Robertson Grant: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):I want to talk about both clauses 1 and 3 in this particular set of calls that I want to make here. The first is that we on this side have focused as is our job on the bits of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill that we oppose and therefore the reason we oppose the bill as a whole. But I do want to talk about something where the Government has made some changes that impact on the title of this bill and also on clause 3 “Principal Act”.Actually this bill repeals the Modern Apprenticeship Training Act. The Labour Party is actually very proud of the introduction of Modern Apprenticeships when we came into Government at the end of 1999. The reason that we are proud of that and why I think we should note it today as this bill repeals that Act is that in the 1990s the system of apprenticeships that New Zealanders had come to know over many decades was dismantled by the then National Government. It took away the idea that many New Zealanders had experienced that you would come up through an industry—it was often in those days a Government-run one like the railway workshops or somewhere like that—and you would learn your trade. You would become an apprentice you would get the skills that you would then take into your later life you would add a lot of value to your community and you had a career.We were proud of the fact that when Labour came into Government in 2000 and had seen the destruction of that apprenticeship system through the 1990s we said enough was enough. We brought in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. We tried to put it in the context of that old value of learning a trade getting an apprenticeship doing the hard yards and then going off and working perhaps for yourself or for another business. We took that into a modern era. We said there would need to be a range of different apprenticeship options for young New Zealanders and thereby we created the Modern Apprenticeships system. Over 15000 people went through that Modern Apprenticeships system in the first 8 years of that decade. The Labour Party knows that those 15000 New Zealanders received high-quality training within the New Zealand Qualifications Framework and got their start in their chosen career.But we also acknowledge that having done that it was time for a review of that system. The incoming National Government mucked around for a couple of years and did not do much at all. It was a critical period to be mucking around in because it was the period in which we had to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes. But then after that the Government finally got its act together and brought in the New Zealand Apprenticeships scheme which brings together all of the different types of apprenticeships there are. That is what this bill establishes.I think it is important to note that the Labour Party does support the idea of New Zealand Apprenticeships. We like the idea of a more coordinated process. We like the idea that the pastoral care aspects that were so critical to Modern Apprenticeships are now seen right across the board in the tertiary funding that the current Government has put in place. So the Youth Guarantee scheme is an example now of the idea that you cannot just set someone off on an apprenticeship and hope for the best. That is now understood. That is what lay behind Modern Apprenticeships—the idea that you would have a coordinator somebody who was responsible for making sure that the training actually took place and the young people involved appreciated that. That is now understood and shared across the board.But we also accept that in the changing employment market that we now have apprenticeships are not just about those aged under 24. That is what Modern Apprenticeships were targeted at. So we actually agree with the idea of broadening that out. My colleague Carol Beaumont has already mentioned the lack of women in industry training and apprenticeships. One of the ways of breaking through that is to lift that age barrier or get rid of the age barrier and say that women who may need to retrain and go into a new area could do that through an apprenticeship-based system. That was not possible under Modern Apprenticeships; it is now possible under this new legislation.I think it is important to put that on the table. It is inherent in the proposed title of the Act the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Act because what it does is repeal the Modern Apprenticeship Training Act and changes what was called the Industry Training Act 1992. I want to put on the table that there are aspects of this bill that we do actually support. It would have been nice to be able to say we support this whole bill because there are those aspects that we thought were good but we could not do that because this bill fundamentally undermines the Act that it claims to amend in clause 3 the Industry Training Act. The essence of the Industry Training Act the principal Act under clause 3 is that that Act is about organising industry training across an industry not providing funding for individual businesses to do business-specific training.Why should the Government fund that? We have not had a single Government member stand up in this Chamber today and say why they are fundamentally changing the nature of industry training with this legislation. Why would a Government that is supposedly all about fiscal discipline and looking after the taxpayer decide that it is a good idea to provide funding for industry training to people who are not industry training organisations or to businesses who may well simply train for their own skills? Even Business New Zealand the greatest ally of this Government came to the Education and Science Committee and said it was not sure about this. It was “cautiously supportive” but said there needs to be a review really quickly to make sure that industry training money is not going into activities that businesses should be doing themselves.And then we again wondered why the Government would fundamentally undermine the Industry Training Act in clause 3 by taking away one of the three core responsibilities of industry training organisations which is skills leadership. Skills leadership is vitally important in the role of industry training because it is business identifying the skills needs that are out there. One of the main reasons we decide to fund industry training is to ensure that we are looking ahead. What are the skills that are needed in the future? Under this bill we have a situation where no one is responsible for skills leadership. Is that not an amazing thing? The Government has brought a bill to the House to make nobody responsible for looking ahead to what skills New Zealand needs. How absolutely ridiculous short-sighted and without any strategic plan.Tracey Martin: Typical.GRANT ROBERTSON: As Tracey Martin says it is typical. It is typical of a Government that cannot see past today.What we need is industry training organisations doing more work in terms of skills leadership. We heard from Careerforce a very high-functioning industry training organisation about the fact that it had sat down with Health Workforce New Zealand the Government’s body for finding a strategic way forward for the health workforce to identify the needs of those health care workers who are often forgotten: the people working in rest homes the people providing in-home care. They need training. They are looking after our grandparents and our parents. They have been left out too often when industry skill plans are developed. So Careerforce has been right in there with Health Workforce New Zealand providing that skills leadership. That is gone under this bill. It is gone. It is now no one’s responsibility. But the officials came and said that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is going to be doing a lot of work and it is going to be talking to industry. This should be industry-led. Why is the Government saying it wants no one to be responsible and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment will have a little bit more of an oversight? It is not good enough and undermines the very purpose of industry training.So in two hits—the opening-up of funding for industry training to non - industry training organisations and to specific businesses and in taking away the skills leadership function—very sadly this bill is wrongly titled. It is not the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill; it is the “Privatisation Agenda Bill”. It is furthering the privatisation of education this time in the industry training sector. Steven Joyce the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment who is responsible for this bill has an ideological commitment to privatisation. He does not know why it is a good idea in this instance he is just doing it just as is being done right across the education sector. It is wrong. Education is primarily a public good. We all benefit from it. We should all have a role in making sure it is a quality system. We should all have a role in making sure that the taxpayer funding is being well spent.This bill goes in the wrong direction it undermines industry training and it is fundamentally flawed. I wish we were voting for it because I believe that apprenticeships and industry training represent a key part of our future productivity and wealth as a nation but we cannot vote for a bill that is driven by such narrow-minded ideology and that takes away one of the core parts of industry training and skills leadership. The Labour Party will be opposing this legislation.