Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill

Members, the House is in committee on the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. We come first to Part 1, which is the debate on clauses 4 to 13—“Amendments to principal Act”—and Schedule 1. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Madam Chair, thank you. We come to the committee stage of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. I’d like to reiterate my thanks given in the second reading to the Education and Workforce Committee for their work on this bill—

Hon Member: No worries.

Hon Member: Happy to help.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —oh, good—and also just give a brief overview of Part 1, the first part of two parts in the bill. The purpose of this legislation, as has been said, is to establish a Director of Regulation, with a set of statutory objectives and some powers and some obligations. All of this is set up so that people in the early childhood sector can actually point to their rights—that the person that holds the power over them will actually have some laws that restrain how they use their power, while also making clear what their priorities are.

If we go through the clauses in Part 1, we begin by interpreting what early childhood education is and, therefore, what kind of services this part of the law will apply to: early childhood services and play groups that opt in to being certified under the Act. We then talk about the purpose of this part, and it is to regulate early childhood education in such a way that there are “minimum standards for quality early childhood education that allows all children to establish strong foundations for learning, well-being, and life outcomes;” and also to “support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.”, which is important to a lot of parents up and down this country.

Once you have that purpose, there are certain objectives that are pursued in order to support the purpose. First and foremost, and absolutely critical, is protecting the health, safety, and wellbeing of children. Then there’s educational and developmental outcomes, there’s accessibility and choice for parents, and then there’s informing parents and caregivers, because one of the things that was found in the Ministry for Regulation’s review of the early childhood sector was that parents often can’t actually identify what good is and what to bring market pressure on to providers to improve. Finally, the objective of implementing a licensing and certification system is something that the Director of Regulation will do to achieve this purpose.

It then goes on in new section 27A in clause 7 to set out that the Director of Regulation must be appointed and must be an employee of the ministry at the time of the appointment, and it goes on, in new section 27B in clause 7, to list the functions that the director carries out. Those are things such as issuing the licences, providing support and information, and also assessing and responding to complaints about licensed early childhood services, and so that’s an important avenue for parents. New section 27C in clause 7 goes on further to say how the director’s functions and duties are performed. It says, first of all, that in accordance with the purpose and objectives that we have discussed, they’re accountable to the Secretary of Education—the chief executive of their respective department, and, finally, in new section 27D in clause 7, there are some principles. The health, safety, and wellbeing of children is the first principle that they have to follow. Similarly—and I’ll skip to the end—they must have regard to “good regulatory practice, including (without limitation) decision-making that—(i) [must be] risk-based, proportionate, fair, and transparent; and (ii) avoids imposing unnecessary costs on parents, caregivers, and service providers.” Then, in new section 27E in clause 7, “Delegation of Director’s functions, duties, and powers”, this can be done—obviously, there won’t just be one Director of Regulation. There will be a number of people working for them, but they need to delegate those powers in writing.

Subsequent to that, there are really a lot of changes that you might describe as mechanical, or minor and technical, but I think I’ve laid out most of what Part 1 does. It sets out the purpose, the objectives used to achieve the purpose, then there’s the Director of Regulation, and then there are their duties and the principles for which they carry out those duties to fulfil the objectives and achieve the purpose. All of this is offering transparency to the people who are regulated.

There is a minor and technical amendment in my name that the Government intends to support. We’ve reviewed other amendments as they’ve come in. We do not intend to support other amendments. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister for walking us through what this bill purports to do, in his view. Labour strenuously opposes this bill because it doesn’t do what it says on the tin. It talks about facilitating early childhood education reform, when, in fact, what it does is it has a very strong labour market focus, and it doesn’t—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Sorry to interrupt the member. Can I just ask members to refer to the clause that you’re speaking to.

INGRID LEARY: Yes, sure. What I was doing, Madam Chair—thank you for the guidance—was that I was just about to talk this committee of the whole House through Labour’s approach to this, because when I come to my questions on clause 4, given that the Minister has given an overview, I would also like to give an overview of how we plan to approach this, if I may. The Minister himself has raised the purpose of the bill and he’s talked about the effect of that, and it will be our view, as we interrogate the clauses, to show that, actually, there is a denigration of children’s rights and we will be doing that through Part 1.

