SpeechDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Speaker for this opportunity. I'm taking this call to oppose this bill the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill. This is a bad bill and that's the reason why we're opposing this bill. This bill is going to do a lot of damage. The member who was speaking before me Jo Luxton said that they didn't hear what our plan was so I just want to make it very clear that our plan is to reverse the changes that this bill will make—to reverse the damage that this bill will do because we know that there is going to be a huge amount of damage done to our regions. There will be a huge amount of damage done to a lot of jobs that these polytechs provide. And of course we heard about how they give so much importance to regions. Yeah for me it's quite a mixed message because on one side they have this big funding that is allocated to the Hon Shane Jones to support regions but then this bill shows the reality. So that big funding to the New Zealand First Party we fully understand because Labour is stuck in the middle—that's in between the New Zealand First Party and the Green Party. So they have to look after the New Zealand First Party they have to look after the Green Party so that Budget is just to make them look good. But this is the reality of the Labour Party: they don't care about regions. In so many other areas we are wanting to give control to our communities but in this legislation we are going in the opposite direction. What is interesting in this is that Treasury the Tertiary Education Commission and the industry have been quite vocal that this is not going to deliver what the Minister of Education believes it is going to. Still the Minister looks quite determined to go ahead with the changes that the Minister wants to make. So in the select committee process I really hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to sincerely listen to what submitters will say. And I hope that all these people those who have been against this will come to the select committee process to submit because I don't want them to feel that they have already done their job and the Minister has not bothered to listen to them so there is no point coming to the select committee process. So I would really like to get this message out to people that are directly affected with this legislation to come and speak to the select committee as well. If we look at our education industry it's a very interesting and attractive education industry because we offer some courses which are quite unique and we know that education supports our export economy. We should be exporting it like so many other developed countries but for some reason this Government has sent such a wrong message that polytechs have been suffering. We know that that is one of the causes. We know that is one of the causes so the Minister instead of addressing those root causes is trying to look like he's doing something so he came up with this idea of doing a merger. So the Minister—this Government themselves they created this problem. They created the suffering for polytechnics and now they want to look like they are doing something.So as we have seen in so many media reports—I could have actually brought a big pile of media reports. This is from Wintec. It says Wintec battles student visa delays." And it says this: "Delays in processing student visas could cost the tertiary education sector millions of dollars a polytech boss says." Then there is another headline which says "Student visa delays financially impacting tertiary institutions." It says "A tertiary institute is describing visa delays for hundreds of prospective international students as a crisis."—as a crisis. That is why because of this these polytechnics—as I said this is one of the reasons why polytechnics have been suffering. And another headline says "Polytechs claims $70m in losses over visa delays". These are our local news headlines but when we look at some overseas headlines this headline says "Study visa troubles in New Zealand." So actually this kind of headline in overseas media sends out a very wrong signal from New Zealand because as soon as people see this they won't be interested in even applying to come here to study. It's really important that we keep giving out that positive message about our education industry and about New Zealand being welcoming. We know that the New Zealand First Party doesn't like immigrants they don't like foreign students so I can clearly see why this Government the Labour Party has decided to come up with this legislation instead of resolving one of the problems that is causing that big suffering to polytechs. So polytechs know what is needed at the regional level. They should be able to provide that training. They should be able to run that; not the central government here. So we do not support this legislation. Thank you."