Clendon David: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17251. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): Casting back to January 2013 the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment indicated the shape of what this legislation the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill would probably look like. He indicated some changes in industry training and apprenticeships. At the time the Greens said publicly that we sort of liked the general direction and the shape of what the Minister was indicating. We also noted that it was rather late in the piece and that point has been made by the previous speaker Dr Megan Woods. The need for expansion in the industries to ensure a supply of skilled trained labour was paramount. In fact that was obvious at least 3 or 4 years prior to the Minister’s announcement. It is unfortunate that the Government chose to sit idle while an obvious need was growing more urgent.Nevertheless we finally saw the bill in September last year. We looked at it analysed it and took some advice and with some qualifications we came to the House and voiced our qualified support for the bill. There were some good aspects to it and I will reference those in a moment. We saw one or two things that puzzled us and that we were not clear on. One of those in fact was the issue of skills leadership. We thought that the Government seemed to be suggesting that the industry training organisations would not have sole responsibility for skills leadership but it was not clear to us where that responsibility would land. We now know of course that the responsibility lands in a black hole somewhere. Nobody carries the burden of responsibility for skills leadership and that is an untenable situation. Now unfortunately as with our Labour colleagues we have to oppose a piece of legislation that we would have liked to support. It does some useful and good things. It might have been a very good piece of legislation. But sadly it misses the mark it misses the targets and it will require amendment to bring it up to being fit for purpose in the 21st century in order to meet our current needs.One of the things we do like about the bill to be relentlessly positive is that it does remove age restrictions. Many apprenticeships many disciplines skills whatever you like no longer require the strength and enthusiasm of youth. There are many trades many situations in industry where people who are no longer young might usefully pick up skills get qualifications and effect a career change. This is the era of career change. Very few people very few of our students currently at school will have one career from the time they leave training education whatever to when they get their gold watch. This is the era of career change. Retraining is valuable and critical and it is useful that this removal of the age restriction will facilitate that.We like the fact that this is a unified piece of legislation. It brings together a number of other pieces of legislation. It is always desirable to have a single document that covers a particular issue or industry whatever it might be. We like the fact and alwayshave that the bill prevents industry training organisations from owning private training establishments. It obviously removes the potential for a conflict of interest and that is as it should be. We particularly like the fact that it names particular groups that are identified as in need of particular support—currently Māori and Pasifika—and that is again a very well-targeted intention.We regret that the bill is silent on women. We know for a fact that there are way too few women taking apprenticeships and going into industry training and we could put some effort into amending that and putting that right. If I recall correctly the issue of who will get particular consideration at any time is tied to the tertiary education strategy. Tertiary education and industry training apprenticeships are two separate domains. They have some crossover clearly but I do not think it is particularly smart to link the particular support the special cases if you like to whatever is written in the tertiary education strategy. It would be better to have a stand-alone consideration of which particular groups in society would benefit from some particular attention and how we might attract particular groups demographics into industry training or apprenticeships. I think that could have been a better move but as I say I do certainly support the focus on Māori.In the last few days I have visited a number of schools around Northland for another purpose. You see these young predominantly Māori students and you want for them the very best future. They are at great schools. Their parents and teachers are committed to doing the right thing for them. But they are also coming from behind the eight ball in some respects in terms of distance in terms of social capital. Anything we can do to enable those young people empower them put them in a position where they can get a skill get some training get a qualification is only to the good.What do we not like about the bill? First I should comment on some of the changes made in the Education and Science Committee. There were some useful changes. The bill as drafted gave the Minister significant ability capacity to impose or amend conditions on the recognition of an industry training organisation. The language got tidied up about that just to put some reins on the Minister just to make sure there was some justification for what he or she might do at a particular time. The bill again as introduced was seen to potentially give the New Zealand Qualifications Authority perhaps a little bit more sway in terms of governing industry training organisations than was appropriate. The select committee reined that in and made some language changes that will ensure that the appropriate level of authority is given to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority but no more than that.What we do not like—yes again some of this has been outlined by our Labour colleagues who are equally disappointed. The issues include that yes industry training organisations will have responsibility for developing and maintaining standards and for organising training but the skills leadership function will simply fall into a black hole. Building and construction is one of those skill sets that is so critical at the moment. We have a badly broken city that needs to be rebuilt. I would hate to see us importing tradespeople when we have a large pool of unemployed and untrained youth. Skills leadership in building and construction is critical to ensure that we are doing the right thing. The Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation came to us and pointed out that something like 90 percent of building companies companies in that industry are small to medium sized enterprises. They employ fewer than 20 people and many of them employ fewer than 10 people. They are not of a scale where they can purport or pretend to undertake skills leadership. It is not their role or their function.I was very disappointed that the Government chose to vote down Supplementary Order Paper 426 which I put in at the Committee stage and which would have remedied these two major flaws in the legislation. Even had the bill gone so far as to suggest thatthe Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment or some other Government agency had ultimate responsibility for ensuring that there was skills leadership being displayed being undertaken by somebody we would have been reassured but we have not even got that reassurance. We can predict with complete confidence that in many cases that will fall off the edge and we will see a lack of leadership in developing the necessary training to keep up with changes in particular industries and particular trades.The second major concern for us of course was the fact that public funding will go to private companies under the provisions of this bill and we heard from the Minister that this was in deference to the great god of competition. Yes competition can often be a very good and useful thing but there are limits to it. Interestingly I was at a presentation last night from a person who felt—well I am paraphrasing but in my view he was suggesting—that competition was a solution to all things. In theory it often is but in practice it fails badly and that is what we will see here.I was interested too that the Minister referenced the necessity for amending a situation based on a survey done in 2007. The industry training organisations have conceded that there were some shortcomings in their performance and they have upped their game. They are performing better and differently from how they were 6 or 7 years ago and it is unfortunate that this legislation is responding to a problem that was perceived 7 years ago but has since been remedied by other means. We think it unfortunate and the point has been made about Business New Zealand. It has put two conditions around the proposition that public money should go to private companies for training. Neither of those conditions has been met by this bill. Business New Zealand will be as disappointed and as concerned as every other person every other organisation and every other stakeholder in this legislation.So we will regretfully in some regards oppose this legislation. Its redeeming feature perhaps is that it will be easily amended and can become what it ought to be: a piece of legislation fit for purpose to ensure that we have got the skills and the tradespeople that we need to build our future. Kia ora.