He has also talked about minimum standards. We will be interrogating the Minister about how those standards are upheld and what safeguards there are. He has also mentioned the complaints procedures and, through the parts relating to that, we will be asking for the processes that are involved and also about the vulnerability of the Crown to judicial review.

As I’ve said, he has mentioned the purpose, and, clause by clause, we will see how, in our view, the drafting does not align with the purpose. Therefore, we have a number of amendments that we would like to table to make the drafting align further.

The Minister himself mentioned new section 27 in clause 7—and, indeed, that is a fundamental section that we will be going through very carefully—where a lot of the changes are made that, essentially, decouple the stewardship of the Ministry of Education with its regulatory role. This goes against the OECD best practice, and we will be referring to that in some of our questions in wanting to understand how New Zealand will be aligning itself with OECD countries, given that the decoupling goes in the opposite direction of what the OECD recommends.

The Minister has also talked about having health, safety, and learning as priorities. We will have amendments relating to that, and to having a very strong focus on Māori and Te Tiriti. We are wanting to understand, and to get on the record for Hansard, as well, not only why Te Tiriti is not mentioned but there seem to be implicit references in parts of the bill and, therefore, we will be asking the Minister whether, in his view, Te Tiriti is implicitly to be considered when this bill is applied.

Finally, just in response to the Minister’s own opening remarks, where he talked about the schedules as being, essentially, technical: in fact, we find that many of the powers that will go from the Secretary of Education to the Director of Regulation are conferred by Schedule 1, and then the safeguards that we would expect to see in Schedule 2 are not there. We intend to spend some time on Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 to unpack how they could be improved and what the risks are as we see them, because we do not see the safeguarding in the legislation before us.

Having said that, and being aware that this is the committee stage, I’ll now turn to clause 4 with my specific questions. Clause 4 is really around definitions, as the Minister has said. This question will come up in relation, I think, to each of the clauses because we’ve heard from many submitters that there are no Te Tiriti obligations, and so we want to understand why Te Tiriti is not mentioned in clause 4. We also want to know what advice and evidence he has sought on the impact on tangata whenua education.

We would also like to understand what the Minister thinks a playgroup entails. What is his definition of the word “playgroup” in paragraph (b) of the new definition of “early childhood education” in section 10(1) of the Education and Training Act, in clause 4 of the bill? It talks about “a playgroup that opts to be certified”. Can he please define a playgroup for us, and also what are the circumstances in which a playgroup would not be able to be certified under the Act? Is any playgroup able to be certified, or are there some criteria, and where will those criteria be located so that the director can do their oversight job? Finally, what is the difference between an early childhood service and a playgroup?

I do also have some other questions on this regarding the regulatory impact statement (RIS). We have heard in the RIS that there has been a lack of consultation. This is mentioned on page 48, and so, again coming to these definitions that the Minister has referred to and that we see in new paragraphs (a) and (b) of the new definition, what assurance do we have that the definitions that he provides around playgroups and early childhood services actually align with the sector expectations? We also want to know how they will be assessed for standards when they haven’t been consulted on them, and that, again, refers to the RIS, at page 48, where there is actually a repeated theme throughout the RIS about the lack of consultation.

I also have some legal questions. Given that I’ve referred to the absence of Te Tiriti, does the Minister accept that this could undermine the Crown obligations, and, if not, why not—if he could answer that question. Why doesn’t it include Te Tiriti obligations in the key definitional clauses?

Some of our other questions relating to Treaty will be around the impact of the absence of Te Tiriti. Those are different questions, but for the purposes of this clause, we would like to know why it is not mentioned in the key definitional clause, and that will go to my later question, which comes around under the Schedule, where we see implicit references to things like puna reo, kōhanga reo, and so on.

