We need to nationalise ECE

Seymour changing who decides how much ECE teachers can be paid

The Associate Education Minister is changing who decides how much new Early Childcare Education (ECE) teachers can be paid, leaving it up to individual centres to determine their starting salary – rather than be set by the government according to the pay parity scheme with primary school teachers.

David Seymour says it will help ECE centres stay “viable” and not pass on costs to parents.

The education union says the change scraps pay parity rates for new teachers, undermining the scheme which took decades to secure. The Greens are concerned it will drive down wages and Labour says it means new ECE teachers will be at the “whim of their employers”.

This is being done to help out the few mega providers who are milking the system and generating an oligopoly.

Which is exactly what ACT does.

Let’s be very clear, the ECE changes are really just more culture war spite from ACT…

…making acknowledgment of Māori as Tangata Whenua optional is a culture war revenge fantasy, not cost saving.

70% of Māori are under 40, there is a huge Māori demographic bubble moving through our child and youth infrastructure, that’s why you recognise Māori as Tangata Whenua!

Removing immunisation data is a sop to the Christian fanatics and ant-vaxxers that ACT rely upon for support.

‘Flexibility’ for Māori and Pacifica means allowing white organisations to service those communities.

These culture war talking points are alongside a naked attempt to provide vast corporate welfare to private ECE providers at the expense of your kids!

If you think ACTs deregulation of Early Childhood Education is about making ECE cheaper or better, you are really, really, really fucking stupid.

Here are the lies:

Childcare sector overhaul gets green light

Ministers have given the green light to slash regulations for the Early Childhood Education (ECE) sector to encourage more investment, increase competition and simplify rules for operators.

“The implementation of the recommendations represents a major shake-up of the sector’s outdated system. It is a great result for children, parents and ECE service providers,” Minister of Regulation David Seymour said on Wednesday.

“By the end of next year ECE providers will be governed by a regulatory system which ensures regulations are focused on what matters, child safety.”

Here is the truth:

The ECE market is held hostage via a few massive corporations, these changes will be to benefit them, not you, you muppets!

Subsidise parents for childcare, not corporate shareholders

New Zealand’s early childhood education market has become increasingly corporatised in recent years. Since the 20 hours funding was implemented in 2007, the number of privatised ECE services has ballooned, while community-owned centres are dropping. Despite the quality of care among corporate services being demonstrably worse than in community-owned centres – for decades a documented fact in New Zealand and internationally – successive governments on both sides of the house continue to pour funding into this sector in an attempt to reduce costs for parents.

When the 20 hours’ ‘free’ funding for three and four-year-olds was implemented in 2007, the intention was to reduce ECE costs for families. That soon became a ‘subsidy’ rather than free hours for families. Some centres required longer hours of participation and charged higher fees for those extra hours, and others applied fees to the ‘subsidised’ hours. The profit motive became very apparent and was noted by Ministry of Education staff at the time. The Business Herald wrote about ECE as a smart investment opportunity because of high child participation rates, secure and reliable government funding and population growth. It is clear the funding hasn’t worked as it should have.

During Covid, services could claim ECE funding subsidy across all alert levels and the government wage subsidy if they met the criteria for loss of expected income and faced laying off staff or reducing hours. Overall, 72 percent of ECE managers applied for the government wage subsidy, and of these most (90 percent) said they paid the subsidy to all staff. None of the kindergarten managers applied for the wage subsidy, but 77 percent of education and care managers and 75 percent of home-based managers did.

The Wright Family Foundation, for example, which runs BestStart and has 260 centres around New Zealand, claimed more in subsidies ($26.9m) than SkyCity, The Warehouse and Fisher & Paykel Appliances combined. Some service providers illegally tried to force staff to take annual leave during lockdowns. But smaller owner-operated or community-owned centres had to ask parents to contribute in order to pay staff. 

…remember, National lied to you about the FamilyBoost payment that was supposed to help pay for childcare…

FamilyBoost: Govt overestimated flagship childcare rebate policy, Finance Minister admits IRD got it wrong

The Government admits the number of families it said would be eligible for the full $75 a week benefit of its flagship childcare tax policy was wrong.

The admission comes as new data shows that as of April 9, some 249 families had received the maximum amount available under the FamilyBoost scheme since it came into effect last year.

This is 1.2% of the 21,000 families the Government said were eligible for the full FamilyBoost payment of $975 a quarter or $3900 a year – a figure IRD now admits was wrong, although the actual number of eligible families remains unclear.

…THEY LIED TO YOU CLOWNS, and you think they will help you now?

Seriously Kiwi – how stupid is you?

Here is what is going to actually happen:

What will actually happen is the corporate behemoths will be able to cut costs and your kids will be looked after by people who are unqualified, it won’t save you one single cent while empowering corporations to squeeze costs.

You will be blinded by bullshit and ACT will gerrymander the entire industry.

Here is what should actually happen:

What should ACTUALLY happen is the Government should nationalise ECE and make it free so working Mums and Dads can drop their kids off to ECE and allow them to work and keep that money instead of paying for child care!

Working Mums and Dads are getting fucked over every single day by ECE fees that bleed them dry and bureaucratic FamilyBoost payments that are too complex for most to obtain and use, not to mention the clawbacks triggered by such low tax thresholds..

Why are you all such slaves to giving corporations better deals than the Government will give you?

Why do you worship Corporate profit margins at the expense of your own well being?

Why are you allowing right wing Governments that mean you harm to radically re-shape ECE for the well being of the Corporations and not your children?

How much did y’all hate Jacinda for this to be acceptable you stupid sleepy hobbits?

The Corporations are laughing, and you are still paying.

Kiwis should stand on their feet, not kneel to corporations.

The State empowers and provides for us all, the corporation is a free market mutation whose venal interest is to profitize every human interaction for their own benefit while masquerading as your interest.

Get off your knees Kiwi, you are no one’s servant!

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