Beaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):Part 2 of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill is obviously a very small part of what is a very significant bill. As I added in my earlier contribution I believe this is a very significant bill and one that is a real lost opportunity one where we could have had real consensus about something as important as industry training and skills in our country which are vital to provide decent jobs and vital to ensure our economy works to its best capacity. In Part 2 we are looking specifically at amendments to the Education Act 1989. There are only three clauses there: clause 24 which actually states that “This Part amends the Education Act …”; and clause 25 which empowers the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to make rules “prescribing quality assurance requirements for industry training organisations”. That bit was actually amended following the work of the Education and Science Committee. The select committee amended clause 25 to introduce into section 253 of the Education Act the necessary authorisation for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to charge an annual fee to industry training organisations. That was important I think to cover the costs of issuing quality assurance improvement notices in addition to covering other costs. That change was recommended from the select committee work.Clause 26 amends section 254 of the Education Act to empower the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to charge fees for quality assurance activities undertaken in accordance with its function under the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Act 1992. The important thing here—and I was not a member of the select committee so I did not get to hear all of the submitters on this. But what I do understand is that the relationship between industry training organisations and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is important and none of us in this House I am sure would dispute the requirement for robustness and the requirement to ensure that we do have good quality. We want to have a very robust high-quality industry training system. In fact ironically the recent review has actually led to some good improvements—improvements that we acknowledge needed to be made.We do believe this bill overall particularly in allowing funding to non - industry training organisations namely large businesses to deliver industry training has the potential to undermine that good work and the robustness and the quality of our industry training system. But the relationship between industry training organisations and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is an important one as is quality assurance as is mentioned in this part.One of the things I would be interested in knowing and I am sure the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment would love to clarify this for me is how these provisions around quality assurance apply to the non - industry training organisations that will be providing industry training because as I have said this bill opens up industry training effectively privatising it so that individual businesses will be able to be funded to deliver so-called industry training. What I want to know—and it may already be clear to those who were on the select committee and if that is so please excuse me. If the Minister could take a call—because there has been an absence I have to say an absolute absence of Government members commenting on what is a very important bill—and please let me know how these quality assurance provisions will apply to non - industry training organisations providing industry training.The other thing I guess is whether they will be subject to the same fees if these provisions do apply. Will they be subject to the same fees that are flagged up in these clauses 24 to 26 here in Part 2? I am hoping the Minister will feel moved to get up and comment or perhaps a member opposite who was on the select committee might be able to answer my question for me. We are disappointed to be in the situation of opposing this bill. We had supported the bill to select committee because we did see there was an opportunity here to work on improving industry training which is so vital to our economy. There are such major skill gaps at the moment. We really did want to see an improvement in this space but unfortunately the Government in its wisdom has gone with two measures that are absolutely of fundamental concern to us: the privatising of industry training and the removal of the skills leadership role for industry training organisations.