Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to rise and speak on this inquiry which was initiated by one of my colleagues the Hon Paul Goldsmith.This report highlights—and my colleagues have also emphasised it—this rise in chronic absenteeism: 70000 young people chronically absent from our schools. That's a huge number and when I think of it in context it's 50 percent more than the size of Invercargill City. It is a large number of young people that are not in school and it is quite frankly frightening.One of the things that I was pleased to see that came through in the report was the noting of barriers due to disability or neurodiversity. I'm very pleased that the report notes that this needs to be monitored in the context of learning support needs. That will be something that I'll be paying particular attention to.But I want to talk about those young people that don't particularly enjoy traditional success in our schools. I saw a lot of this in the vocational education sector. In fact I listened to the Hon Kelvin Davis talking about the things that excited some young people in schools and I thought he was reading out a very good description of charter schools which obviously offered some different experiences for those that don't necessarily achieve in the traditional school environment.My fear is that the young people that I was dealing with in the vocational education sector who weren't necessarily enjoying traditional success in the school environment are now not there at all. I saw the work that we had to do embedding numeracy and literacy in level 1 to level 4 vocational qualifications to try and bring those young people up to speed with their numeracy and literacy because many of those young people were the ones that went on to be our outstanding young trades people. They were young people who were really good at practical skills. They knew how to do and make and fix things and so they are a really important part of our society. My fear is that we won't have those young people coming through because they've gone from not enjoying school to actually not being there at all.I think we are in real danger of having depleted a pool of young people who would have been coming through to fill some of those trades roles in the future. I'm really concerned that this is a Government that has been characterised by having strategies and announcements but inaction. This is a problem that cannot have inaction. This is a problem that can't just have academic debate and working groups. It must have action or we are going to be providing a disservice to 70000 young people—70000 young people every year who are missing out on the basics of schooling. If you miss out on the basics of schooling those people are being abandoned and being led into a life of poverty a life of crime a life of being disenfranchised from society. And so we're setting up not only those individuals for a life of misery but our communities and our country is going to miss out on those thousands of young people who should be going forward and having meaningful careers and meaningful lives.This is a serious problem: 70000 young people not in school is a serious problem and we cannot afford inaction. We must see real solutions to solve this problem. We will be watching this Government very closely that they come up with solutions. Thank you Mr Speaker.