Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill

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

💬 SPEAKER: 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 third time.

This bill is a very simple bill, and it allows us to deliver on a commitment that the Government made at the last election to deliver pay parity for early childhood education teachers working in education and care services outside of the kindergarten sector. We have made the commitment over this term of Government to ensure that we reach the point where teachers working in those services are paid the equivalent of their counterparts working in kindergartens.

The pay gap that has opened up between education and care teachers and teachers in kindergartens—over a decade now—is wrong. It is unacceptable. Why did it happen? It happened because between 2008 and 2017, there were not adjustments to the per child, per hour funding rate for education and care services to reflect the pay increases that were being given to kindergarten teachers—none, not one at all, during that nine-year period—and, as a result, we saw quite a significant pay differential open up. Under our Government we have given annual funding increases in terms of the per child, per hour funding rate, including to the salary component of that funding rate, every year that we have been in Government, but we recognise that that is not enough to undo the damage that was done during that nine-year pay freeze, so we do have to do more to catch up and to start to get nearer to pay parity.

We started that process last year when we increased the minimum attestation rate that centres have to sign up to in order to reach the highest rate of funding to at least the equivalent bottom step on the kindergarten teacher salary scale. So in order for a centre to access the highest per child, per hour funding rate, they have to attest that they are paying their staff at least the bottom step on the kindergarten teacher salary scale. That requirement came into force last year, and we increased funding to accommodate that.

Kindergarten teachers had a pay increase this year, and so this year’s Budget introduced extra funding to ensure that that parity did not go backwards. The Budget also set aside funding, to apply from 1 January next year, that will allow centres to go further. It will fund centres to allow their teachers to step their way up the salary scale, up to step six of the kindergarten teacher salary scale, depending on their length of service. So if they’ve been teaching there for three years, they would get on to step three; for six years, they would get on to step six. Over time, it is the Government’s intention to continue to increase funding and provide extra funding so that centres can make it all the way to the top of the kindergarten teacher salary scale, and that is step 10.

In order to be able to ensure that that extra funding actually flows through into teacher pay, the Government wants to be able to establish a condition on access to the highest level of funding that relates to employment relations—i.e., that the centres sign up to saying that they will pay their staff at least those steps on the salary scale in order to get that extra level of funding. There is some ambiguity about whether the existing conditions that can be attached could do that, so to remove all doubt about that, we have put this extra provision in place. That will mean that we can attach that condition, we can do that with certainty, and those early childhood services will know that the condition is consistent with the Education and Training Act of 2020. So this minor amendment allows us to attach that condition.

There is debate with the sector about whether or not the rates of funding being proposed are sufficient to meet the cost of moving all of those teachers to step six on the kindergarten teacher salary scale if they have done six years’ worth of service. Those discussions are ongoing. We’ve had feedback from the sector about that. This bill does not relate specifically to the rates proposed. It simply allows the conditions to be put in place. The discussions around what the rates are, when they should come into force, and how that should be stepped out is a discussion that we continue to have with the sector. So the bill allows us to deliver pay parity, but it is the work that we have to do once the bill is passed that is actually the important part, which is to identify what the funding conditions are and to identify what the funding rates that go with those funding conditions are. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

This is a bill that was sold all those weeks ago as small and insignificant technical fix, a mere minor change, that actually has turned out to be a nightmare for the Minister—a nightmare of such epic proportions that I think it surprised even him.

Just a few weeks ago, Minister Hipkins was in a perfectly presented presser at an early childhood centre, with smiling children, happy teachers, and centre owners that were beaming from ear to ear. He announced that pay parity was happening and he was fulfilling his election promise. There was one throw-away comment that he mentioned on the day—that he would need to make a minor technical change to the law to achieve his goals, and here we are.

So much has changed since we saw those happy smiling faces at that press conference. On to the Early Childhood Council conference on Saturday just gone, where the Minister was skewered, to put it mildly. Where angry and frustrated early childhood centres—while they absolutely want and support pay parity and want to pay their very much valued teachers a lot more—were angry, upset, and frustrated with the Minister for the way in which he has gone about his pay parity promise. There were many reasons that were talked about.

The first thing about this bill is the time frame, and I mentioned this all the way along—the fact that we’re doing this in urgency, the fact that we only had a few weeks to think about the bill, to have submissions, and the fact that we only had three days, during early childhood centre hours, where submitters to the bill could come and talk to our committee. Now, we know that the sector is short staffed. We know that they’re under a huge amount of pressure, and what did we do? We put the submission times during the time that the centres would be open, making sure that they would not have the chance to talk to our committee in person. But they did make themselves heard loud and clear through the written submission process—over 550 of them, and most of them opposed to this bill.

They were upset about the lack of consultation. They were blindsided by this bill. The Early Childhood Council, which is the sector representative, said that this had never been discussed with them. The terms and conditions of pay parity that were outlined, which had been outlined to the committee, were never discussed with them. The third thing that they were upset about was the term “employment matters” in the bill, and while it was cleared up somewhat in the bill, and the Minister tried to talk his way around it, the fact is that “employment matters” is still the term that is used in the bill. This worries privately owned centres, who are worried about what the Minister will do, what terms and conditions he will impose on them that are outside of just pay.