Finally, in the RIS, at page 30, there has been an identification of a risk of confusion. Again, this is around some of the lack of certainty around the early childhood service and the playgroup, and so we need to get a very clear steer from the Minister as to where he gets these definitions from, whether they align with the sector, what consultation, if any, was done, and what will happen in the absence of having alignment on those definitions. Also, there are minimum standards and a playgroup that opts to be certified—are there circumstances in which they cannot be? If so, what are they—and it is the same in relation to an early childhood service. We will have many more questions on Part 1.

The member Ingrid Leary has just taken eight minutes to ask two very simple questions. First of all, a playgroup is defined in the wider Education and Training Act as a group that meets on a regular basis but where children don’t attend for more than four hours at a time. There are other definitions, but the point is that the definition is already in the wider Act.

On the absence of a definition of the Treaty in the interpretation section of this bill, I’m an ambitious politician and I thought about perhaps getting some of my ideas about defining the Treaty into this education amendment bill, but I actually just don’t think that defining the Treaty of Waitangi should be done here in this interpretation section of the Education and Training Act.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Moving on to clause 5, this is an important part of these reforms. There were a number of submitters who wanted us to spend some time here and really understand the trade-offs and the choices that are being made by the Government to prioritise certain sets of values in the education system here.

Just for the committee’s attention, section 14 in the Education and Training Act 2020, which is being amended by clause 5 has three parts. Some of those are being picked up here, but some of those are a bit different. They are about setting standards for quality. There is also a mention of provision there, which we’ll get to in a second, but the second one is about health and safety and the wellbeing of children, and the third one is about enabling parental choice.

Those are all important things and they are mirrored here, but the difference is that submitters came to the committee and they raised their concerns, particularly those providers of things like kindergarten services, those providers who are community-based and who have had a long history of provision for children—after, say, the Second World War, with the establishment of play centres and playgroups. Those organisations that were represented at the Education and Workforce Committee by their bodies continued to raise the point that in putting in the new section 14(b), as it is here, and then also backing that up with inserting the new section 14A points around establishing this for parents so that parents and caregivers have more information—they felt that there was a sort of decentring of children’s wellbeing and children’s rights in this, and that’s a fair enough point.

I want to first ask the Minister whether it is his intention to do that. Is it deliberate that these objectives sort of create a new hierarchy of how you might balance both the wellbeing of children and education provision with the rights of parents—which, obviously, do exist and have been catered for in the original Act at section 14, but in a different way—or is it the case that it is the same balancing exercise, and yet we are then introducing other sorts of provisions about how you might interpret that?

The second question is around how this should be interpreted. When we talk about new section 14(b), as it’s written here—“support choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.”—that is a good thing. Is that an acknowledgment of, really, just the administrative arrangements that are around this now?

Some departments that are outside of education manage this as an allocation, and they have done that well before the 2020 changes, let alone these changes. Departments like the Ministry of Social Development, for instance, administer the Out of School Care and Recreation (OSCAR) programmes, which are about providing education services, but they’re predominantly because of labour market force participation. It’s going to be a goal of any Government of New Zealand, I would suggest, that people who have the care of children in their ordinary life should have options and choices around that. So is that intended to be given effect in some different way here or is it the same balancing exercise, or is there more of an emphasis now—which is what the submitters suggested there was—on this active labour market participation, and, if so, should that be recognised?

Should it be clearer, if the Minister is trying to give effect to those administrative arrangements that have grown up over time in the Public Service, that we also have this secondary goal of making sure that parents can participate in the workforce? Should it be making it clearer that early childhood education is about that? If that is an intention and that’s what he means, then we should say that, and so those dual purposes there should have a sort of hierarchy and a balance between them, because there are trade-offs to be made by any Government.

If early childhood education is intended to provide a real range of services that are outside of what is currently being provided for in the market by those providers who came along to the committee and said that their number one concern was the welfare of children and their educational development—if it is the intention in New Zealand to have another sort of service which is more like the OSCAR services, which are available to older children, where that is predominantly around the active labour market participation of parents and caregivers, then should we be setting that out more clearly here? Those are my two questions, and I have more on this.

