if they agree to pay their teaching staff, their registered qualified teachers, at least step 1 to 6 on the kindergarten teacher salary scale.

Under the current system, I can specify a minimum rate of pay for an early childhood education teacher, but I can’t go further than that without stretching beyond credibility the criteria for which I can attach funding decisions, and so this allows me to attach an additional funding condition to that extra funding so that it goes where it is intended to go, which is paying those teachers more.

The ultimate goal of this Government is to get to full parity. In order to do that last bit, steps 7, 8, 9, and 10—there’s a 10-step salary scale—we’re going to have to probably further redesign the funding system to make sure the funding gets to the right place. This bill allows us to deliver quickly the funding increase, the pay increase, that we know those teachers need.

In terms of the timing, we want to get this bill back into the House very quickly so that we can then work to develop the funding conditions required. We can make sure the sector is familiar with those, and then we can get those funding rates flowing from the beginning of next year. That’s quite a tight time frame to do that. We do want to do that in a collaborative way so that the sector’s consulted on those additional funding conditions, and that’s why we need the law change to happen quite quickly.

The select committee will have the opportunity to hear from the sector. I imagine that the main people who are interested in this won’t so much be the teachers who will be receiving the pay increases but the centres, and so the centres, I’m sure, will be submitting to the select committee, because, ultimately, they will want to know more about what those funding conditions are. That’s one of the reasons why we want to move quickly, so that we can give them that certainty.

Pay parity for early childhood education teachers is long overdue. This is something the Government wants to make haste on; these teachers have waited long enough.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party supports this bill at first reading but only with very considerable concerns that we will need to see addressed through this process. So we hold our right to reconsider this as it goes through the House, because there is a clear sort of line of logic where, I think, there’s universal agreement that further resources into improving incomes for early education teachers is a good thing, and we all understand the importance, from a social investment point of view, of making sure that young New Zealanders have the ability to get good education in their early years and to set them up well for the compulsory schooling sector. That’s why the previous National Government invested very heavily in early education. So we agree with that, and we do want to see better pay for those working in this sector.

But then we see this bill, and we’ve just been in this House this morning dealing with yet another case of bungled legislation from this Government in the COVID area, and the pattern has been well established that this Government doesn’t seem to think that it should follow the traditional, tried and true method of passing legislation, which is, first, to consult with the sector, and there has been very little of that in this place—it’s all just been blindsided with no detail—and then to rush through shortened select committee processes in order to ram through legislation very quickly, and then we’ll figure it out once it’s been passed!

So they rammed through very loose legislation, and, again, this is another classic example—it’s just a handful of pages. There’s a very, very loose and sloppy departmental report that comes along with it. It looks like they’ve given about two or three days’ consideration to the legislation. They throw it into the House. They haven’t worked out exactly how it’s going to work. They haven’t talked to the sector, but we’ll have a conversation through the select committee, in a short time, in a rush, and then, when we pass the bill, we’ll sort it out afterwards! And, surprisingly, we have to spend all our time in this House fixing legislation again when it comes round and when they realise that they’ve made a mistake. So we will be very interested to hear from the sector.

Given the fundamental issue around supporting our early education providers, we’re prepared to support this bill at first reading. We will be opposing rigorously the next debate, which is the shorter select committee time frame, because we don’t think that’s justified; we should actually allow proper investigation of this legislation by the sector. And we will be very interested to hear from the sector as to how they think this will work, because the overriding concern is that there is a centralising attitude in this Government and a well-explained desire towards national collective agreements in every area of industrial relations. This legislation all seems to fit with a pattern of more and more centralised control. The basic sort of point of this legislation is to say we don’t trust the sector to pass on the money that we’re going to give to them in terms of higher wages; therefore, we will make it much more clear that the Minister has powers to delve even more deeply into the employment matters.”

