Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 1 July 2021 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 on 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, and 196(1)(b) and (c).

The reason for moving this bill through the Parliament relatively quickly is to ensure that we can have the new funding system in place, or these extra funding measures in place, by 1 January next year. The bill’s quite a technical one. It simply allows us to add an additional funding condition. The advice that we have received is that we can add the funding condition, as we have done for some time, around the minimum rate of pay for an early childhood education teacher and still be consistent with the current provisions in the Education and Training Act, but to add additional steps would be stretching that existing power too far, and so hence this very technical amendment that allows us to add those extra conditions. It will be very consistent with the way the minimum rate of pay condition is applied at the moment, and so it’s relatively technical.

Once the bill has passed through Parliament, we also then want some time to be able to ensure that the sector understands the conditions that will apply to them and understands how the system is going to be implemented and that there is adequate time for consultation in that part of the process, hence the desire to have this bill through some time in July. So the report-back by 1 July will allow us the time to do that, also recognising that we have a bit of a long adjournment during that period of time as well. It means that we can get the bill through—passed—and then the new funding conditions out for consultation.

The sector has already been consulted quite extensively on the fact that pay parity is coming. They have been pushing for it. They know that it is coming. I imagine the people who will want to submit on this will be relatively narrow—probably, most likely, the people who run and operate the centres as opposed to the staff who are going to be receiving the extra pay increases—hence I think the committee should be able to do what is required to be done within the relatively constrained timetable they are being given.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

We oppose this motion here. It’s just another example of a Government that isn’t well organised, and throws out the normal processes of this House, which is to allow—so what people might not understand is normally when legislation comes into this House, it gets referred to a select committee for at least six months, or longer, in order for submissions to be heard by the public and to have their say, with plenty of warning and plenty of consideration. Then, once the select committee members hear those submissions, they then go back to the Government department which is advising them—in this case, the Ministry of Education—get advice, ask questions, and then the select committee formulates an opinion and refers it back to the House.

Now, this Minister, who claims it all needs to be rushed so that we’re ready for next year—he wants to truncate that to a very short period of time and have it all done by 1 July. Well, the very obvious point would be to say that if the Minister and his Government had got their act together earlier and introduced this bill at the start of the year, or even late last year—they’ve known about this issue for a long time—then we wouldn’t have to be rushing it through in this normal manner.

Time and time again, this Government operates this way, and then just comes along casually into the House and says, “Well, you know, there’s a rush. We’ve got to get this done because we didn’t really sort of think about it. It’s all a bit of a hurry. Here’s the legislation. It’s loose, very poorly thought out, no real detail that’s been outlined, but we’ll just run it through. We’ll get it in, we’ll pass it, and then we’ll talk to the sector once it’s all finished and we’ll iron out the details, and probably we’ve a very good chance that we’ll make a mistake. We’ll come back and we’ll have another piece of legislation to fix that, and we’ll do that in urgency because there’ll be a rush.” This—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Very narrow.

I suppose this debate is really a debate about standards and it’s a debate about arrogance, because I would put it to the House and to the people of New Zealand that what we see here is an arrogant Government that’s got all these numbers in the House, and it can do whatever it likes and it wins every vote. “We’re the king of the castle and we’ll just do whatever we want.”—and if people only get a few days to consult or to have their views heard on legislation that affects an important sector, then so be it.

The point that we would make is that early childhood education is critical to this country, and we do want to see better investment so that teachers are well-paid in this sector. What we don’t want to see is slip, slob—what’s the word again? Slobby—

💬 Matt Doocey: Slip, slop, slap.

Slip, slop slap—no. No, it’s slipshod—slipshod legislation brought through in a hurried fashion. On that basis, we oppose this motion.