Can I quickly address these two questions in relation to new sections 14 and 14A in clause 5. The member Arena Williams asked what the Government’s intention is in having twin purposes for the Act. One is to implement minimum standards for quality education for children, and the other is to support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.

I think it’s clear to most people that early childhood education policy has those objectives now and has for a very long time. Successive Governments have introduced policies to boost that. What we’re doing here is putting in statute law that those are the purposes that the Director of Regulation for early childhood education should be following. I can’t make it any simpler than that. Those are the widely acknowledged objections; we’re putting in law that the regulator must take heed of them.

Then there was a question about whether new section 14A(d), by providing information to parents and caregivers—the member described that as decentring children’s rights. There are a couple of things in response to that: first, that comes three paragraphs after paragraph (a), which says that “protecting the health, safety, and well-being of children” is the first objective in the list; and, second of all, I don’t know if the member has met any three-year-olds, but one of the best ways to help them is actually to ensure that their parents are enabled, because most three-year-olds are quite dependent on their parents and caregivers, and so by informing and helping them, we actually are centring the child. We could, of course, give all the information directly to the three-year-old, but—I don’t know—they might eat it or something, and that wouldn’t work so well.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the Minister’s response, and I love the fact that the Minister is literally telling a mum of young children about what it is like being a parent of young children. I’m sure that that is something that Arena Williams will have more to say on, but I want to pick up on something that the Minister has said. I want to start with clause 5, as well, because it is an important part of this bill, along with the Director of Regulation and also the regulation of early childhood education (ECE) in general.

But just looking at this first part, broadly, I see that the intention here of separating out the purpose and the objectives, and we’ve seen that as well in terms of other legislation, particularly in terms of some of the broad objectives we’ve seen in the education bill that was passed last week. But what the Minister said was interesting to me because new section 14(b) in clause 5, to “support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.”, is not in the existing legislation. That is new, and it’s a very peculiar one because this is saying that the purpose of ECE is to ensure that we free up our parents to go and work. What we’re looking at here, which I thought was a very interesting purpose in education because, I mean, unless the Minister can quote a specific section, there is no other part of the Education and Training Act about parents working in jobs—like, that is not even covered within the overall purpose of the Education and Training Act.

But while that is what a lot of parents have to do—and I do acknowledge all of the parents who are in this Chamber at this stage of the bill, and all of your spouses and partners who have to work and have to ensure that their children are going there. But what it also means, by this singular clause, is to treat early child education not as a place where tamariki learn and develop skills but, essentially, treating it as a babysitter—essentially, a nannying service—and—

Carl Bates: That’s not what it says—that’s not what it says.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: But that’s exactly why we have this particular section here, and I cannot fathom why the Minister would consider including this part when it’s not in the existing legislation.

Conversely, what we’re not seeing—and it’s quite an obvious gap within new sections 14 and 14A. There is not a single mention of teachers and there’s not a single mention of the resources that support teachers who are working in ECE to ensure that a lot of this does take place. Again, I agree that parents do perform an important role in all of this, but in terms of providing for some of these teachers, it also performs an important role, and so if we’re speaking to a separation of purpose and objectives—you know, providing clarity—I understand that. But I would ask the Minister to consider my amendment so that new section 14(b) to “support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market.” isn’t actually something that is needed within this section, especially when it’s not in the existing legislation.

Furthermore, I would ask the Minister to start by considering my amendment that says that supporting qualified teachers and workers to ensure that they are well resourced and supported as part of the objectives—I’m not asking the Minister to include it in the purpose of Part 2 in new section 14; I’m asking the Minister to include it in new section 14A, under the objectives. So I’m going to start with those two questions, which are about the peculiar inclusion of new section 14(b) and what is the intention of that, and, in the purpose and objectives, why are teachers not mentioned at all?

If the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan had listened to the debate, he would have heard my earlier answer. New section 14(b) in clause 5 is being put in the legislation because it reflects the simple reality that many New Zealanders actually do send their child to early childhood education so that they can go to work. I mean, if the member seriously doesn’t think that that’s what happens in New Zealand, I don’t know where he has been—certainly not listening to this debate. I won’t repeat myself again on that topic.