As I said in my second reading speech, and it was said again on the weekend by all of the early childhood centres that were at that conference, they were never talked to about the fact that pay parity, the money that was going to be granted, would be attached to conditions like the fact that it would be a tenure-based scale rather than performance based, and the fact that the centres themselves wouldn’t get to decide where, in fact, their own staff started on that scale. These things were never mentioned. In all of the lead-up to this bill and during the bill and during the select committee, it was never mentioned, until we dragged it out of the officials, and said, “Hang on a minute. What other terms and conditions of the kindergarten teachers collective agreement will be imposed?” The Minister said, “Oh no, none at all. None at all.”, and the officials said, “None at all.”, but then they did actually have to say, “Well, there will be a couple of conditions that will mimic the KTCA.”, and those will be the fact that the centres will not get to decide where their staff start on the scale, nor how they go up the scale. That will not be up to them; that will be as per the kindergarten agreement—never mentioned, but confirmed. They were blindsided by this, and the feedback from the conference was, “We are private businesses. You are foisting a collective agreement on to private businesses who want to manage their own employment affairs.” They do not want to have it put on to them in such a manner that it’s done under urgency, without any consultation, and sort of slipped in at the last minute.

Therefore, these centres, at the beginning of this process, were not able to work out actually how much this was going to cost them. They’re looking at this bill, going, “Do we support it? Do we not? Let’s have a think about if we can opt in. Can we opt in?” They weren’t able to work out how much it would cost them, because they didn’t realise they wouldn’t be the ones to decide where their staff would start on that scale. When it was made apparent and they were able to do the calculations, it was a pretty dire situation. Most of the centres—in fact, every single one at the conference—when they were asked to put up their hands as to who could afford to opt in, not a single hand went up. Not a single centre could afford to opt in.

Now, the Minister can play games and say, “Oh, well, but the funding is completely separate to this bill.” He could be a bit tricky and clever and say, “We’re not talking about that. We’re just talking about the bill and the technical amendment.” Actually, those two things are inextricably linked. The centres that were there on the day were standing up, almost in tears, saying, “What are we supposed to do? You’re putting us between a rock and a hard place.” In fact, those were the Minister’s words. The Minister said, “You are between a rock and a hard place.”

The teachers’ expectations have been massively raised—“We’re getting pay parity.”—and yet a minuscule amount of money has been put forward to actually fund it. So where does that extra bit get made up? Well, I’ll go into that later. So many questions were poised at this conference that the Minister was not able to answer about this bill. The early childhood centres were saying to him, “What happens when our staff go? Even if we can’t afford it but we manage to make things work in the first year, what happens in the second year when all of our staff on all the different levels go up? What happens then? What if we are massively out of pocket? Will you commit to paying?” The Minister was very clever with his words and talked about the bottom rate, but he never talked about all of the other people on the higher levels of that scale.

They also said to him, “Well, what about the kindy agreement. If the kindy agreement rates go up, will you make our grant match that”—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not the Speaker.

I’m sorry, Madam Speaker. They said, “Will the Minister increase the grant to match that, so that centres wouldn’t get further and further and further behind?”, and he could not answer. He says, “Well, it’s my intention that we will.”, but there’s no promise and there’s nothing in this bill to guarantee that while a centre might be out of pocket in the first year but manages to make up the difference—in future years will they be able to keep their doors open?

This whole issue is, in my opinion, the worst possible outcome for the quality of early education, and the reason for that, as I said, is the Minister is pitting centres against teachers, and the centres know and want desperately to increase pay for their teachers—they want to opt in; they desperately want to—but they’re not funded enough to. So what do they do instead? If they opt in, they’re going to have to increase the ratios to the bare minimum, which international evidence shows is not the best thing to do. They desperately don’t want to do that. What else can they do? They can reduce the amount of resources. They can hire less qualified or unqualified teachers, or they can increase fees to parents, which many are loathe to do.

The worst thing about this is the centres who will be the most adversely affected—and the Minister even admitted to this in committee—are the ones that are in highly deprived areas who can’t afford to charge fees, or charge very, very low fees. They certainly can’t afford to increase those fees, because those parents and families won’t be able to afford it and will pull their children out, and we desperately want those children in early childhood education. So if they can’t do that, what will they do? They will increase their ratios—so one teacher for 10 two-year-olds—and nobody wants that.

These are some of the most vulnerable children in our society who need the best ratios, and we are forcing these centres into a situation where they will have to choose between teacher pay and quality. If they choose teacher pay, the quality will go down, and those kids in those highly deprived areas will suffer the most. They will have to cut back on food, they will have to cut back on resources, and the biggest jump is for these centres in deprived areas because often their teachers aren’t paid like teachers are in more affluent areas. So they’ve got the biggest jump to get on to those steps. They will have the biggest cost to get to pay parity, but they don’t want to lose those teachers. They want to keep their teachers, so they’ll opt in and the quality will reduce.

All the submitters on the bill said the same thing: quality will be reduced if people opt in. I suspect, now, that Minister Hipkins is going cap in hand to Minister Robertson to ask for more money, because he knows centres can’t opt in. He knows that at that conference, no one raised their hands. Even in committee, when I asked the Minister how many centres would opt in, he couldn’t say.

