Martin Tracey: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionMartin Tracey: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14375. Text is subject to correction.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill. I look forward as my learned colleague Colin King just said to discussing the bill with the right-minded level-headed people of the Education and Science Committee. If we go back to the bill and away from the political rhetoric for just a moment—actually before I do that I would have to say to Mr King that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Considering that Novopay was paid when its key performance indicators were not met I do not think the Government should actually be launching any rockets towards the Labour Party with regard to the Modern Apprenticeships scheme.The amendments in this bill are to implement the findings of the review. The general policy statement of the bill states: “The review found that changes were needed to ensure the industry training system which includes apprenticeship training—is well-connected to industry with high employer buy-in; and is educationally sound; and is coherent with the wider tertiary system; and delivers value for money for employers and the Government.” I want to note that that fourth bullet point makes no statement about value for money for the apprentice. I know that we have said that out loud but it is in the explanatory note and I think that will be one of the points I will be raising with the Education and Science Committee. There must be value for money for the apprentice.New Zealand First is very pleased to see that the first bullet point under the policy objectives is to “establish a comprehensive apprenticeship system that provides the same level of support to all apprentices regardless of age;”. New Zealand First has always been a strong supporter of lifelong learning. We actually mean that; we mean that you should be able to learn for the length of your life.I believe that Carol Beaumont brought our attention to the situation of women in today’s society. The ability of women to enter training or education perhaps in their 30s and 40s is of particular significance to women because like it or not we bear the children. More often than not it is us women who leave the workforce for a period of time in order to stay with those children. So to come back and to be able to access learning lifelong learning is a very important thing to us females.It also says here that the bill is about the focus of the industry training organisations on “setting skill standards for their industries and arranging training;” and to “clarify the functions and powers of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority …”. We are hopeful that this amendment means that we are actually going to minimise perhaps the number of qualifications that we are seeing out there. We are hoping that we are going to create a clearer standard around industry training certificates or qualifications so that the parents of students the parents and the future apprentices can be more confident that when they sign up to an apprenticeship they are getting high-value credits and a high-value qualification because at the end of the day apprentices also pay for that training. So we will be very keen to talk about that a bit further.As many have already mentioned the bill “requires ITOs to have particular regard to the needs of Māori and other priority population groups”. We will be very interested to discuss what that actually means. It is all very well to put these statements in bills and in legislation. It says that there must be particular regard given to the needs of Māori and other priority population groups “when developing and maintaining arrangements for the delivery of industry training.” My fellow colleagues on the Education and Science Committee will testify to the fact that I sometimes ask the questions that nobody else asks. One of them would be around this particular statement in this bill which is how a small engine apprenticeship would be delivered differently for Māori than for anybody else. That statement suggests that you actually need to have particular regard when developing and maintaining arrangements for the delivery of industry training. So that would be an interesting conversation that we would like to have. I think I would also like to extend that to how that would look different for women.We are concerned that statements like that take away from the good work that has been done around the vocational pathways by the Ministry of Education and this Government. It is going to be modified in some way. Anybody who requires an apprenticeship to create a sustainable vocational pathway is a priority to New Zealand First. So we would be looking forward to a conversation around that.We also have some concerns around the New Zealand Qualifications Authority which operates on a cost-recovery model. The bill allows the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to charge fees to industry training organisations for its new quality assurance activities. Will the businesses that are able to gain this funding also have to pay those fees? There is some concern we believe among the industry training organisations themselves and around this fine print around businesses being able to deliver these services and whether they will also have to pay the fees and meet the same standards. The conversation needs to take place.We have had some talks. New Zealand First talks quite a lot actually when I am talking to educational groups about widening the success criteria and we see this as part of that move towards widening the success criteria rather than this narrow sort of sausage machine that we are currently working with. So we are pleased to enter into this conversation. Throughout the history of our party which is close to 21 years we have always supported the training of New Zealanders and the fact that skills shortages should not be used as an excuse for mass immigration. This has been ignored largely for the 20 years that New Zealand First has been saying it. So it is nice to hear the Green Party actually vocalise that right now and I believe that other parties in the House are coming to the same conclusion. We cannot keep importing skills and letting our own people be unemployed. New Zealand First 100 percent supports the concept that New Zealanders should be trained before we start bringing in people from overseas.The construction industry has been mentioned a lot with regard to this bill but some of the other apprenticeship areas that are currently on the skills shortage list are bakers metalworkers plastic technicians upholsterers and winemakers. We would like to think that although we are doing this work around this bill the industry training organisations and the industry organisations are actually thinking about how we can improve how we can widen and how we can support in all those skills shortage areas not just in construction because construction seems as David Clendon said to get the greatest amount of attention at the moment. I understand that because Christchurch is on the books but we will live past Christchurch.We would also be very interested in the recognition of the fact—David Clendon and the Greens and New Zealand First again on this particular issue seem to have morethings in common than we have against—that if we are going to support people into apprenticeships there needs to be recognition of the loss of adult and community education in 2009 which severely hit the regional areas and the need to support apprentices with their paperwork. It needs to be part of this conversation to make sure that apprentices in rural and semi-rural areas are able to access this sort of training. The small to medium sized enterprises in the rural and semi-rural areas are businesses that have on average 1.5 to 2.5 employees. They need to be able to access this support. Stonemasons are actually on the skills shortage list. There is a stonemason out at Leigh who would take on an apprentice but actually margins have been cut so low that he needs to be able to access this support from this date to be able to take on apprentices. So we want to make sure that this is available to those in the rural and semi-rural areas even those semi-rural areas inside the super-city of Auckland. Those are the sorts of conversations that New Zealand First will be having at the Education and Science Committee so at this stage we will support the bill through its first reading.