Clendon David: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16798. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):I am pleased to take a call on the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill. This is a bill that the Green Party would have liked to support. We supported it at the first reading through to the Education and Science Committee. We would have liked to see it right through with our support but unfortunately as with our Labour and New Zealand First colleagues we are unable to continue to support this bill for reasons similar to those we have heard already.We liked the bill initially because it did remove the age restriction on apprenticeships. That was something that was long overdue and that has been Green Party policy for a very long time. The days when people would go to school then go to some form of training or education as teens or young adults then go into a career a profession and stay there until they got their gold watch at 65 are long gone. We need to take every opportunity to accommodate the modern reality which is that people will change careers often a number of times in their lifetime. That is not a bad thing. That is something we need to encourage and enhance given that a lot of the jobs available to people today probably did not exist 30 or 40 years ago and that we do not know what career paths will look like even 10 years into the future. So to the extent that we can open up the apprenticeship pathway or model to a wider age group that is a good thing. It is an important benefit that will come from this legislation.Mr Calder made the point that we were able to get unanimity at the select committee around a number of the amendments. That is simply because they were good amendments not least of all the amendment that put some reins on ministerial discretion. The bill as first drafted gave the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment pretty much open slather in a number of important provisions. We like others thought that was not a good idea and that is one of the amendments we are very happy to agree to. But such is the nature of a select committee—people come along and make submissions we read them we discuss them and there are always different points of view. But it is extraordinary that for this particular bill—and the point has been made by Mr Grant Robertson I think—there was almost unanimous condemnation of one particular provision. There was not an enormous number of submissions—30-odd from memory—but they were well founded. They were well informed. They were from people and organisations actively interested in participating in the area of industry training. They were substantive submissions.I read the Business New Zealand case which Mr Robertson made reference to slightly differently. Business New Zealand did give very qualified support to the notion of allowing organisations other than industry training organisations access to the public funding but it put two quite clear conditions around that. One of those conditions was that there ought to be independent evaluation to ensure that learning outcomes are linked to industry needs; the other was that the needs of small to medium sized enterprises—those employing fewer than 20 staff—should be met. Nowhere in this legislation do I see those two qualifications those two criteria met. So to me that would put Business New Zealand in line with all the other submitters opposing the idea that public funds can go to organisations other than industry training organisations. The obvious danger is then that a large industry will get access to that funding and simply train people to work within that industry. It will not give them the range of transferable skills that are the logic and the intention of the learning outcomes for industry training organisations. I think Business New Zealand picked up on that very well.This bill has made some rather strange bedfellows. One does not often see Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions allied in their opposition to a bill. They and the New Zealand Industry Training Organisation—the peak body the umbrella body if you like—and the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation all very strongly opposed the notion that the Government funding should go to organisations other than industry training organisations. It is worthwhile just reiterating some of the reasons they found for that. The New Zealand Industry Training Organisation for example questioned whether organisations other than the industry training organisations that may get access to this funding would face the same compliance conditions that are perhaps a necessary burden on industry training organisations. They wondered whether giving this funding to specific export industries could in fact compromise New Zealand under some of the fair trade arrangements. It could very clearly be seen as a direct subsidy if the Government is funding the training of people within a company that is then exporting the product made by those people. That could very easily be read as a subsidy. I am sure it is not the intention of the bill but it certainly does create the potential for a hiccup further down the road.The Council of Trade Unions strongly opposed the amendment on the basis among other things that one could suggest that the intention of the change is to encourage a level of competition within industry training organisations. But that does actually already exist. The performance of industry training organisations has increased dramatically in recent years. There was a need for some change for restructuring and for upping the game frankly. We have seen evidence of that in recent years. The industry training organisations are uniformly committed to continuing to do well and to continuing to do better. So making funding available to non - industry training organisations really is a retrograde step. It fails to reward industry training organisations for the significant improvements and the efforts they have already made.There is of course the question of flexibility as I said. Employers can switch industry training organisations if they are not getting the service the satisfaction or the learning outcomes they require for their particular industry. It is important to keep coming back to the point that industry training organisations are obliged to equip their trainees—people who come under their umbrella—with transferable skills so that people can be an asset across a range of companies and indeed give those individuals more opportunity for employment.Along with the other Opposition parties we point to the matter of the opportunity for skills leadership to be picked up by somebody other than industry training organisations. There is a pious hope embedded in the legislation that some organisation or group of organisations will fill the gap that is left when the statutory responsibility of industry training organisations to provide skills leadership is taken away as this legislation does. There is no evidence to suggest that this will be picked up by industry training organisations.The Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation is a very significant body given that we are in very serious need of tradespeople around the construction industries. In Christchurch and Auckland we need lots of buildings built relatively quickly. It would be most unfortunate if we continued to have a high level of youth unemployment and an unnecessarily high level of adult unemployment and were needing to employ tradespeople to rebuild Christchurch and to build the housing stock we need in Auckland. The Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation pointed out that in its particular industry something like 90 percent of apprentices are trained within companies that are small to medium sized enterprises that employ fewer than 10 or 20 people and in many cases fewer than five people. That is by definition a very diverse and dispersed industry. Where is the skills leadership likely to come from within that? There are very few large players in it. Well there are some but the likelihood of the breadth of that industry collectively providing skills leadership is very very remote and very distant. The Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation picked up on that issue very clearly.One of the things as I said that we did like about the bill was the dropping of the age restriction. We also liked the fact that it required industry training organisations to give particular regard to the needs of Māori and other priority groups in line with the existing tertiary strategy. Of course the recently renewed or refreshed strategy specifically mentions Māori and Pasifika youth as two of those population groups. It is a good thing that industry training organisations will be obliged to lend some focus to them. What this bill unfortunately overlooks—and I think it is a gap—is that there is no reference to women as being a priority group that we need to encourage into apprenticeships. We know that the gender balance in trades is very very unbalanced. There is a pressing need to encourage more young women into trades and that is a missed opportunity. It is something that could have been included in this legislation and has not been.So as I began by saying this is a bill that we would have liked to support. It makes some useful changes but unfortunately because of those two specific flaws in the bill it is something that we will have to amend when we have a more progressive Government that is more willing to listen to the overwhelming number of submitters to follow their guidance and to follow best practice. We look forward to the opportunity to do that. Thank you.