Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the title and commencement of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill.I'd like to propose an alternative name for this bill rather than the one that it currently has because I don't believe it reflects the true nature of what this bill will do. The name that I would like to propose is the Education (Mega Polytechnic) Bill" because I believe that more accurately defines actually what this bill does. This bill will make one mega polytechnic for all of New Zealand. It will gut our regions of their regional polytechs. It will gut their assets. It will centralise them. And as has been said very clearly by prior speakers this is going against the nature of the coalition agreement which said that we would protect regional jobs. Well I guess the question that I have is: what's in the secret coalition agreement? Because there must be something in there.This bill grabs money from the regional polytechnics. We've heard the Eastern Institute of Technology has $30 million in cash reserves—money which they have built up over many years by prudent financial management which will be taken by this mega polytechnic and which will then be decided how it's spent by the mega polytechnic.We've heard of the resources which have been given by the community the land which has been gifted to help create these institutions for the training of people in those regions. That will be taken and given to the mega polytechnic for them to decide how it is to be spent and what's to be done with those assets and whether those assets should be rationalised.We also know that this change will take the power from the regions and centralise the power into a central organisation rather than allowing regions to be able to prioritise what they want to do in their local area.So I think the title which I'm proposing the mega polytechnic is a much better reflection of what this bill actually does because you look at all of the things which this bill does: what courses where and how they are made. At the moment it's the local polytechnic. They're the ones who are able to make those decisions. Now it's going to be part of the mega polytechnic.Academic freedom—the local polytech currently has academic freedom. That now gets brought and it's part of the mega polytechnics' responsibility without the full academic freedom rights being delegated down to any subsidiaries.Community involvement—currently decisions are made by local councils. All decisions are now going to be made centrally by the mega polytechnic at the head office.Cash reserves which are currently spent on local needs—the decision will be made by the mega polytechnic as to what those cash reserves will be spent on. Any capital projects—currently it's the local polytechnic which decides what capital projects are to be done. Any of the subsidiaries they will have to go cap in hand to ask whether they're allowed to do any of those decisions any of those capital works that they want. They'll have to ask whether it's within their delegated decision-making or if not they'll have to go cap in hand to the mega polytech to be able to make those decisions.In terms of who sits on those regional boards well we're going to have a mega polytechnic with the Minister having full control over who is going to be sitting on the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology board. This bill is incorrectly named. The Minister might think that he's reforming the vocational education and training area but what he's actually doing if you look at the Tertiary Education Commission report is he's going to make things worse. We're going to see a high likelihood of workforce disruption with an extreme impact. We're going to see a reduction in participation in vocational education with a major impact on our economy. We aren't going to see the needs of industry and employers met by this mega polytechnic and that's going to have an extreme impact on our economy. I ask all members to vote for what this bill should be titled "The Education (Mega Polytechnic) Bill"."