Clark David: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):Very kind Mr Chair. Thank you for the call. Of course we should reiterate that Labour opposes the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill. A lot of the reasons come down to the fact that this is privatisation by stealth effectively of the sector. It undermines the quality assurance that we have become used to. It undermines the industry training organisations’ restructure which is being bedded in. To my mind Part 2 really does get to that issue when it comes down to the annual registration fee and the prescribing of quality assurance requirements. This is the nuts and bolts this is where rubber hits road and this is where we ask what the value-add of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is where we ask whether the regulatory oversight is adequate for industry training.Let us ask ourselves what would happen if there was no fee. What would happen if there was no quality assurance in the sector? I think what we all know is that that would not be a desirable situation for New Zealand. We already witness a lack of workforce training. We see it in Christchurch where there is a real skills shortage for an urgently needed rebuild—a lost opportunity. We see it in many places around New Zealand. I myself think of Dunedin where we know that only 45 percent of the nurses who trained last year were in positions where they could further train and get their practical skills training because the Government did not have in place a channel for them to carry on in their studies. They did not have work placement. That tells you that this Government has not got a priority on proper workforce training with pathways into the workforce. Likewise with medical students—280 medical students trained for 100 places we are told. There are some real pipeline issues and they are not being looked out for by this Government. It is kind of letting everyone sign up and the market decide at the end.Well that is not working because young New Zealanders are following their passions and they do not always have the necessary information to make a decision about what the future workforce needs are. It is a role of the Government to assist with that process to make sure that New Zealanders are training for the future benefit of this country. That also means that they are then appropriately trained to make the most of their skills so they earn a decent living to better their own lives and the lives of those around them. Here in this bill we have the assurance that there will be a fee charged and we have the assurance that there will be some level of industry oversight but we need to ask whether that is adequate.We on this side of the Chamber contend that this move that is going ahead really is not adequate. It is not forward-looking enough. We have seen it in the track record of the Government with the drop in the number of Modern Apprentices over the last 5 years and the 37 percent drop in the number of industry trainees. Can you have any vision for a better education sector and for a better future for New Zealand and can you have the kind of opportunity for all New Zealanders that Labour would want if you do not have a proper industry training organisations sector? This bill unfortunately is a step backwards because what it does is remove the skills leadership function from the purpose of the industry training organisations. Without that skill leadership function without that oversight nobody really is looking at the bigger picture.Labour is committed to ensuring that New Zealand does have the skilled workforce it needs and we are committed to making sure that the shortage of skilled tradespeople in New Zealand is addressed and that means investing in apprenticeships and industry training. That means making sure that this annual registration fee is going the right way as the funding that comes out of the sector to support quality assurance and support appropriate workforce training—that it is directed in the right area.The question I posed at the beginning of my contribution was: what if there was no fee? What if there was no quality assurance? This is the track that we seem to be heading down and that is the concern that I have. I am concerned that if we do not have proper oversight and if we do not have a skills leadership function we will end up in a situation where we have loads and loads and loads of some professions that are more accessible and of which we already have too many. We know for example that in New Zealand we train far too many hairdressers. We need hairdressers. Hairdressers are good people. I do not need a hairdresser—Grant Robertson: Some of us do.Dr DAVID CLARK: —but many people do. But we need only so many hairdressers and there has got to be skills leadership around choosing just which people we need.