This is a bad bill that jams a collective agreement model into a private business model, with no guarantee of future funding to meet the increased teacher pay. That will see kids in the most deprived areas suffer the most, and the Minister admitted to that himself. We cannot support this bill. The Minister should have just used the existing attestation rate to increase teacher pay.

Tēnā koe, e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to do a third reading speech on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. We heard the Minister very succinctly put it in his speech this is a very small, non-complex bill that makes really one change only, and that is an important clarification that is needed to the Education and Training Act 2020, because it will help enable our Government to support pay equity.

This change will allow our Government to deliver on the commitment to move towards closing the gap between those two groups that are basically operating with the same or equivalent qualifications yet are paid very differently. The Minister also outlined in his speech how that came about and he talked about a nine-year pay freeze. That, of course, is in stark contrast to the $170 million that our Budget 2021 committed over the next four years for the purposes of improving the pay for certificated teachers in that area.

Under our current funding system, teachers and kindergarten teachers carrying out the same work but not being paid the same is basically wrong. It’s not right that we have this. Pay parity is not a novel concept. It’s nothing new but it’s one that our Government has committed to, and that is what this bill will help address. So really, what it comes down to, at the end, is that this is a bill about fairness.

All that I’m left to do really is to say thank you to our 558 submitters, the 14 submitters that either provided oral submissions by Zoom or by coming in to talk to the committee in person, our Office of the Clerk team, the ministry officials, and Parliamentary Counsel Office for helping us get this bill back in time to the House. I commend it to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party is opposed to this bill, the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill, and we’re opposed for a number of reasons. The first and foremost is that this is just a very typical example of the way in which this Government is operating. An old adage in politics is that, in their third term, Governments tend to become arrogant in their approach to Government, and what we’re seeing here with this Government in the first year of their second term is they’ve already got “third-term-itis” and arrogance. So they’re in the position of ramming through legislation in a short, truncated process such as we’ve seen here. And, more often than not, it’s ill-thought-through and will have to be revisited.

So what happens in the normal process—for people to understand how Parliament usually works—is that a Government consults with a sector when it’s bringing in legislation that is going to directly affect it. The sector that’s being directly affected by this, of course, is the early childhood education sector—a very important sector; a critical sector, of course, to the many tens of thousands of working parents who are looking for the opportunity to have their young children looked after and set on a path of good education but also looking after their kids while they’re trying to work and make a living. It’s an expensive business, as any parent would know. So this is an important area, and one in which the previous National Government put a huge amount of effort into increasing the share of young children who were enjoying and participating in early education, and there has been a very, very significant increase in that over the past few years. But this legislation directly affects the private providers of early education, of which there are many tens of thousands.

Now, did this Government consult with them before bringing this in, in any proper way? Absolutely not. They talked a little bit about pay parity being an issue, and there was consultation on that, but what suddenly has appeared in this legislation as it was thrown before the House is something that’s a bit broader than that. It talks about wider employment relations priorities, and we all know that the primary employment relations priority of this Government is to increase unionism, and that, naturally, is something that rightly concerns the private sector providers of early childhood education. So they didn’t consult over these broader issues; they brought this legislation quickly into the House and then, in their usual fashion, have tried to ram it through in short order. Rather than having the normal period of time to consult with the community, through the select committee process, which is a critical part of our democracy, they truncated that dramatically so that people had only a week or two to make submissions and then a very short period to hear those submissions. That was a slap in the face to a sector that is working hard to provide services to tens of thousands of parents around the country—a complete slap in the face from an arrogant Government.

Then, when they heard the submissions, the providers of this early childhood education said, “Well, what’s going on here is that the Government is saying we need to pay our workers more—but, hang on a moment, we’re not clear how much, if any, extra funding we’d get.”, and that’s still unresolved. Then they look at the legislation, and the legislation is around bringing in industrial relations rules relating to payments for workers—that they should go up automatically every year regardless of performance, and they should start at a particular point on a new scale. All these questions are, naturally, left in the hands of the providers, saying, “Well, how much is this going to cost and how am I going to make a living? How am I going to stay afloat?”, and the average proposal or suggestion or guess from the providers was that this might add an extra $40,000 of cost on to each provider.

They then made the obvious point: “Well, where are we going to find this money from?”, and the most likely outcome, this Government always just assumes, is “Well, when we add extra costs to business, it just means businesses will be less profitable and everybody will be happy, because we all don’t like businesses, and if they’re less profitable, that’s a good thing.” That’s the basic kind of attitude that this Government has when it comes to small businesses. What they fail to realise is that a lack of profitability in businesses leads to less investment and less sustainable businesses. But, secondly, most business owners actually prefer to look at other options, and the two most likely options in this space are higher fees for the tens of thousands of working parents or reduced ratios between the teachers and the children. So you’d have more children per teacher. So that was the message that this Government got from the sector in the very short, truncated, and rather arrogant way in which they went about consultation through this bill.

