Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to have a slot in the general debate here today and I want to primarily turn my attention to the tumultuous reforms of vocational education. I want to cover a couple of topics. I want to cover the disrespectfully short consultation period implications for Māori. I want to cover job losses and the damning Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) report from yesterday.Let's start with the consultation period. No one is happy with a six-plus-one-week consultation period—absolutely no one. The Minister tells us that there are some who are pleased that actually they want to speed up the consultation but when I ask him in written questions Who are these people? Can he identify them even organisations?" he declines. He declines because they don't exist. It's a fiction in his mind. There are no people who are pleased with the six-week consultation period. I think it needs some explanation that the Minister declined the Victoria University name change and is on record with one of the reasons being that the four-week consultation period was too short. Really? One institution and four weeks is too short? Sixteen institutes of technology and polytechnics 11 industry training organisations (ITOs)—that's 27. That's 27 institutions and six weeks is OK? How does that work? How do we explain that? It's disrespectful.Māori at a recent hui at Hopuhopu a hui led by Des Rātima NZOM confirmed that this is a disgracefully short consultation period that in no shape or form is it consistent with Treaty of Waitangi protocols for consultation. What they did was—the hui and indeed other constituents around the country—they looked for their Māori representatives to express their concerns to Minister Hipkins. They asked for their elected representatives to express their concerns—their concerns for the short consultation period their concerns for Māori and Pasifika training and their concerns that industry training is not broken. The polytechnic sector may have some work to do and indeed there could be some stuff that's done around the industry training sector but fundamentally industry training is not broken. It's being thrown at the polytech sector as the fix and the band-aid.We know that the Minister is disparaging to the industry training organisations because we know from a meeting with Skills Active Aotearoa last week a medium-sized ITO that the Minister said to them "I took something from the polytechs and so I had to give them something back so I gave them the ITOs." What did you take from the polytechs Minister and how comfortable are you horse-trading apprentices across the sector? I am very uncomfortable with that.Anyway the constituents—they all asked in the sector. They asked their Māori representatives in Government their Labour Māori representatives to express their concern to the Minister and what do we get in written questions? Did Māori Labour MPs stand up for Māori in these reforms? No they did not. The roll call of shame that Minister Hipkins answered to me in written questions included Kelvin Davis included Willie Jackson included Jenny Salesa and the whole Labour Māori caucus. Not one of them as Minister Hipkins wrote to me expressed their concerns. Why was that? How could they fail to carry their elected representatives' mandate to the Minister and at least express their concerns? They weren't asking for money. This wasn't a contentious Treaty settlement. It was just "Can you please convey our concerns?" All I can surmise is that we know the Labour Māori caucus is already afraid of Grant Robertson. We know that from the last Budget. Now they're afraid of Chris Hipkins—afraid of Chris Hipkins afraid of everyone. That's what we're seeing from the Labour Māori caucus—afraid—and I have concerns for them.I have concerns for the sector. I'm concerned for the loss of our rural ambulances. St John—I didn't make this up—wrote in as a submission saying "We're funded in what's called an indirect group called Direct Funding Scheme direct to the Industry Training Fund one of three and we have every reason to think that our funding will disappear and we will not be able to provide emergency rural ambulance services."I'm concerned for job losses. In February I came out saying there would be a thousand job losses in these reforms and I stand by that statement. On Newshub Nation on Sunday the Minister said there could be significant job losses. He's danced around the word "significant"; I'll stand by a thousand and keep on going. I'm concerned that tomorrow as my colleague Nikki Kaye has said the New Zealand Union of Students' Associations will appear with a campaign promise which will not be delivered around postgraduate student allowances. I'm also concerned for what the OAG wrote in their damning report yesterday that the reforms as they're detailed will not generate financial improvement—a key reason to do the reforms—and that the time frame is absolutely impossible. Slow this down Minister. We want to work with you. We're happy to work with you. You cannot deliver this by 1 January. Take it to the campaign trail slow it down—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member's time has expired."