He then asked why we do not include teachers. Well, very simply, this is about children. This is about getting outcomes for children. I know that there will be people who want the service provider to be put at the centre of the policy, but it’s not—we’re doing this for children, and we have no intention of supporting the member’s amendment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to pick up on a point that the Associate Minister of Education raised there about new section 14(b) in clause 5, and the kind of unusual answer that he gave, where he said that he was not willing to repeat himself. Well, I wouldn’t want him to repeat himself, either, because that would be very tiresome to listen to.

But my question that I would like to put to the Minister is that throughout the regulatory impact statement, there has been constant referral to the lack of consultation. There’s been constant referral to the possibility of being opened up to future litigation, which we will probably ask questions about, a little bit further on, but I just don’t see the need. The Minister said before that parents and people know that early childhood education (ECE) is an educational service, but it’s also known that parents use it when they are in the workforce. They use ECE services and send their children to ECE services when in the workforce, and so if that was something that everybody already knew, why is it so important to make it a specific purpose—

Carl Bates: To remind you.

Hon JO LUXTON: —in the Act? Maybe you could take a call—oh no, maybe not, because I don’t think you’d have anything worth listening to. But perhaps you could explain then, if it was well-known, why there is a specific need—

Carl Bates: I think the Chair is worth listening to.

Hon JO LUXTON: I’m asking the Minister, Mr Bates, not you, and so please be quiet. I can’t get my question to the Minister if he can’t hear through your barracking. I’ll go back. My question to the Minister with regard to new section 14(b) is: if everybody knows that that’s what was happening and occurring in ECE, then why feel the need to make a specific purpose for this piece of legislation?

Also, given the lack of consultation out there—I noticed that there was some consultation undertaken as part of a review, but not direct consultation with regard to this piece of legislation, particularly with teachers and parents. That is concerning and we will have more questions around that a bit further on. I also wanted to know why there was the need to take the wording about supporting health and safety out of the purpose section and put it into an objectives section when that doesn’t really specify how to go about protecting health and safety.

I see some of this as being extremely unnecessary. Having come from the sector myself and having been a teacher, and also having been a centre owner, these things were never an issue, and so I don’t understand why the Minister feels the need to specifically tease these out and add these really unusual purposes in. It would be really great to be able to understand the Minister’s thinking there.

In relation to the first question about why, in clause 5, we are putting the requirement in new section 14(b) in statute, well, the whole purpose of this exercise is to put into law the rights and responsibilities of the regulator and, therefore, also the rights and responsibilities of the regulated into law. That’s the whole purpose of doing this, which I explained in my opening remarks, and I’m not sure if that member heard them.

Then the question was: has there been enough consultation? Well, actually, this is a process that began in June 2024. Eighteen months ago, the Ministry for Regulation began consulting literally thousands of teachers, centre owners, and parents about their desires for the regulation of early childhood education, and this bill puts into place the recommendations that Cabinet agreed after that consultation process. There’s probably never been more consultation on a bill of this length to make improvements to regulations, and so, no, I’m very comfortable and the Government is very comfortable with the amount of consultation that’s occurred.

Thank you, Madam Chair. OK, those are very useful questions, and I thank the Minister for his explanation of new section 14(b). As you can see, this is something that my colleagues on this side of the Chamber and submitters have been quite interested in, and it is useful for us to clarify what this means.

My first question, then, in this part is on the difference around the provision wording in the original section in the Education and Training Act, and then the words “to provide for”, which the Minister has chosen. The difference there seems to me to be that provision across locations is not something which is either—geographic locations or for certain communities or to make sure that there is a choice for parents isn’t something which is included as a purpose in this part, and I’d like the Minister to clarify that. On the old reading—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Can you please clarify which part you’re speaking to.

