King Colin: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is subject to correctionKing Colin: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14051. Text is subject to correction.]4.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) to theMinister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment: How many new apprentices have signed up under the Government’s Apprenticeship Reboot scheme?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment): The Government announced in January this year that it would provide a $1000 payment to the first 10000 new apprentices and their employer towards the cost of tools and training or $2000 each for the priority trades. I am pleased to advise the House that the reboot scheme has already signed up 8000 new apprentices in only 7 months. This compares with the normal sign-up rate of 7000 for a full year. The reboot has resulted in a 67 percent increase in the number of people starting apprenticeships compared with the same period last year and two-thirds of all of those signed up—Dr David Clark: Where are the jobs?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —have been in the designated priority trades such as construction engineering infrastructure andelectrotechnology. And to be helpful to that member over there to have an apprenticeship you actually do have to have a job.Colin King: What other steps is the Government taking to improve industry training systems?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well we inherited a mess in industry training from the previous Government. Even though funding trebled there were up to 100000 phantom trainees in industry training who had achieved no credits. We have sorted out a lot of that mess and introduced a suite of measures to improve the opportunities for in-work training for all Kiwis. For example we have established New Zealand Apprenticeships which provides the same level of support and the same level of subsidy for all apprentices regardless of their age. We have also boosted the educational content of apprenticeships and increased the funding. With the reboot and these other changes we have estimated that around 14000 extra new apprentices will start training over the next 5 years over and above the normal numbers. We are now running ahead of that target.Colin King: What steps is the Government taking to expand trades training in Canterbury?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As well as the apprenticeship reboot the Government has now invested some $65 million in specific skills for Canterbury training initiatives over the last couple of years. In addition I have recently announced a further capital injection of $18.9 million for the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology to enable it to further expand its trades training capacity as part of its campus rebuild following the earthquakes. That capital injection means that Christchurch Polytechnic will be able to further expand its Sullivan Avenue facilities taking on an additional 400 equivalentfull-time students or up to 1000 additional places a year through until 2018. That is on top of the 1000 it has already added. This further increase in trades training is very important to the Canterbury rebuild and to the wider Canterbury economy. The Government is delighted to support it.Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to table statistics from the Tertiary Education Commission that show in the first 3 years of National’s period in Government the number of apprentices—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just want to clarify that the Tertiary Education Commission report is not a published—Grant Robertson: Those statistics are very hard to get.Mr SPEAKER: On the basis that they are hard to get I will allow the leave to be put. Leave is sought to table that particular document. Is there any objection? [Interruption] Order! There was objection. It will not be tabled.