So did the Government listen to any of that? Absolutely not. What we had was a very clear message from the Minister: “Get lost. We’re not listening to you. We’re not changing a thing in this bill. We’re going to ram it through, because we’ve got the numbers. Ha, ha!”, and when he went to a conference on the weekend with this sector, he was roasted by that sector for this piece of legislation and the way that it’s been introduced. That is why we, on this side of the House, are deeply concerned about it and we’re not supportive of it, and we’re worried that the most likely outcome is to be higher fees for the children, for the parents to pay. When we consider that in the context of what is going on at the moment, we, on this side, are deeply concerned about the pressures that many families are facing right here, right now. We’ve seen rents continuing to increase. The costs of living that many families are facing are going up, and we all know how difficult it is, particularly in big cities like Auckland, but not exclusively. In fact, if you go all round provincial New Zealand, many, many families are under intense pressure by higher rent costs, and then, if you add to that extra costs for childcare, it makes it very, very difficult for families to get by.

What this Government doesn’t seem to understand is that there is no magic. If you continue to add costs to businesses, often with the best of intentions—and there’s always a good reason, and there’s always a desire to pay people more or to have higher minimum wages; a whole bunch of things, very good. But, if you add the cost to those businesses—and, in the case of this one, don’t send a clear signal that those additional costs will be properly funded—then that leads to a very obvious outcome, which is, like I say, either higher fees or a reduced ratio for the number of kids per teacher.

So here we are at this late stage, this third reading, and this Government is full of its power that it has got here right now. It’s got the ability just to ram legislation through this House. We might well be seeing another example of that today, where they win every vote because they’ve got the numbers. I suppose the message I’d give to the members on the other side of the House is that it’s a two-edged sword, because in two years’ time you will have no other excuse, as members—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.

Yes, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Members on the other side will have no other excuse. Those members are responsible for the outcomes. You can’t blame New Zealand First anymore—or anybody else. What they will see, and what they will have to tell New Zealanders, is “What have we done with this power that has been granted to us?”, and, if this legislation is anything to go by, they’re not going to have a very good response, because what they’ve done is made it more difficult for New Zealand families to get by. They’ve made it more difficult for young New Zealanders who are trying to get ahead, trying to get on to the housing ladder, facing higher rents, and now face the prospect of higher fees and costs to have their children in early childhood education, and everybody knows that it’s expensive enough as it is.

The icing on the cake is the Minister coming in here yesterday and coolly saying, “Well, it’s not our intention to do anything other than focus on pay parity. Trust us. We’ve brought in legislation that’s broad and gives me all sorts of powers to meddle in the way that the employment relations are sorted out. I’ve got all this power, but don’t worry, trust us, we’re not going to do anything wrong.” And this is a Government that, of course, said it wouldn’t increase taxes but then they’ve raised taxes on the poor ute drivers—

The member’s time has expired.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It is my privilege to stand and take a call on the third reading for the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. It is my pleasure to do this because it allows this Government to deliver on its commitment to move towards closing the pay gap and achieving pay parity for education and care teachers in comparison with kindergarten teachers, who are generally paid at higher rates.

This is about enabling legislation that will help the sector to move towards pay parity. This legislation enables the Minister to determine the additional $170 million that are dropped into the system is ring-fenced, not to be spent on anything else but moving towards pay parity. So it is very, very helpful and enabling legislation. At the moment, the improved ratios that we’ve been hearing about that some centres are able to afford are currently being paid for out of teachers’ salaries. It isn’t the teachers who should be paying for these conditions, improved learning conditions, for our young people. So this is an opportunity to support those centres who really want to move towards pay parity to engage in this process.

I’m really pleased to hear that the member opposite is concerned about consultation, and it is at this point I thank the 558 submitters and their absolute commitment, their desire to engage around the really gnarly bit as the rubber hits the road—is how to improve the funding model. As I’ve said before in this House, there are issues with blunt bulk-funding measures, and it is really encouraging to hear that the sector wants to engage in improving the funding model so that we can make sure that we support our teachers and their centres to provide wonderful education for our young people. I commend this bill to the House.

E tū ana mātou ngā Kākāriki ki te tautoko i tēnei o ngā pire. The Greens are standing to support this bill amending the Education and Training Act 2020 to clarify the education Minister’s power to set conditions for funding and to fulfil its Budget 2021 decision to unlock funding by $170 million to employers who opt into higher funding levels and agree to pay their teachers at least parity with the first six steps of the kindergartens’ collective agreement, and we welcome that.

I agree with the previous speaker, Angela Roberts, who talked about the problematic nature of paying for extra things from the wages of teachers. This legislation—it’s a small, technical bill, but it will unlock a pathway for that funding to actually start to happen to flow into the sector. When we had a committee of the whole House last night, I welcomed the statements of the Minister that this would be a first step, and that there would be a next step and there would be a step after that, but I would also invite the Minister to actually provide that clarity to send very strong signals to the sector about what that actually will look like—sending signals to the teaching profession, but also to the providers as well.

I also think it’s important that we stop trying to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic—that’s the impression I get from that corner of the Whare. It’s important that things cost what they cost. You can’t go to the mechanic and go “You know what, I’ll just have three wheels on my car.” and then expect it to go. Things cost what they cost, and having this amendment to unlock and to begin this move towards full pay parity is a good thing.

