Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Today's announcement does two things. First, and most immediately, from 1 July it increases the funding rates for education and care services to ensure that the next increase for kindergarten teacher pay, which kicks in this year, will flow through to education and care services. The second thing that it does is introduce new, higher rates of funding from 1 January 2022 for the services that agree to pay their teachers up to the equivalent of step 6 on the kindergarten teacher salary scale, meaning a teacher in early learning and care services that has six years worth of experience should be being paid step 6 on the kindergarten teachers' salary scale. That's a significant change, and it could see some early learning teachers get pay increases of up to 17 percent. 