ARENA WILLIAMS: Sorry, I’m talking to clause 5, which creates new section 14, which is entitled “Purpose of Part 2”—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Thank you.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —and under subsection (a) here, we have the words “set and implement minimum standards to provide for”. That is a formulation of that word “provide”, which means that the regulator is regulating for the regulated to provide services to a set of minimum standards.

Under the old formulation, which uses the word “provision”, the settings there are around ensuring that the provision meets the needs of parents. The difference there is that as electorate MPs, we know that many of us do not have enough early childhood education centres for children locally to go to. It’s not clear whether that’s a problem in some communities, because many parents drive their children from one area to another—so from, say, Manurewa to central Auckland—because they are working parents, and so that’s fine and we don’t need to solve that problem and that situation. But we don’t know that, because the standards aren’t set in such a way that it would be clear that that was a policy problem that needed to be solved.

Under the old provision, though, there was still a reason and a purpose for the regulator to make sure that that problem to be solved was a problem that could be solved. Under the current provision, the formulation “set and implement minimum standards to provide for” is about providing minimum standards for those providers of education, in whatever location they happen to be in, to meet the standards that are required of them. That’s fine if you want to take that approach, but it is a change, because there is a policy problem when parents can’t access these services that they need in the locality in which they need them. The question, then, of the Minister is whether that is deliberate, or are you meant to read that “to provide for quality early childhood” as if there is still a requirement that, somewhere, someone—either the Secretary of Education or the Director of Regulation—knows that there is a policy problem there to be solved around provision, be it equitable provision or otherwise just simply geographic provision, and is there a mechanism by which to solve that that is enabled by this, probably under new section 14(a), that I’m not seeing?

My second question in this part is around what these services that, as the Minister has explained, support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market look like, because these services, under the old formulation, probably didn’t exist. They were probably down at an end of the market that we didn’t have under the old formulation. Here’s my guess: they are probably less expensive, they are probably less intensive, and they are probably less focused, perhaps, on educational outcomes.

There are a range of services for the care of children which are outside of the education system at the moment now, but they are designed for older children—like the Out of School Care and Recreation programmes, or like babysitting, which my colleagues have discussed. Is this a new sort of service which will exist under this new formulation in new section 14 which the Minister envisions here, where they are primarily about the labour market participation of the parents, and, if so, are they meeting that need and not meeting the needs for the educational wellbeing of the children—what does that service look like? What should New Zealanders expect to see, or is there no new service and this is simply recognising currently that this sort of provision of day-care services is also meeting that need? That would be a helpful clarification.

Just two further quick points, and, actually, I’ll have to raise this with the Minister later, but it is about grandparents. There are 10,000 grandparents in New Zealand—as was advocated by Seniors New Zealand—who undertake the parental care of their grandchildren. They are constantly invisibilised in our regulations and our primary legislation, and they should be recognised in this new section 14.

Grandparents can be caregivers for the purposes of this Act. There is not any type of new service envisaged that we are putting in place. The purpose with which the Director of Regulation will regulate—there’s not any suggestion anywhere here that a new type of service is being created. The member Arena Williams seems to ask why the legislation doesn’t seek to require the supply of early childhood education (ECE). To start an ECE centre requires initiative, and, by definition, you can’t force someone to take an initiative, and so we’re not seeking to mandate that people open early childhood education centres.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one last call on clause 5, from me, anyway, before I move on to the latest section. I appreciate the Associate Minister of Education’s response to my earlier question.

Now, when it comes to the purpose of Part 2, I wanted to check this. One of the barriers, currently, for parents—and I understand that the Minister has clarified that the purpose is to support the choice of parents and caregivers to participate in the labour market. But one of the challenges we’re currently seeing in early childhood education (ECE) is that even though parents are participating in the labour market, ECE providers are actually too expensive for parents to be able to afford that, and I think that that is a really important part if that is going to be a purpose of what the Minister is proposing. So I wanted to check with the Minister in terms of my amendment to this, which would include a new purpose, which is to ensure that we have a well-resourced public early childhood education system.