I think it’s really important to acknowledge the work of the early childhood education (ECE) sector. They do an incredible job teaching our tamariki. They’re passionate about what they do—all the ECE teachers that I’ve talked to are passionate about what they do. I have my own relatives who work in the sector as well—they’re not doing it for the money, they’re not there for the pūtea, but they do need to get paid properly so they can feed their whānau as well.

The first years in a child’s life are really important, and they set up our children for educational success. The future of our physical, cognitive, and emotional social development is profoundly affected by our early experiences. At the heart of those experiences are the relationships children form with their parents and, of course, with their teachers, and ensuring that those teachers are paid properly is actually a strong part of that. The Greens believe that every child deserves a high-quality, free, accessible public education that gives them the best possible start in life, and we want all children to reach their full potential.

For true pay parity to be implemented and sustained, ECE sectors need to be able to start, as kindergarten and school teachers do, on pay steps that reflect their qualifications and experience, then progressively advance through the steps annually. The pay varies wildly across the ECE sector—we know that. And while in schools there’s a clear, transparent pay scale that means teachers with the same experience, responsibilities, and qualifications receive the same pay and advance up the scale every year, teachers’ submissions on this bill made it clear that they want the same fairness in ECE. And that gap is huge. I keep reflecting on this press release that came out last week from the NZEI, where they did a bit of—in this quote in particular, it says, “NZEI Te Riu Roa estimates that within 10 years, an ECE teacher starting their career today will on average have been paid more than $100,000 less than their colleagues in kindergarten unless the Government accelerates pay parity.”—$100,000, that’s massive. So this first step must be followed up by consecutive steps.

As I was saying, regardless of what people say, it costs what it costs, and we need to get a really clear sense of what that is. Continuing down the path of privatisation, expecting that when we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic that it will sort it out, will not work. So I would urge all of us around this House to be courageous in terms of the way that we fund education, in particular, with what needs to happen in order to meet pay parity. And I think, again, that we can alleviate the anxiety in the sector if we can give teachers and providers a clear plan—give them that clear plan, so they know that, this year, it’s $170 million; next Budget, it’s something else; next Budget, it’s something else; because if we do that, that gives them a kind of pathway for them to organise. They know exactly what’s coming down the pipeline. It’ll help them to organise their staffing, and that will mean the flow-on effects and how they can manage teacher ratios, workload, and, of course, deal with the teacher shortages that we’re experiencing, not just within the ECE sector but teaching in general, but in particular within the ECE sector. I think we need to do this and I look forward to the next step, because our teachers deserve it and so do our tamariki. Tēnā koutou.

Madam Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): James Baillie.

It’s Chris, Madam Speaker, but it’s OK.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): It’s the second time I’ve done that.

I rise on behalf of ACT to take a short call on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. The details of what is wrong with this bill I think have been pretty well explained by members over on this side of the House and there are a number of other factors which make this bill unacceptable in its present form. There were over 550 submissions. They all said that pay parity was an issue and they’re all good, caring people who want to pay their workers more but they showed up a number of flaws. If I can just read David Gibson, with 120 staff, he said it’s a nail in the coffin for him and he’ll become insolvent. Jessica Dodd: “It’ll be unaffordable. There’s too much bureaucracy, no consultation.” Bridget Gifford: “Fifty kids—will reduce staff or put up fees.” Deborah Petterson with 334 kids in her centres: “I’ll have to change ratios, increase fees. Special things cancelled like special needs programmes.”

The funding is inadequate and it’s been mentioned in quite a bit of detail over this side. To pay people, businesses must have the money themselves to be able to afford to pay people and if they don’t have it they won’t be able to, and it’s the same with this Government’s approach to small business as well: the businesses must have the money in order for it to flow down and for them to get it.

The unintended consequences—I’ve explained, the early childhood centres, some will have to close, the ratios will change, will get greater, and the fees will go up. The consultation process was non-existent. I’m not sure of Minister Hipkins’ definition of “consultation” but I think it’s pertinent to just remind ourselves of a High Court judge’s definition of “consultation”, if I may just quote this: “Consultation must allow sufficient time, and a genuine effort must be made. It is a reality not a charade. … To “consult” is not merely to tell or present. … consultation is to seek at least consensus. … Implicit in the concept is a requirement that the party consulted will be (or will be made) adequately informed so as to be able to make intelligent and useful responses. It is also implicit that the party obliged to consult, while quite entitled to have a working plan already in mind, must keep its mind open and be ready to change and even start afresh.”

I think to ignore all of the submitters—almost all of them—would be arrogance to the extreme. It’s not surprising that there is a suspicion of an ulterior motive. The extra powers awarded through this bill haven’t been explained properly. The quote “I have no intention of doing anything.” really falls on deaf ears and I think we have reasonable—we accept that that is a pretty reasonable assumption. We do expect an edict dictating who 5 percent of our employees have to be.

To conclude, things need to change in this very important sector, but it deserves a thorough review so it’s done right: consultation that is listened to, adequate funding provided, and solutions that respect both the hard-working early childhood centre owners and their hard-working employees. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m happy to take a call in this third reading of the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. As I stated in my speech on the second reading of this bill, it is a technical bill. It doesn’t go into the funding mechanisms that have been discussed at length by those opposite. As the Minister says, it authorises the Minister, whoever he or she may be, when setting out the conditions on grant funding to do so for employment relations aims. It does this through amending one clause, clause 4—sorry, that amends section 548 of the primary Act, which is the Education and Training Act 2020.

