Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak to the Prime Minister's statement. I'd like to speak to several parts of her statement starting with the reflection on vocational training and the tumultuous reforms that have been announced today. Now I want to put on record that we were really hoping that we could scrutinise and support some of these reforms. We understand that there are challenges across the sector and as the education cohort if you like we thought there actually could be some changes that we could get along with. Unfortunately with six weeks' notice that's a hugely short consultation period for a tumultuous and drastic reformation process like this and that's going to make that very unlikely but we did come to the table willing to look and understand that some changes were necessary. The theme through today's vocational and education reforms and vocational and training reforms is the Government knows best—the Government knows better than industry what is best for industry and the Government knows better than the regions what is best for the regions. Barbara Kuriger: Just like oil and gas. Dr SHANE RETI: It is like oil and gas. What's happened today is the industry training organisations (ITOs) have been disestablished and their parts dispersed to the winds and I'll talk to that further. But just so that we understand the industry training organisations are those organisations mandated by industry and confirmed in the 1992 legislation to do several things. First of all they're there to set standards; secondly they're there to provide apprenticeships and to organise apprenticeships; and thirdly they have a quality function. Let's be clear on those organisations that are being cast aside today: Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation—the building people—Careerforce Competenz Connexis the Hairdressing Industry Training Organisation MITO the New Zealand Marine and Composites Industry Training Organisation the Primary Industry Training Organisation ServiceIQ Skills Active Aotearoa and the Skills Organisation. They have been cast aside today and I'll come to the alternative that they've been cast to. It's also understood that ITOs actually manage more trainees and have more people than all the collective polytechnics together and more than domestic university students—around about 150000. They are substantive. They were formed by industry for industry and they've been cast aside. Cast aside for what? They've been cast aside for this amorphous New Zealand polytech the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology of which we know very little detail. Let's actually look at some of the parts of the ITOs and where they've gone. So the standard-setting function of ITOs is purportedly going to go to the industry skills bodies (ISBs). We don't know if they're going to go across services. We don't quite know more about some of their components. We know that the ISBs as they're called will be responsible for leadership for standards and for capstone and curriculum—a lot of what the ITOs were doing. What we do know is that the part that the ITOs were doing will not completely move across. The bigger part of what ITOs were doing was going out to industries and saying Would you like an apprentice? Can you take on an apprentice?" They were organising apprenticeships and that has moved completely to central functioning from Wellington—to the governance arm of the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology. A central bureaucracy in Wellington will tell industry what they need. Instead of industry telling industry that has all moved to this national polytechnic we can call it. Now let's look back at that. So we've done this before: in 1992 trade training was done—in fact in the 1970s and 1980s—through the polytechnics and we moved away from that in the early 1990s for a couple of reasons. One of them was that the polytechnics taught what they wanted not what industry needed. The other reason we were actually looking to move from service-based training—it used to be that if you did just four years you qualified as a trade certificate or advanced training—was that we actually wanted to move to competency-based training. So Lockwood Smith through the early 1990s led the reforms that put industry back in charge of industry and the industry training Act of 1992 empowered ITOs to do what they've done over the last 27 years. So the main functions of the industry training organisations are going to move to the national polytech. Polytechs will deliver trade training. Industry has not been interacting with polytechs. They've been interacting with industry training organisations for a very simple reason: they best understand their industry. Furthermore there's an obvious conflict of interest here. So if polytechs are going to do trade training—if they're going to do the same role as the ITOs—they would then farm out some of that training to the specialists. But polytechs themselves actually train—they do a lot of the trade training. So they're going to have two choices: they can look internally to fund their own courses in trade training or they can look externally to the industrial sector for that training. Where do you think they're going to look? They're going to look inside the tent to themselves. This is what we saw in the 1990s. This is what they'll do here. This is a clear conflict of interest that the Minister is going to need to manage. There are other interesting quirks in this proposal of having a national polytech that need a lot more scrutiny particularly around the funding. So this national polytech will offer foundation learning levels 1 and 2 sub-degree category training. Generally those are diplomas and other sorts of business degrees—well not degrees but non-degrees because then you move to the degree level. So that's what the national polytechs are going to do. Now interestingly the sub-degree level—the diplomas and certificates—are normally funded by what's called student achievement component (SAC) funding and SAC funding is consistent across the whole sector. Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Good evening members. The House has resumed. Before the dinner break we were debating the Prime Minister's statement and Dr Shane Reti has four minutes and seven seconds remaining to speak should he so wish to take it. Dr SHANE RETI: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to continue. Just to briefly summarise where we were I was prosecuting the case that the disestablishment of the industry training organisations—fundamentally this Government is saying that Government knows best. They know best what industry needs rather than industry knowing what industry needs. If we look at the separation of the functions of the independent training organisations and how some of them will wishfully end up in the industry skills bodies we don't know how many of their main provider functions will end up with this national polytechnic—whatever that means. Fundamentally all of trade training will go to this national polytechnic which is the position we were in in the early 1990s when all trade training came from polytechnics. The failure that that was—we have looked back and not looked forward. So the ITOs are clearly hurting. They are finished under these reforms. I wanted to talk then to job losses. Last week I put out the statement—which I'll stand by—that there are a thousand job losses in these reforms. Earlier today—just before the dinner hour actually—we were meeting with some of the affected stakeholders and just one small segment of this reform is accounting for 500 job losses. But then we heard the Minister. When we raised the question the Minister said "Well look we haven't actually modelled that so we can't give you a number." Now there's two points to that. If it wasn't modelled then it's just frankly reckless and irresponsible to come to the House with major reforms—and they are tumultuous reforms—not having done the work. If you have got a number and are too scared just bite the bullet here now and put it out and we can see what it is. So job losses are a huge concern for the sector. The tumultuous vocational education training reforms that were mentioned here today were also alluded to in the Prime Minister's statement and it's a really important piece of work that we need to look at although a full six weeks to do it—really? Tomorrow's Schools are roughly three times that and for something as big as this we're getting a third of the time—six weeks. That also speaks as I said initially to why it's going to be a challenge for us to collaborate on some parts of this that we really did want to work together on. The second area I wanted to focus on is the Prime Minister's statement at page 5 where she talks about "The second area of focus of course is in health." She also gives a story a little bit earlier about the child of a beneficiary in Kaikohe so let's join those dots together. Let's talk about children in Kaikohe and health. Let's talk about whether that child is vaccinated for meningitis or not. Are you one of the five- to 12-year-olds who—sorry—this Government does not choose to be safe? Are you part of that group who cannot guarantee that you'll be safe this coming winter or that you will have developed immunity this coming winter to meningitis? If we look at that let's look at the reasoning the Government's put forward as to why they will not vaccinate the 20302 five- to 12-year-olds in Northland who are ineligible for the meningitis Menactra vaccine. Two arguments are put forward: first of all that the technical advisory group on 8 November recommended to do only the two targeted groups that are currently receiving vaccine—wrong. Option three also said you could vaccinate everyone under 20. The second argument being made is that there are not enough vaccines—wrong again. Shall we dial up right now on my iPhone and I'll order dozens of them right here from the House? There are plenty of them. The cost of this is $700000. We can't find $700000 to vaccinate Northland children against meningitis—really? We've heard of the expense of the reforms here today and all the other options we have in front of us and the Prime Minister has the audacity to say "The second area of focus of course is in health." and to talk about Kaikohe children in her prime ministerial statement. But she will not because the open letter we placed before her before Waitangi Day said "Prime Minister please will you consider vaccinating 5-12 year-olds in Northland for meningitis?" and she said no. So you saw the petition at the start of the House today and we will lobby this through the select committee. Vaccinate Northland children."