That’s the basic message of this legislation, and I would be surprised if the sector is very impressed by it. We talk about it being a high-trust model, but this legislation obviously says it will be a slightly lower-trust model going forward because we don’t fundamentally trust the providers to pass on the legislation. I suppose the natural fear in the sector will be that this is just one more step in a march towards a much more centralised, highly controlled sector.

Now, will that lead to better results? Well, I’m not so sure. We do, as a country, invest significant sums in early education, and all New Zealanders do have a very clear interest to make sure those significant sums are spent wisely and there are robust processes in place to ensure that early education providers are delivering good quality services, and that is a fundamental role of the ministry. I think there is a good argument that they should be more active and vigorous in ensuring that that quality is high. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should be moving more and more in the direction of national awards and everybody being dealt with exactly the same. That seems to be the approach of this Government.

So here we are, a day after a Budget, a Budget that provided very little to working New Zealanders, and for all the billions of dollars that have been spent, working New Zealanders haven’t seen very much in this Budget. And, in the education sector, we haven’t seen a great deal—for, particularly, the compulsory sector—but what we have seen is extra resources being sent in the direction of early education teachers. And we agree that, if we’re sure of the quality of that teaching, that is potentially a very useful thing in order to get kids better prepared to go to school.

I don’t like to divert too far, but I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t make the point it’s all very well preparing them to go to school, but if they don’t actually go to school they’re not going to make any progress. We have a truancy crisis in this country, and I think it’s a tragedy that, for all the billions of dollars that have been spent on education, we only managed to come up with an extra $5 million a year to actually go out and ensure that kids go to school. I would have preferred to have seen more effort in that space.

Chlöe Swarbrick: You can’t punish them into school.

Pardon?

Chlöe Swarbrick: It’s a housing crisis issue. You can’t punish them into going to school.

Well, it’s very good to hear from the Greens.

💬 Simeon Brown: Professor Swarbrick!

Ha, ha! From Professor Swarbrick and the Greens, who have focused very much on making it more and more difficult for private sector landlords to provide houses. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a massive increase in house prices and rent prices.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Stop being so patronising.

But now she feels the need to blame I’m not sure who for that problem. The only point I was making there was that good quality early education teaching is something that the National Party supports. We do not support the general process of this bill, and it is yet one more example of a Government that seems to be operating off the seat of its pants when it comes to legislation. It rushes stuff through, doesn’t talk to the sector entirely, has short processes, and, as a result, we spend most of our time fixing legislation six months later. And I have no doubt that we will be revisiting this topic again very soon. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I think I heard in that contribution that the spokesperson for education for the National Party was actually saying that he was very supportive of early childhood education. If that’s the case, then I am really pleased to hear that. But I will say that just a little bit of caution there for him because he kind of, sort of, intimated that the sector weren’t asking for this. The sector’s been asking for this for a very, very long time. When we hear about that they don’t have to attest to a certain pay rate or talked about attesting for paying the teachers, they have to attest now for paying their teachers at a certain rate of pay. Just would be helpful, I guess, for this to be going to a select committee so that that member could actually learn a little bit more about how early childhood does work better.

As someone who marched and fought for pay parity for primary school teachers with secondary school teachers in the 1990s, I am absolutely delighted to stand in support of this bill. Education and care teachers, absolutely in the early childhood sector, effectively carry out the same work as those teachers in the kindergarten sector.

This is a matter of fairness. This is a small but important clarification to the Education and Training Act 2020 that will make that parity happen; the journey happen. As the Minister said, this is the beginning of the journey, or probably, I’m going to say, the middle part of the journey, because we did make a small step towards that in the last term of Government. But this is exciting. This is an exciting time for our teachers in that sector. This is about fairness. It’s the right thing to do. I’m very excited to see where we are heading with the early childhood sector, and I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on this Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill, and I do so on this Friday when it is Pink Shirt, anti-bullying, Day. And I say very clearly to the Government: stop bullying our farmers, stop bullying our hardworking primary sector which is working to keep this country afloat.