The Minister, as the House will appreciate, already has wide power to set conditions for grant funding, and this particular bill makes it clear that these conditions can be for employment relations purposes. This is the only substantive change in this bill. It adds clarity to the intention of this legislation and removes, therefore, any ambiguity as to the purpose clause, and it is a pathway to remove serious inequity between kindergarten teachers and education and care service teachers. This move is colloquially known as pay parity, and pay parity in the early childhood sector has been called for for some time. In fact, one of my earliest memories is being pushed in my pushchair from Hill St childcare centre, up the road, down to Parliament to a protest asking for more money for early childhood teachers.

This has also been remarked on by those opposite. The Hon Paul Goldsmith said this bill is typical of the way the Government is working, and I agree. This is part of the Government’s ongoing programme to address inequity and promote fair pay, including work towards significant settlements and pay equity for female-dominated work, raising the minimum wage for those on the lowest pay, and working towards pay parity in the early childhood sector. This bill allows this important work of this Government to continue, and therefore I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is not about pay parity. If it were, it would include those words somewhere in the text. It does not, and the reason that it does not include those words is that it has a far broader purpose, which the Minister of Education has tried to hide from view but which the early childhood sector are very alive to. This bill gives the Minister of Education the power to set employment conditions in privately owned businesses. It gives the Minister of Education a much wider power than he has ever had before, which is to set conditions in early childhood services in order to, and—I quote from the bill—“help achieve employment relations aims”. While we have this bill progressing through this House, I want to summarise some of the key questions that have been asked and the key themes that have been raised that remain unaddressed as we have this, its final reading.

The first question that members asked was why this bill was necessary at all, given the Minister already has the ability to require attestation rates for those receiving grant funding—that is, he already has the ability to set minimum pay rates. That remained unaddressed. We had a whole lot of technical explanations that really did not get to the heart of that.

The second thing we asked was if this is actually about pay parity, then where is the funding to make that possible, because the questions that early childhood centres have asked are very fair and very reasonable. They have said, “Well, if the Minister is now going to have the power to specify the conditions relating to a broad range of employment matters, including when we step people up in their pay and what the pay levels are at different levels of experience, then can we be confident that the Minister will match that power with the funding to make those things possible?”, and the Minister has at no stage engaged in that debate. Instead, he’s said that it’s not relevant. Well, I put to this House that if this is a bill about pay parity, as members opposite have harped on about, then it is absolutely about funding, because that is at the core of why early childhood services today are unable to pay their staff as much as kindergartens: because they are funded at a lower rate than kindergartens. So if the Minister is not addressing that fundamental issue, then you do have to be cynical about what this bill is doing.

The second issue that has been raised by services who will be affected by this bill is why so quick? Why so rushed? The discussion about pay parity has been ongoing for a number of years. The Minister has had multiple opportunities to engage with the sector on it, and yet this bill was introduced under urgency. It was rushed through. Only 14 days were given for submissions and only two days for oral hearings, two days of which were days when, actually, early childhood service owners and teachers across the country were operating those services and so found it pretty difficult to come and have their say, and were left feeling that actually the Minister of Education didn’t want them to know about this bill, didn’t want them to examine it, and didn’t want them to raise their concerns.

But more than 550 entities and individuals were so concerned to hear about this bill that they did share their views, and what were their concerns, because it is pretty important. The member speaking before me—Camilla Belich—raised this issue of equity. Well, the question that they put was: “If the Minister imposes employment conditions that we cannot afford, how do you expect us to pay for them, because, really, we have two choices. One, we can increase fees”—and by the way, Minister Sepuloni, that is not good for the lower-income families who need to access early childhood education in order to be able to return to work; that is not good for them—“or, actually, the other choice we have is to lower quality in early childhood services by increasing the ratio of children to teachers.” So if employment conditions are imposed by a Minister but they are not funded, that does not improve affordability or accessibility of early childhood education.

This bill is a Trojan Horse. It is not about pay parity. It is about the Minister increasing his control over the early childhood education sector.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. In the absence of the Māori Party, I rise to take a third reading call on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill, which I am happy to rise in support for.

I was not involved with the select committee that looked at this and this is my first opportunity to take a call on the bill. However, as someone, along with other members in the House, who has a background in education, I certainly value and understand—albeit my background is in secondary education, I none the less understand the hard work that those in our early childhood sector do up and down the country in our communities. This bill is actually about supporting them. This bill is actually about supporting those hard-working teachers in early childhood education who deserve to have the support of people in this particular House.

The whole point of this bill, as colleagues before me have already alluded to, is to allow the Government and, in this case, the Minister of Education, whoever it might be, to deliver on fairness—to deliver on the fairness that the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Marja Lubeck, indicated was the purpose of this particular bill, and the Minister himself identified that in the House last night. I was present, listening to him and his responses to questions from the Opposition as this was being progressed through the House. So this is a bill about fairness, and I would have thought that anyone in this House would be wanting to support it as a result of that.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: You’d think so.

