Robertson Grant: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):I am sad that the contributions from members of the Education and Science Committee on the other side of the Chamber have been so limited today because they heard the same submissions that we did on this side of the Chamber. I want to come to a couple of matters that have not been covered yet by speakers. In particular I want to talk about clause 9 of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill which talks about training contracts and apprenticeship training agreements being part of employment agreements. I want to mention that in this stage of the debate because it was raised as a concern by a number of submitters who came to the select committee that we would be limiting in some way or another the ability of people who were volunteers or people who were contractors to be part of apprenticeship training or industry training.I want to make sure it is on the record of the House that officials were very clear with us that that was not the case and that there was no limitation here. What it effectively means is that whatever the employment arrangements in place with an employee that is where we will find the arrangements for training. That is essentially what they said. It is very important because a number of industry training organisations that are involved in the training of both volunteers and contractors appeared before the committee. We heard from the Primary Industry Training Organisation that there are a large number of contractors within that industry who have very important training needs—health and safety type training needs but broader training needs as well. This bill still allows for the training to be a component of the agreement that they have to perform that task.Equally this also applies among volunteers. There is actually some very important work being done in terms of search and rescue training at the moment that involves volunteers and we would not want a piece of legislation passed in this House that would unintentionally limit in some way or another the ability of those people to get that training. We have been assured that new section 3 in clause 9 does not do that and I wanted to make sure that that was on the record of the House.The other area that caused quite a lot of controversy from the submitters was around the role of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority alongside industry training organisations. This is covered in numerous clauses in the bill but the one that I want to refer to is one that the committee amended and that is new section 13 in the bill as set out in clause 16 and in particular on the expanded role that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has. The heading of new section 13B is “Qualifications Authority may prescribe quality assurance requirements”. This caused concern. There was a feeling among industry training organisations that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority already had a fairly stringent oversight of the industry training organisations and that this would move that from being about the quality of the training that was being arranged and about the quality of the standards that were being set more to the point to being about governance. They questioned why the authority should have that increased role.The committee picked up on this concern—and I want to pay tribute to the chair of the committee Cam Calder because he picked up on this concern particularly—and new section 13B has been amended by the select committee to ensure in section 13B(d) the ability of industry training organisations to acquire and to maintain New Zealand Qualifications Authority approval for programmes or training schemes and consent to assess students and that the governance arrangements for this can be part of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s work only where it is relevant to those skills standards and that organisational training. So it is not carte blanche for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to wade into an industry training organisation and say that it thinks the organisation has got the wrong number of people on the board or that it wants to change the governance arrangements. But rather where it is relevant to the standards setting and to the organisation of training that can be a matter that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is interested in.From our point of view on the Labour Party side of the Chamber—and I think this goes for Green and New Zealand First Party members as well—that satisfied us that the concerns that were being raised about the authority’s role had been met.None of us wants the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to be overreaching here and making life more difficult for industry training organisations. What we do want is taxpayers—who are paying money for industry training to be organised and for skills standards to be set—to know that that money has been well spent. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority does have an important role in that so we want to maintain that role without increasing it and enhancing it. I thought it was important to make sure that those two points given that Government members seem not to be interested in their own bill were put on the table.I want to return though to a little bit more detail around the skills leadership function because I think it is important given that this is something that has been in place for more than 20 years now that this role is there for—