Getting back to the theme of the Budget and this amendment, this carries on giving nothing to business and middle New Zealanders except telling them what to do. We listened last night to members on the other side of the House, one by one popping up and proudly calling themselves socialists. I hope people looked up what that meant, because it means people who want to have everything controlled by the State. And here we are seeing more of this. The Government amending the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill are doing this so they can get the pay parity that they have promised. They are saying to all of the businesses, to all of the community groups that own childcare centres or run playgroups, “Don’t you dare think that you can use your business acumen or your business skills to run your business. Don’t you dare think that you know best for your early childhood centre or playgroup or the young children that are there.”, because it is only our self-confessed socialists on the other side of this House who know best for you. They know best for our little Long Bush playgroup and our Roslyn Bush playgroup in Southland and all over New Zealand that are run by communities, small businesses, groups of mums and dads. But you don’t know best, you people, it is the Government.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): May I remind the member that when she uses the term “you” she’s bringing me into the debate. Thank you.

I was meaning “you” as in the community group. Sorry.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Please just don’t refer to the term. Thank you.

I’ll be careful. Thank you. So we go back to the Government knowing best, and this is a theme that we are seeing through education, whether it’s at early childhood level or at tertiary level. I noticed in the Budget this year the Minister of Tertiary Education has suddenly been able to find millions of dollars more for the vocational education sector from 2023 onwards. His outrageously expensive Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE)—tens of millions of dollars spent disrupting the whole vocational education sector to get it centralised. It was form before function, it was the cart before the horse. The Minister had to get it all nicely centralised so he could have control of it, because there was far too much innovation and entrepreneurship being exercised as it was. So he pulled them all together and then, hey presto, he can magic up millions of dollars more now that he’s got it centralised.

We’re seeing exactly the same thing at the early childhood level. Once they get control, they’ll put the money in. That money that he made available for the vocational education sector from 2023 onwards could have been made available three years ago for the vocational education sector. Instead, he turned it upside down. He caused anxiety right across every polytechnic and institute of technology in this country. But he did it as the most transparent Government in New Zealand’s history, ever.

He said he had to do this RoVE because they were in financial trouble. He said the polytechnics were in financial trouble so he had to turn it upside down and put it in a new form. But now he’s found the money to fix it. Well, why didn’t he do it before he spent tens of millions of dollars on consultants and his buddies in the directorships, turning it into a centralised system that he could control far better? So let’s see a little bit more transparency in the education sector. Let’s see a little bit more money available before you get that centralised control. Because, unlike the Minister, and unlike this Government, we on this side actually trust the people that used to run the polytechnics. It’s all run by Hamilton now. We trust the communities and the mums and dads and the business people that run the childcare centres, because they’ve done these things; the Ministers never run anything. I don’t think he’s run a bath for himself, let alone one of these institutions. So we trust people who can run early childhood centres and we trust communities and mums and dads who can run Playcentres. We trust people who used to be able to autonomously run and govern a polytechnic. But this transparent Government doesn’t trust anyone out there, because nobody out there knows best; you have to be a socialist and run it from the centre. The State has to control it.

So here we have those good people out running childhood centres, out running polytechnics, out running Playcentres—the other side is laughing, but actually, I’ve run a polytechnic and I’ve run an early childhood centre and I did it for years. If you haven’t run anything, I wouldn’t be laughing. So I would much, much rather have my faith in those people out there who know how to run education centres. I would much rather have that than the State thinking they know best.