You’d think so. But, clearly, there are others that perhaps are more focused on having barriers towards pay parity and other opportunities that identify the hard work that teachers are doing. Mr Baillie, you sit there and nod, and, as a teacher yourself, I’m surprised that you wish to stand in the way—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.

My apologies, Madam Speaker.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Just by way of seeking clarification, Speaker Mallard made a ruling at the end of last term clarifying the use of the word “you”. It was clarified in that ruling that when a member is responding to another member, and it is clear in that response that he is not bringing the Speaker into the debate but responding to another member, then there would be a lenient approach taken to that.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Look, thank you very much for that point of order. My ruling is that I will rule out “you” when it is directed at a member; using the word “you” when it can be replaced for the word “one” is now acceptable.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Mr Baillie, who shook his head, perhaps is one member who continues to want to remain as a barrier towards pay parity opportunities and support.

So, on that basis, I am happy to support this bill.

Thank you Madam Speaker. I am very grateful for the opportunity to rise to speak in support of this bill. This bill, as a member on the other side previously indicated, is not a parity bill—we know that, and we have said it over and over—but it makes a small clarification to the Education and Training Act 2020. It’s very simple, but it will allow the Government to deliver on its promise to address inequality.

For far too long our hard-working early childhood education (ECE) teachers have been underpaid, undervalued, and they were left behind. Teachers with the same qualification carrying out the same work do not get paid equally. This pushed our teachers to look for jobs somewhere else. They’ve been leaving the country in an exodus, therefore many ECE centres have been struggling to either retain their existing teachers or to recruit new ones. This also has been affecting our children, who deserve high-quality care with the consistent and secure relationships that they need at the very early stage of their lives.

We have heard a lot about this from the other side. It’s all negative and they’ve consistently been attacking this because, for them, it’s all about freezing the pay increase for hard-working Kiwis. For them, it’s about increasing any sort of pay increase for nine years, but for this Government it’s all about addressing inequality. It’s all about bridging the unfair pay gaps. It’s all about lifting those who are struggling on low wages. We know our ECE teachers have been struggling on low wages. They have had it hard, they have had it tough, and I’m very proud that this Government is paying attention and listening, to address this. I’m very proud that our Government is not leaving anyone behind, because that is what a compassionate and a kind Government should be doing and that is what our Government is doing.

On that note, I highly, highly, highly commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition of this Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. This amendment concerns the funding of our early childhood services, and as my colleague has said, this bill is very typical of what this Government likes to do plenty of, and that is gaining tighter control. Even though these early childhood services are privately owned or community-run playgroups, the Minister wants more control.

I’d like it to be seen in the context of some of the other things that the Minister has done in the education sector. Let’s have a look at the review of vocational education, where the Minister has decided he needs to have a much greater level of control. I find it fascinating, the arrogance of a Minister who has never taught, who has never managed, who has never been involved in an educational institution feels he has the expertise to exert this level of control. I listened to Mr Baillie, the member of the ACT Party, who talked about the arrogance of ignoring submitters.

I’d like to give a little bit of an example, to put it, again, in context, of what that Minister did around the review of vocational education submitters. The Minister, who clearly needs a little bit of remedial maths, said that he had an overwhelming majority of submitters who supported his review. Well, it was 46 percent, and I don’t think that’s even a majority, let alone an overwhelming majority. But wait—there’s more. That 46 percent was if you took the 800 submissions opposed that came from Southland and you say “They’re all from Southland. They’re pretty much the same. I’ll only count them as one submission.” So if you don’t allow that to happen, actually, the overwhelming majority of submissions in support is actually 29 percent. So I think a little bit of remedial numeracy support for the Minister would not go amiss.

What we see in this bill is, as my colleague has said, a continuation of the Minister wanting to exert control, and he is wanting to, essentially, expand the reach of a collective agreement into private businesses. Early childhood education is incredibly important, so, please, we mustn’t dismiss the importance of it. Even though we are not supporting this bill, we want to make it very, very clear that we understand the importance of the early childhood education centres in the development and the wellbeing of our young tamariki.

I want to just talk to you a little bit about my history at the Southern Institute of Technology, where one of my first jobs as a senior manager was to build a new centre for our early childhood centre. Now, that facility and the environment and the equipment was really, really important. We spent a lot of time making sure that we got the best possible physical environment that we could for that centre, and it was incredibly important to the teachers, to the parents, to the young children, but it was nowhere near as important as the staff that were in that centre.

I want to tell you about a wonderful centre manager that we had for over 25 years—in fact, I may be doing her a disservice; I think she was there for more than 30 years—Anne Golding. She was an outstanding early childhood teacher. She was an outstanding manager. She taught my children and then my grandchildren, and rumour has it she retired very shortly after my grandchildren started. That may have tipped the balance! However, that woman was an outstanding teacher and an outstanding manager, and so I absolutely know the importance of having wonderful staff at these centres, both for the children and for the parents who leave their children in that care. It is an absolute blessing to have good staff in an early childhood centre.

