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Tuesday, August 6, 2024

David Farrar: Mindless opposition


David Seymour points out:

Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet.

“Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led to urgent calls from the sector to conduct a review. The review is currently underway and taking public submissions.

“Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have united with the unions to vow to stop any changes, no matter what they are. They are essentially saying they want to stop the Government from making it easier and cheaper for parents to access childcare.

Submissions have not even closed on the review. After they you do a summary of submissions and then draft proposals which you consult on. But the unions and their proxies have decided that they are against any change, no matter what it is.

This is predictable because the reality is the unions hate the early childhood sector because they don’t control it, and it has private providers. Their worst nightmare is that one days parents will say “Hey I got to choose from 10 local ECEs for my pre-school, so why I don’t get any choice for my school”. They also hate that providers can set up anywhere they like, rather than where the Government dictates.

Their ultimate aim is to turn ECE into the school sector – you get no choice, and no flexibility.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It wouldn't matter if it was just the opposition parties and unions, as thet all complain about everything anyway. The problem is that RNZ, TVNZ, Stuff and the rest of the mainstream "media" are united in inventing non-existent problems as well.

Gaynor said...

I don't like pre-schools in NZ because they may not be controlled by unions but they still have the same progressive ideology which means child centered education. Well actually they do stuff all educating . It is just free play. Child centered ideology means the child decides what they want to do. There is little discipline and little correction of bad behaviour or learning self control. In Finnish preschools children are taught some academic skills like the alphabet , counting, and printing. Most children can read by the time they go to school and do some elementary arithmetic. But not here it is all play ,play play.. I think children should have play but learning some skills are also indistinguishable to play for a preschooler.