So, while we will support this bill to the next stage, to the select committee stage, be very sure that we will be looking very, very closely at this, because I do not want this to be the thin end of the wedge—having seen what an absolute debacle and mess and unnecessary exercise RoVE was to spend millions of dollars of other people’s money. I do not want to see this as the thin end of the wedge for our early childhood sector, which is so incredibly important and so incredibly valuable in preparing our young people for the compulsory sector. So we will support it to select committee stage, but be very, very ready for the scrutiny we are going to give it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Now, that was the most incoherent ramble I have ever heard. Did the member know it’s the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill, nothing to do in there—this is about early childhood education and it’s about the Labour programme to make sure that our lowest-paid workers are paid better and paid fairly. This is a manifesto commitment for pay equity by early childhood teachers, and we’re absolutely committed to that. If ever there was an argument that members perhaps should be allowed to write a speech and read it, that was it, because I have no idea what it was about. A fantastic piece of legislation, great Ministers, great Associate Minister and Minister of Education. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill, the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill—and that’s not Grant Robertson. The Greens support pay parity and have for a long time, because we recognise that teachers’ work conditions are actually our kids’ learning conditions, and quality, affordable early childhood education (ECE) can provide a foundational learning experience for our children, can help identify specific learning needs early. It can support children’s positive socialisation, support families with parenting, and break the isolation that quite a lot of parents experience. It helps maintain women’s participation in the workforce and many women’s mental health by virtue of that participation. The gains from attending quality early childhood education are greatest for low-income families. There are so many social goods from quality, affordable early childhood education and it’s something we should all care about.

I can vividly remember my first experience trying to teach a group of 20 four-year-olds, and I’ve got to admit it was a complete disaster. I tried to teach them without having any experience of four-year-olds, and once you lose your nerve in front of a group of 20 four-year-olds it’s chaos. I’ve got to say, it was only 30 minutes but it’s seared into my memory as a complete horror. I hope that that wasn’t the experience of the kids, but the classroom was a mess at the end of that 30 minutes. So I have huge respect for the skill and the knowledge that goes into supporting our littlest learners.

In the words of one of our trained teachers, Holly, we teach little people how to be people. It’s the foundation of all future learning and relationship-building for their whole lives. We teach children expectations and kaupapa around life, how to be kind and caring and respectful people, and building their social skills, physical skills, problem-solving, and building resilience. So much respect to these teachers.

So this piece of legislation is, basically—to be technical, it will set a new section 548(5)(A), which will ensure that the Minister can direct funds to relate to matters that include employment conditions such as remuneration and be specified to help achieve employment relations aims specified by the Minister. This is necessary because at the moment our broader ECE picture is slightly, I think—understating it, possibly—messy. A 2020 survey found that more than one-quarter of ECE teachers wouldn’t put their own child into care of the centre that they worked in. They were highlighting concerns—and this was a survey of, I think, over 4,000 teachers that was shut off early because so many responded—with an overemphasis on occupancy rates and making money rather than providing quality care and education.

Other reports as well have found that the quality of ECE has been deeply affected by the trend towards private provision in the sector. On average, not-for-profit services are providing higher quality services than for-profit services. This is also consistent—not surprisingly, perhaps—with international findings as well. For-profit centres tend to pay their staff lower wages and have lower ratios of qualified staff, both of which are strong predictors of quality and factors that lead to higher staff turnover, which also impacts children’s learning. As I said at the beginning, the condition of the teachers is the condition of our children. ECE centres are struggling to retain qualified staff, particularly outside of kindergartens, because, since 2002, the Government has been funding kindergartens to pay for collective agreement costs that have been negotiated—obviously, “collective agreement”—collectively. That’s resulted in a massive difference and inequity in pay for those working within the kindergarten sector and those outside of it: up to, I understand, 48 or 49 percent difference in pay between people doing the exact same job in a kindergarten or a private ECE.

The Government has recognised this call for pay parity and there was a significant amount of money in the last Budget towards addressing this to get people on the same starting rate. But then not long after that, we saw articles in the media where the Minister was having to speak quite sternly to some of these private providers that his expectation was that that money would be sent to, and put towards, the salaries of the staff because that was what it was for. But there were concerns being raised through the unions and from teachers that that money was being spent—instead of on the wages, which is what it was intended for—on things like maintenance and actually shoring up the profit lines of those businesses. So when we’ve heard from members of the Opposition that this is—you know, really there should just be high levels of trust, well, there were high levels of trust. We have tested the environment of letting the market solve this problem and we are living with the results, and it is not serving our children. So this piece of legislation is an essential back up to ensure that we improve the conditions of our teachers and deliver on pay parity because that will deliver for our children.

