Joyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5174. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment):It is great to have the opportunity to follow the Education and Science Committee chair Dr Jian Yang and talk about this as he says very very important part of the Government’s work which is growing the skills of young New Zealanders in particular for the 21st century economy. I am going to focus my comments on the tertiary education system where the Government has been delivering very very good results in terms of increased numbers of full-time students increased levels of study at the higher levels and increased numbers of graduates over the last 5 years on—Hon David Cunliffe: What planet is the Minister on? Numbers are dropping.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This Government has delivered far more while maintaining its investment in tertiary education. The member opposite is now making the point that numbers are starting to drop which is of course correct. As the economy recovers there are fewer people in full-time study.But this Government has taken the decision to invest any money saved back into the system in areas such as engineering science and so on areas where we need further investment to ensure we deliver the best possible results for our students. The whole sector is working very hard on the tertiary education strategy which runs from last year through until 2019. That has half a dozen themes. I thought I would just cover them very briefly because they are important.The first one is delivering skills for industry. We have heard a lot of talk in this Chamber tonight about the importance of diversifying our economy which is absolutely correct and it is exactly what this Government is doing. In order to do so we need more people with skills in engineering in information and communications technology in the physical sciences in the agricultural sciences and so on. That is exactly what we are delivering with the increased investment in tuition subsidies in those areas. We have also done a major reorganisation of the industry training system which has streamlined and increased the efficiency of that system and is now delivering many more tradespeople who are actually achieving qualifications rather than just being on the list that the previous Government used to have. Those people are doing particularly well.The second priority is getting at-risk young people into a career. That is hugely important. We have a number of initiatives in that space—obviously the Youth Guarantee and trades academies. This Government has put more into this space than any others. It is another of the areas where we inherited a situation where there had been a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of action and now there is very very significant action in this area.We also have action in the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative which is the latest initiative. It also coincides with priority three which is boosting the achievement of Māori and Pasifika. The Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative is an innovative concept that in some ways is back to the future in that it picks up the young Māori cadetships that we had many many years ago. It supplies whanau support. In the case of Pasifika it supplies community and Pasifika church support. That is getting a whole lot of younger people in particular into jobs into industry training and into apprenticeship training.The fourth priority is improving adult literacy and numeracy through the intensive literacy and numeracy fundings and the workplace literacy and numeracy. We are going through a process at the moment of assessing how those are going. We have increased the amount in those areas. We have put a big emphasis on mainstreaming if you like the literacy and numeracy at the lower levels of study. That has meant many many thousands of people have been properly assessed for literacy and numeracy training. That work is ongoing in terms of providing second-chance learners the opportunity for better skills of literacy and numeracy while they are in the workplace.The fifth priority is strengthening research-based institutions. I understand there have been some comments about the Performance-based Research Fund tonight. That has been hugely important in investing and increasing science funding. This Government has taken that from $250 million a year up to $300 million a year. The centres of research excellence have gone from I think six to 10. So we are putting in some big investments—things like the Marsden Fund which is another portfolio but nevertheless those are big investments. Our total science spend has gone from around $780 million a year to $1.5 billion. You will not hear that from the Opposition but actually that is what is going on.Andrew Bayly: How much was that?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Seven hundred and eighty million - odd dollars; then we came up to about $1.5 billion in the 2015-16 year. So those investments are very important.