Beaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17260. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I have to say that some of the contributions from the other side do show a lack of seriousness about what is a very important piece of legislation. The Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill is a bill that should be taking this country forward. Industry training and apprenticeships are vitally important. It should also be something not only taking our economy forward but providing opportunities for New Zealanders to gain meaningful industry skills and get decent wages and conditions. Why? Because we have structural skills shortages in this country. As an example of that we are having to import labour to work on the Canterbury rebuild. We have high unemployment—27000 young Aucklanders are not in education training or employment and 50 percent of them are Māori or Pacific Islanders. It is not good enough. Too many people are working in low-quality low-wage jobs. This is an opportunity to get industry training and apprenticeships right.It was potentially an opportunity to gain a consensus about this vital area. It is an area that New Zealand has a long and proud track record in. Many of us know people—including my own father—who have undertaken apprenticeships and then had very satisfying and important work roles as a consequence and contributed strongly to our economy. So we have a proud history. This is a wasted opportunity. It is due to a Government that is ideologically driven and not willing to work strategically on such an important issue.We indicated a willingness to work constructively on this bill and we acknowledged the need for changes. I think every member opposite has talked about what was wrong with industry training. As my colleague Chris Hipkins said there was a lot that was right with it but yes there was a need for change. We accepted that. We have absolutely said that that was true. Much hard work has actually been done to rationalise the industry training industry and that is good. That is good. But this bill potentially serves to undermine all of that hard work. We supported this bill going to the Education and Science Committee because we did want to try to get it right. I too would acknowledge one of the positives in this bill and that is the removal of age limits in relation to apprenticeships. Anybody should be able to undertake an apprenticeship at whatever age. As others have said people’s careers change much more frequently nowadays so it makes perfect sense to not limit apprenticeships to just young people.But I guess we should not be surprised that the Government has taken the position it has taken on this legislation. As has already been said National is the party thatabolished apprenticeships. Although it did bring in industry training it was not necessary to have got rid of what was a time-proven scheme. In fact Labour reinstituted apprenticeships—and with wide support in the community. National is also the party that threw out an agreed skills strategy that had been developed between business unions and Government agencies—a strategy that actually had a clear path forward for skills and vocational training in this country. It also stopped the tripartite group that was meeting to progress that. One of its first acts was to do those two things. So this is not a surprise that it has come up with the legislation it has got. The Government has failed to train New Zealanders to meet the skills needs that we have. We said “Why don’t you look at fast-track operations for apprenticeships in Christchurch?”. But no—completely ignored. As a consequence most of that work has been undertaken by migrant labour.So this bill is a missed opportunity. I have acknowledged the positive little element of it. The things that are problems and are strongly opposed by submitters such as the funding of industry training for non-industry training organisations—including it seems Foodstuffs which never even submitted—are business specific rather than for the public good of industry training. Large not small businesses will benefit. Removing the skills leadership element is just ridiculous. This Government seems to be pathologically opposed to planning and strategic approaches. Steven Joyce said “Well we want to focus on what’s important: training. And it doesn’t stop them doing skills leadership.” Well how can you do the training if you do not know what you need to train for?