The Greens are pleased that this legislation is going to a select committee and will be keen to understand what powers, exactly understand what powers, this will give the Minister that aren’t currently provided for in the legislation—I haven’t quite got my head around that—and to check that this will be future-proofed through different changes of Governments to make sure that we are always consistently ensuring pay parity wherever possible. The Greens believe that we do need to go further and faster, ensuring that teachers are involved with moving forward towards a centralised pay system and common core conditions right across the sector, as well as doing more to ensure profit motives do not continue to undermine the quality of our children’s learning.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support at the first reading of the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. The ACT Party is well aware of the importance of early education, and it is of growing importance, increasingly as parents become busier and unable to provide the adequate grounding that their kids need. Anyone who has children—and I’ve had a couple—who have put them through early childhood centres appreciates the skills and abilities of the workers in the sector. Teachers of any age group—and I’ve been a teacher for 22 years in secondary school—certainly appreciate the good grounding that these students have when they come through.

We do have concerns, however, about the Government’s imposing legislation. Just looking at the pay scales, there doesn’t really appear to be any adequate inquiry work into the sector, prior to this. We believe, as much as possible, that schools should be run by the people on the ground, with as little interference as possible from the Government; they know best where the money should go. If it’s not a great centre, then teachers won’t want to teach there, and parents won’t want to send their kids there.

We are rightly concerned about how the Minister could use these powers, and I look forward to the select committee to flesh out a bit more of those. We’ve seen some pretty good examples of the abuse of power over the last six months.

There was a comment this morning from the Early Childhood Council, which I think is quite relevant. It said “Clearly linking funding to education outcomes will benefit children, parents and providers, and introduce much-needed fairness and transparency.” I think it is really important to have that in mind as we measure outcomes, and are able to measure the outcomes, with the increasing importance of this sector, and how this will be monitored is quite important. Productivity or outcomes are important over the wider education sector. While we are seeing more money into the sector, we’ve also seen declining results.

So, overall, ACT does support this. We appreciate the great work that our early childhood teachers give our kids. We look forward to the next reading and select committee. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to stand and take a call on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. You see, I have friends who are early childhood education (ECE) teachers. Not only that, but my daughter is in ECE, and I am incredibly grateful for the support of the ECE teachers that we have. They work incredibly hard to nurture and support our young people, our future leaders, to help us parents build those really strong foundations for their future. It’s important that this bill recognises their hard work, their study, and their professionalism by ensuring that they get pay parity with their counterparts working in kindergartens. This is a matter of fairness and that is why I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. I thought the day after the Budget we’d be down here delivering something for New Zealanders, helping New Zealanders get ahead, helping to grow our economy, helping to make New Zealand a stronger place. But what we’re here debating is a bill which simply gives the Government more control. This is a bill which gives the Minister of Education more control, and we’ve seen over the last three and half years how this Minister of Education has come to this House and he’s grabbed more and more power in the education sector. Whether it’s amalgamating our polytechs, whether it’s doing this to the early childhood education (ECE) sector, every single piece of legislation that he brings down to the House is about trying to get more control—whether it’s the Tomorrow’s Schools reform. It’s about centralisation—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. This is about the narrowest sort of bill that you can have. The member’s speech would be barely relevant on a second reading; it certainly isn’t on a first.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I was saying, this bill is about the Minister grabbing more control in the education and training sector, and particularly when it comes to our early childhood education sector.

This legislation gives the Minister power when grants are paid to the management of a body corporate for establishing a licensed early childhood education centre. It directs how these grants should be funded. It takes away the ability for businesses to have flexibility. It takes away the opportunity for early childhood education centres to be able to make decisions for their business and be able to manage their businesses in the way they see fit. This is very much in line with the direction this Minister seems to want to take everything in the education sector.

The question needs to be asked: did the Minister consult with the early childhood education sector—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: Yes.

