King Colin: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
King Colin: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
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COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak in the first reading debate on the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). I will start with some thoughts about what the tertiary education strategy says. The strategy calls for an ongoing improvement in the educational and financial performance of tertiary education providers. It also says that during tight fiscal times tertiary education organisations need to improve their efficiency and performance. That is probably a very appropriate theme because when we compare the previous administration with the Government of today we see in particular in respect of the health portfolio that billions of dollars were thrown at health with no noticeable improvement in outcomes. It was exactly the same case in regard to tertiary education. Enormous amounts of money were thrown at tertiary education with no real noticeable improvements in outcomes. 
This bill is very appropriate at this time because it is the first occasion that we are making amendments in respect of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority which was set up in 1990. We are talking about an authority that was set up 21 years ago. Although it was cutting edge at that time it needs modification. When we look at that authority we see that it had over 6000 qualifications and on that basis it was essential that we went through those qualifications in order to rationalise them. The Minister for Tertiary Education has begun that job and an outcome of it all will be a much improved more appropriate in tune New Zealand Qualifications Authority. 
The Minister talked about reporting this bill back to the House on or by 29 July so that gives us only 3 months. The select committee will need to be very adept at hearing the submissions and working collegially on the Minister’s vision for tertiary education. Many speakers tonight have talked about tertiary education and I am sure they were not intending to talk about tertiary education in a context of its own. Education definitely needs to be a continuum and when we hear about and lament the people who find themselves unemployed at the moment it really does drive home how important it is that education has that continuum and that our children learn to read and write and become independent learners. 
One of the things that is very noticeable is the fact that unless secondary school students get up to level 2 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement they will more than likely fail when it comes to doing a national qualification at level 4 independently. There is a lot of very very positive stuff in this bill. It has been a long time coming. A lot of thought has been put into it and I certainly see some good outcomes coming from this work. 
I want to pick up on a comment that was made about the industry training organisations and $55 million being stripped out of them. I tell members that $55 million was put into universities to create more opportunities at a higher level. We were aware that some of our industry training organisations had up to $20 million in surpluses so it is about using the taxpayer dollar more effectively. I understand why Labour will try to pick holes in things; it was in Government for 9 years and did nothing. I commend the bill to the House.