Beaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16804. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):If we are talking about preaching let us just get on the record that across the House sits the party that got rid of apprenticeships from our country and that led to us having massive skill shortages in trades and technical areas. So when that member Colin King says that the Labour members should not be lecturing National I think that that is something well worth remembering. We have struggled to actually bridge that gap—the gap that was caused by the lack of investment in skills and apprenticeships by a former National Government.This bill the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill in my mind is a real lost opportunity. This could have been an opportunity to actually get some consensus and to get an agreed position on something that is vitally important to our economy and that is industry training and apprenticeships. This is an area that—like my colleagues who have spoken tonight Grant Robertson and Dr Megan Woods—I feel passionately about. This is an area that I have done a lot of work in and I know how much difference this makes for individuals for families for workplaces and for our economy.The bill was an opportunity. We supported it in the first reading to go to the Education and Science Committee. We wanted to see what was possible to achieve jointly on this issue because we do actually accept that there were things that needed to be improved and we acknowledge that there have been some improvements in recent years in terms of industry training. This bill could have been something that was shared and agreed across this House but we will be opposing this bill now.I am going to talk as others have about the two main reasons. That lack of consensus that missed opportunity has big consequences for our economy because we still have major gaps. We have many many New Zealand - qualified tradespeople and technicians living in Australia. We have the absolute obscenity that we do not have enough people in the construction industry to rebuild Christchurch. We have to have numerous immigrant workers coming into this country because we failed to step up and do something to ensure that we had people to do the construction work in Christchurch. When Labour is elected and when we start our KiwiBuild programme we will find that we will not have enough people in construction as well because we will be picking up from this Government which has failed to ensure that it plans ahead. That is part of what this is about.The two main areas that we are concerned about include the fact that the Government does not seem to think that it has any role in any forward planning in any area—no strategic analysis of what is needed—and that it is somehow miraculously going to fall out of the sky. Miraculously we are going to know the number of carpenters builders plumbers fitters and all of those other trades groups that we are going to need. It is just going to miraculously happen by the invisible hand. Well it does not. It requires a strategic approach. When National was elected there was a skills strategy in place that had been developed by business by unions by Government agencies and by industry training organisations working together. One of the Government’s very first acts was to throw that skills strategy right out the window.Going back to this bill the two main reasons we are opposing it are first and foremost the privatisation by stealth through allowing organisations other than industry training organisations to be funded directly by the Government to organise and undertake industry training. The second reason is the removal of the skills leadership function of industry training organisations.If we look at the first of those reasons in the very early days of industry training organisations I was involved with the board of an industry training organisation. At that time it was only major companies that were involved. Most of the funding actually went to those major companies. I can see that that is precisely the route we are likely to go back to if we go down this line. As Grant Robertson mentioned small businesses are the big losers in this. If industry training becomes something that individual companies can get funding from in order to do the training that they want for their own particular workforce and their own particular needs that has the risk firstly that the trainees do not get a qualification that is recognised elsewhere is portable and is complete—they might get bits of qualifications—and secondly that in fact many employers will miss out as well. These are small employers which as we know are a vital part of our economy.That is something that is deeply troubling to us—that particular ideological drive about sitting down and saying: “Oh well we can’t have this money just going to industry training organisations. We’re going to have to let our mates in the big end of town actually access this money as part of what the Government is doing here.” This is despite the fact that actually the submitters—except for one which seemed to be as Grant Robertson has already outlined somewhat nervous about its support. But apart from Business New Zealand every other submitter opposed what was happening here: the de facto privatisation of industry training.I just really want to reinforce the importance to our economy of having skills that are transferable. It is so that we can have some confidence that we have people who are qualified to do a complete role rather than having particular employers accessing money to train to their own particular specifications.Actually they have a responsibility. Industry training was never about saying that the Government will provide all of the money for all of the training that employers should do. That is ridiculous. The company-specific training was always meant to be something that an individual business took up and all of the research shows that that is sensible business practice anyway because the returns from investing in training are really high—research report after research report. We could go out there and we could ask employers directly. There is no question that one of the things that has the biggest impact on lifting productivity is investing in training. So businesses do need to do that and they actually get an immediate benefit from doing so.The second reason for our opposition is around the skills leadership part—this is the planning bit. There seems to be an almost pathological fear of planning on the other side of the House. It is kind of like those members saying: “You know if we just leave it up to individual businesses or individual people it will all work out in the end.” but actually we need to be analysing where we need people; where we predict that we will need people in 3 years 5 years or 7 years; what the health workforce looks like at the moment; where we will need people in the future; and what the construction industry looks like.If we have a manufacturing industry left in this country after the economic sabotage from across the House the manufacturing industry will absolutely need skilled technical people—tradespeople. If we want to have good-quality jobs for people who may not want to go down the academic route but whom we need to play an important role in our economy and if we want well-trained people providing the sorts of skills we need in manufacturing construction and infrastructure then we need to plan for it. It does not just magically happen.That skills leadership function is an opportunity for those employers collectively in an industry alongside the unions in those industries and alongside some of the relevant Government agencies to sit down and work those things out and to look at what is needed based on their own knowledge and experience. I think it is just unbelievable that the Government would dispose of that in this bill. It does not make any sense.Finally I want to go a point that David Clendon touched on which was the issue of priority groups for industry training. Something that I personally have been quite vocal about is the appalling lack of numbers of women in many of the areas where industry training is in place. This bill was an opportunity potentially to have a look at that as well. But when you look at the numbers and you look at things like trainees in building construction 1 percent are women in joinery it is 6 percent in electricity supply it is 7 percent in the motor industry it is 3 percent and in infrastructure it is 6 percent. This is just appalling. Women are obviously missing out on the opportunity to get into some areas that may well best suit their interest that may well provide them with the best kind of job for their skills and that our economy needs. So I think that that is another failure of this bill—to not add women to that list of priority groups. Thank you.