OK, when did you consult on that?

💬 SPEAKER: Order!

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: I meet with them every month.

Meet with them every month. Well, the education sector has told us that they have requested opportunities to be able to have consultation on this bill, and now we’re being told it’s going to go to a select committee for a very short period of time. This is something which, again, shows the Minister’s contempt for the sector—his willingness to come down to this House, to ram through legislation in urgency and then send it off to select committee for a very short period of time rather than giving the sector the opportunity to really engage in how this issue is going to impact on them and be able to actually have those concerns addressed.

The National Party will support this bill because this is a piece of legislation which we need to have interrogated at select committee. It needs to be looked at properly. We’re disappointed that it’s not getting the appropriate level of scrutiny that it should. But we do make the point that this piece of legislation is another piece of legislation in line with previous legislation from this Minister, constantly bringing more control around what decisions he gets to make instead of allowing the education sector to be able to manage their own affairs and to be able to get on with doing the important work that they do do, whether it’s helping our young students at school, whether it’s looking after our children at ECE. It should be about empowering them rather than constantly giving the power to the Minister of Education, which seems to be the constant power-grab that he continues to do.

I rise to take the Māori Party’s call, and I note that the Māori Party have chosen not to speak on this bill tonight—this morning, sorry. It’s been a long few days. I don’t need Berocca, I can assure you of that! But I do note that this bill will benefit our tamariki who attend our early childhood centres.

It’s a pleasure to take a call on this important piece of legislation that gives pay parity—I’ll just remind the members opposite of the bill that we’re speaking about—to early childhood education teachers. We’ve had some bizarre claims from the opposite side that the sector somehow don’t know about this or don’t want this. I can tell you, I’ve been meeting with members of the sector for the last three to four years about this particular issue, and I want to acknowledge a woman from my electorate, Virginia Oakley, who has led the nation-wide conversation and campaign on this issue on behalf of the New Zealand Educational Institute. I want to acknowledge that this is a win for her and her mahi, and also a special shout-out to the teachers at the Kiwi Treasures centre in Ranui Road in Stoke, who teach some of the tamariki known to me. I know that they are celebrating the introduction of this legislation, that they’ve looked across at their counterparts in the kindergarten next door, knowing that they are being paid less than people doing the exact same job. That is what this bill is about. It’s fundamentally about fairness. It continues with our programme of work to ensure that people doing the same job receive fair pay for what they are doing. On that note, Mr Speaker, I look forward to the select committee contributions and I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is about the employment conditions of early childhood education teachers. I want to start my contribution by saying that I have huge appreciation for early childhood educators. I have had four children go through early childhood services, and to watch the patience, the care, and the dedication of the teachers that each of my children had in those services was a real joy, and I feel ongoing appreciation for that. Early childhood teachers shape our children’s expectations of education and their social interaction; they are incredibly important people. In fact, they also helped me, I believe, be a better parent by teaching me all sorts of things about how to get the best out of my kids. So I want to start my contribution by acknowledging the vital role of early childhood teachers.

I also want to affirm National’s commitment to this very important sector. While National was in Government, we more than doubled funding for early childhood education. We did that because we saw its vital importance as a foundation for all education and we wanted to ensure that more children from across our communities were able to access early childhood education, and that it wasn’t just the privilege of the few but it was something that was able to be accessed by people on all income levels and from all communities. We are very proud of the work that we did here.

Now, this bill deals with an issue that has been a long-time disparity and something that early childhood educators have long pointed out is just unfair, and that is the disparity between kindergarten teacher pay and other early childhood teachers; a disparity that has been reinforced by differential funding rates for kindergartens versus other types of early childhood services. I would be asked again and again, when I visited early childhood services in a previous role I held as National’s early childhood education spokesperson—they would say to me, “Why do kindergartens get funded more, when they do exactly the same thing as we do? They are required to meet exactly the same regulatory standards. They are required to follow exactly the same curriculum. They are required to teach children in exactly the same way. Why do they get funded more?” It was a very hard question to answer, because, actually, the only reason that kindergartens have been funded more is because that then allows their teachers to be paid more. But the work that those teachers do in kindergartens—incredibly important, valuable work—is not actually different in substance from the work done by early childhood teachers and other types of services. So we acknowledge that that disparity has been unfair and we acknowledge steps towards reducing that disparity.