Early childhood education should be a part of the public system, like schools, and the purpose should reflect that, and I think that that would go hand in hand with what the Minister is proposing under new section 14(b) in clause 5 in terms of parents participating in the labour market, because the parents are, I guess, more encouraged to do that if they are able to have free or cheaper ECE services, but at this stage, that’s simply not the case in terms of the costs. Therefore—to focus on the parents—why would they use an ECE service and enter the labour market if they’re actually going to be worse off overall than if they hadn’t done that in the first place? That’s one of my amendments that I would like the Minister to consider.

Now, on to new section 14A in clause 5, I have a number of amendments around this as well. The first one—and I think that the Minister kind of touched on that—is that under new section 14A(a), when you’re looking at protecting “the health, safety, and well-being of children receiving early childhood education;”, I think it’s important to give a specific example here, and I want to engage with the Minister on whether he would consider my amendment, which would be to include having an adequate teacher-student ratio. Probably one of the most important things that the sector is asking for is to have a sufficient student-teacher ratio, which would align with protecting the health, safety, and wellbeing of the children. We are seeing at this stage that for certain providers, the ratio is stretched to the point that the teacher cannot even take their legally entitled leave, because the minute they take leave such as a lunch break, etc., the ECE centre will break ratio, which is not going to be good for the health, safety, and wellbeing of the child. Like the Minister has said, that’s probably the most important focus that we have here: the health, safety, and wellbeing of the child.

Now, moving along in terms of some of my other amendments, I want to engage with the Minister on improving educational and developmental outcomes, which is paragraph (b) of new section 14A, “Objectives”. I think that education and development outcomes are really, really, important, but one thing that potentially isn’t covered in that—unless the Minister is able to clarify whether it falls under “developmental”—is emotional outcomes, and I ask whether that is something that we are going to be seeing as a part of the objectives, because, again, we’re seeing an increasing number of students with higher needs, both in terms of entering into ECE but also in terms of entering into primary school. That’s an ongoing trend, and I ask whether that is something that the Minister would consider.

Finally, one of my other amendments would add another objective to new section 14A, and I think that this objective reflects two objectives. One of them is around our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and also, if we are looking at taking on something like this—akin to what we’re seeing in terms of section 127 of the Education and Training Act in terms of board objectives, but maybe for ECE—it is also looking at ensuring that early childhood education gives effect to the relevant student rights set out in the Act but also the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act. That’s my final amendment that I want to check with the Minister on.

There was a lot of, frankly, indecipherable speech there. What I did get out of it was that in new section 14A(b), should we add emotional outcomes? Well, actually it’s hard to imagine how to—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Point of order, Madam Chairperson. I just want to seek your clarification and guidance on something. We are hearing these patronising little jabs from the Minister. I want to just check with you: does that mean that it’s open slather for everyone to start their speech with—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): That’s not a point of order. Holding the committee of the whole House in order is the role of the Chair, and I will rule if there is unparliamentary language. I was listening.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Madam Chair, and that’s probably a good example of why there should be more emotional development in early childhood education. But it’s clear that developmental outcomes include emotional development, and the Government has no intention of adding the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan’s amendment.

There was a question of whether the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Treaty of Waitangi should be added to new section 14A, “Objectives”. I think that for people watching this at home, you’d just have to ask yourself—if you’re running an early childhood centre, you’re focused on the quality of the education, the safety of the children, and the information provided to the parents. There’s an unreality about the suggestions that maybe they should also be asking about the Treaty of Waitangi and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and it’s exactly the kind of reason why I recall—and, in many ways, it’s the genesis of this bill being here—seeing 500 early childhood operators absolutely steaming before the 2023 election. They were furious at the rubbish that they’d been subjected to, and not a single member of the then Government fronted, which really astonished me.

We are getting rid of the extraneous stuff. We’re putting in law the true purposes of regulating early childhood education so that those people can tap on the sign and have explained to them why it is that we regulate early childhood education, and it is so that all of us can get on better and have more effective services for the youngest New Zealanders. It’s as simple as that.

Members, it’s time for me to leave the Chair for the lunch break. The committee is suspended and will resume after question time.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 1.02 p.m. to 2 p.m.