But this bill is not about rewarding great staff; this bill is about requiring pay parity and the acceptance of pay scales and that imposition on our privately owned centres of the kindergarten collective agreement, with its terms and conditions. Now, that mightn’t be so bad if the funding that went with it enabled these centres to achieve that parity, but it doesn’t allow that. It puts them in this no-win situation where they can reward some of the newest staff, but then they lose the parity of their more senior staff. It puts them in the difficult position of having had better ratios, for example, than some other centres, and they won’t be able to do that, or they will have to choose whether they do that or whether they try and keep that parity there of their more experienced staff. That’s a terrible position for us to be putting our centres in, our centres that genuinely want to have conditions that enhance the quality of the services that they provide.

My colleague said earlier that this is about the Minister setting employment conditions on privately owned businesses. This is an ideologically driven agenda from the Government. A member on the opposite side of the House said, “No, nothing to see here. This is just a technical change.” This is not a technical change; this is a deeply fundamental ideological agenda being driven on to private businesses, but they are, at the same time, continuing to pay these centres at a lower rate, putting the centres in this most dreadful situation of having to weigh up do they increase fees, do they increase ratios, do they leave their more experienced staff without the parity that they should have against less experienced staff. It is a very, very difficult situation these centres are being put into, and the poor consultation around it proves that this is not just a technical change.

This was rushed through to try and avoid the submitters being able to have a meaningful impact on this bill. Despite that, despite putting this through urgency and having such a limited amount of time, 550 submitters wanted to have their voice heard, but they didn’t, because this Minister, as I said, from the review of vocational education, has a history of not taking any notice of submitters. He has a history of downplaying submitters. How else do you explain taking 800 submissions and saying, “Oh, they’re really similar. I’ll just call them one.”? He has a history of devaluing the input that comes from people who are out in the industry, and he has a history of dismissing the value of their contribution.

So to those 550 submitters that took the time, when they only had a limited number of days and they were still trying to run business as usual in their centres—I want to thank them for putting that effort in to put submissions through, and I want to apologise for how much they were disrespected and completely ignored in the issues that they brought up. I think that we owe people a much, much greater respect if they go to the time of putting submissions in on this.

So it is not a technical change. This is deeply, fundamentally ideologically driven. It is imposing something on to our private centres that it should not be doing, while at the same time restricting their funding, so we vehemently oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It is my honour to rise and speak in support of the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. Unlike my friend across the room, I have quite an optimistic and positive view of our education reforms in this country. I also have a positive view, understanding the importance of pay parity—and, sadly, the examples that she gave do not make sense. Both of us come from the tertiary sector and both of us worked in organisations that did run early childhood centres. We also, as leaders within those organisations, acknowledge the balance sheet and the benefits commercially, I guess, that running early childhood education (ECE) centres in a wider tertiary organisation gave, but we also were able, within those institutions, to pay people properly because we value education and we value our kaiako and our teachers within those organisations, and we also see that within our kindergartens as well.

But, sadly, there are small institutions, early childhood centres, that aren’t receiving pay parity. The former member spoke before about not being able to see pay parity within this piece of legislation; well, you wouldn’t see the terminology of “pay parity” within legislation. It is not a technical term; it is a colloquialism that you would use as a phrase, or something like that. So let’s just be clear about the intent of this particular bill that is going through the House for its third reading. It is a small but important clarification to the Education and Training Act 2020.

I just want to respond to the history of our Minister, because the history of this Minister is, in fact, educational reform. We saw that today in the presentation from Te Pūkenga. Sadly, it hasn’t worked out for the Southern Institute of Technology, to my friend across the room, but it has worked out in ensuring that learners in this country have appropriate pathways, that they are able to have a consistent learning programme in front of them, and that those options and resources are going to the right places in our sector. That is what is important. While other organisations, key organisations, might have best practice, the importance of Government taking a role in leading education reform is very, very important. And that’s why this particular bill, the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill, is taking one step to doing that.

We need to achieve pay parity, and that is what this sets us up to do, that as we invest an additional $170 million into ECE centres, it is about ensuring that people are paid the way that we want them to be paid, that no matter where you teach—whether it be in a kindergarten, whether it be in kōhanga reo, or whether it be in an early childhood centre—that everyone is on a good, respectable wage that acknowledges the contribution that they make to our tamariki and our learners. That is what this bill starts to achieve.

Pay parity: when we look at the previous Government, for nine years there was no increase in early childhood education—nine long years—and, with that, we’ve got to pick up this mess. Again, I acknowledge the history of this Minister to be able to reform this sector, to take brave steps, and to put moves in place to ensure that our learners and the people that teach them in our classrooms, no matter what those classrooms are, are respected through pay parity.

So that is what we’re doing, and we are very, very interested in consultation. We come from a whānau, as the Labour Party, where we like to hear from unions—yes. We want to hear from people on the ground, from grassroots communities. As a good local MP in Northcote, that I’m really proud of, I’ve been out to speak to my early childhood education centres. As we build more and more houses in Northcote—2,000-odd—we are seeing ECE centres pop up as well. I opened one last week in Beach Haven. It is fantastic to see people contributing to the growth of our community as we build houses, as our North Shore community grows, that we bring education, community, and whānau together.

So I am very pleased with this bill, very proud that we are making steps to achieving pay parity. It doesn’t work in isolation; it is part of a history of an extremely effective Minister of Education that is prioritising learners and prioritising our teachers. I commend this bill to the House.