But, as the Minister well knows, this is an issue that has been under discussion for years. In fact, the Minister himself has talked about the Government’s desire to address this disparity for months. So it is a very fair question for us to ask on this side of the House: given how long this issue has been talked about, discussed, why is it that a bill has suddenly been landed on the Table, under urgency, seemingly blind-siding the sector? Why is that the approach that is being taken, when the Minister has had ample opportunity to engage constructively on this? I would simply question: why the urgency? What is really going on here in the way that this mechanism has been created?

I am told by those who work in the early childhood sector that, yes, there have been discussions about what a mechanism could be for ensuring that additional funding intended for teacher pay is used in that way, but they were not expecting legislation of this sort, and believe that there has been miscommunication from the Ministry of Education, that there has not been clarity about why this is the mechanism that is being sought, or what is intended by it. I would point out that they have some genuine reason to be concerned about that.

When we look at the wording in this bill, it is actually very broad. What it says is that the Minister is allowed to put conditions around the funding that he gives centres, to help achieve aims that are, or include, employment relations aims. Now, the Minister, if we take him at his word, is intending for this to be funding—simply that it will flow through to particular funding rates for teachers. But the term “employment relation aims”, which is used in this bill, is much, much broader than that. It is fair, I think, for this side of the House to say, “Well, why are you using such a broad, broad phrase and why has it been sprung on the sector that this is the way you are going to do it? Is there a bigger agenda here, in terms of the way the Minister intends to use this legislation to dictate other aspects of employment relations that are important to him, that may challenge the basis on which privately owned early childhood centres and businesses wish to operate those businesses and wish to employ their staff?”

That is why we on this side of the House are very cautious and are very concerned that people in the early childhood sector look at this legislation, consider what it means for them, and have the opportunity to submit fully during a select committee process. We would not like to see a situation where the nature of the relationship between early childhood services and the Ministry of Education and its funding goals is inalterably changed through something which is framed up as something of good-faith in terms of paying teachers more.

So we on this side of the House cautiously support the bill at first reading. We acknowledge the disparity in pay between kindergarten teachers and other teachers, and the need for that to be addressed, and the benefits of addressing that. But we are very concerned that this has been introduced under urgency, that it is a broad provision. We think it is absolutely vital that the sector consider what this means for them and their future, and that the Minister listens to them carefully during the select committee process.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Having been an early childhood teacher for over 20 years and an early childhood centre owner for over 10 years prior to coming into Parliament, I feel that I might be qualified to be able to say a little bit of something about this piece of fantastic legislation that we have before us today.

Teachers in this sector have been screaming out for this for as long as I can remember. We do the same study, for the same amount of time as those teachers that qualify also and who go on to work in kindergarten centres. So it is a matter of fairness because we do the exact same work and have done for many years, and so it is only right that teachers in early childhood education centres are given the ability to be paid at the same rate as their counterparts in kindergartens.

Now, currently, for those members opposite who are obviously very unaware of how things operate in early childhood centres, you have to attest that you pay your teachers a certain rate now, in order to receive a certain level of funding. So, in actual fact, this isn’t changing that aspect of it. You will just have to simply, again, attest that you are paying your teachers at a certain rate to receive that level of funding. Mr Brown mentioned that this Budget was disappointing and there was nothing in this piece of legislation for the public. Well, I suggest, Mr Brown, that he go out and speak to his early childhood teachers and find out just how much this will mean to them, because I’m pretty sure that for some of them it will mean they will be $16,000 better off. This means a heck of a lot to the teachers in the sector, and I absolutely wholeheartedly and very proudly commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Instruction to the Education and Workforce Committee