McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Chair. You must have known that I was going to speak about an entity that is very close to where you live. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill in the committee of the whole House.It's an unusual place for me to be because education is not something that I've specialised in in my time and didn't in my time at school either but none the less I have been the beneficiary of many people who have had the benefit of spending some time at the Universal College of Learning (UCOL) and moving on often to greater things as a result of that.So I want to speak in support of the Supplementary Order Paper in my name 442 which effectively excludes UCOL from the parameters of this bill. But in doing so I want to raise a few issues that I think are so important when it comes to talking about entities in our communities that are different and specialise in their regional and local entity and the place that they come from. In UCOL's case it was formed in 1902 so it's been around for very close to 120 years—118 years to be exact. That's a pretty amazing performance. So you have to think that when we're thinking of making dramatic changes to an entity that's been around that long there's got to be a very good reason for doing so. I want to enlarge a little bit on that in due course.But UCOL also has branches in Whanganui and Wairarapa and Horowhenua. As you well know yourself the Whanganui one is a very valuable asset to that community. I'm sure that Harete Hipango might speak on that a little later. But I wanted to emphasise the Whanganui thing for a couple of reasons really and one is to emphasise the specialist nature of regional entities. In Whanganui's case—and you might think is a little odd—they had a course in glass-blowing for many years at the Whanganui branch of UCOL. Interestingly there's a very big business in Whanganui founded on the basis of the training that came out of that.There are also businesses in Shannon and in Ōtaki very close to where I come from that have been founded on the basis or on the back of effectively the courses that were provided in Whanganui to specialise in something that was particular to the local area. There are many other examples of that but I want to use another example and it relates to Taumarunui. It really also I think emphasises the fear that I have about the centralisation of anything actually in New Zealand because I don't think that—having been an amalgamation proponent myself of many things in my younger days as you get older you realise it's not the answer to everything.I want to just talk about Taumarunui for a moment because UCOL provides courses into Taumarunui which specialise in training young people in the building industry. That course has trained at least five different batches of young people—or it would be more than that—who have gone through the course in Taumarunui. In the beginning of the Christchurch rebuild they then went on to Christchurch and got jobs very quickly. They would have struggled to get jobs had it not been for that training. That was specialist training provided by a regional provider on the back of demands from a local community.Ironically at the other end of Taumarunui provided by Unitec is a course in catering. Catering of course is hugely important to the central North Island which relies very heavily on the tourist industry and again struggles to get people to work in that sector.So the provision of those courses by either UCOL or Unitec in Taumarunui's case is hugely valuable to local areas. Without the local input into those sort of things I don't think we would ever get them put together. So it's very strong the community need for this. I think it's very important that we have a local input into this.In my experience of centralised organisations they struggle to grasp or comprehend the need that small regional and provincial communities have. So I'm very strongly opposed to the parameters of this bill. I know that UCOL has been in a number of positions on this bill in recent times but none the less I think at the end of the day we need to make sure that we provide something that works locally something that's effective and efficient for our local community and provides particularly for the young people in our communities but also gives those people in need of retraining an opportunity to do it easily and close to home. Centralising any of this stuff does not achieve that. Thank you.