Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): Kia ora Madam Speaker. First speech of 2020 here I go! I've been told to be short and snappy and to the point. So the first thing is just with regard to comments that—Simeon Brown: Particularly the to the point" part!Hon TRACEY MARTIN: I mean I know it's the embodiment of me: short and snappy and to that point. Just to start this off with the amazing comment made by the previous speaker Parmjeet Parmar. Now it's been recognised that 13 out of 16 of the polytechs when this Government came into Government were going to fail. They were failing. They were in deficit. It cost this Government $100 million to keep them open. That's taxpayers' money; $100 million of taxpayers' money because the previous Government and the previous Minister for Tertiary Education—I think his name was Steven Joyce—knew that there was a budgetary hole and maybe this was part of his budgetary hole because he knew that a hundred million dollars of taxpayers' money would have to be put into the polytechs to keep some regional educational vocation provision. But the previous speaker just blamed it on this Government's policies around international students who can't now get into the country. I'm going to make a jump—I'm going to make a leap—but I'm going to say that that speaker is talking about the actions we've taken to protect this nation from coronavirus. That's the only thing I can think of because with regard to international students it's been a couple of years and the polytechs were already in deficit before we even came in and we even made any changes. So I think it's an enormous stretch for the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee to then say that the reason why polytechs are in trouble is because of the coronavirus. It's a stretch. I've got to say it's a stretch. Somebody else might be able to connect that but it's a wee way out for me.So the other comments that have been made by Shane Reti—and I like Shane Reti. I enjoy listening to Shane Reti. I mean there is a man of intelligence and integrity. I believe that to be true. Sometimes he's wrong but he has intelligence and integrity. Now what he talked about there was he said that this legislation is rushed.There is a reasonable amount of urgency. Definitely that is true around fixing the vocational education system in this country. One of them is because we can't keep pouring $100 million into a broken system. The three polytechs that actually were making money even if we talk about their ability to do that locally and regionally—the only reason why for example the Southern Institute of Technology was able to stay in the black was because not only do they have an amazing community and a wonderful trust down there that supports them but they had a campus in Auckland. So they were not able to actually keep themselves in the black based on their localism; they needed a campus in Auckland. That goes to show that the regional provision was not able to work under the way that it had been set up previously.The other thing I find fascinating—and I want to thank all those business owners and industry training organisations (ITOs) and Māori enterprise and so on that came to see me specifically so that I could draw them and go through with them where the areas of concern are in the model that we've got here because of the scaremongering put together by the National Party.Simeon Brown: Could have done a Facebook video.Hon TRACEY MARTIN: So the young man calling out is Simeon Brown. He doesn't actually know the topic ladies and gentlemen but he's happy to call out.Anyway so what they were—and it was actually employers and the ITOs. They came and they said "We absolutely know that this has got to change. This has got to change. We've got young people coming out with debt and they've got qualifications that are useless when they show up at our door. We need to make sure that we have industry input into the standards."The workforce development councils—there are twofold parts to them. One of them is based on the Ōtorohanga model—that is the New Zealand First influence inside the workforce development councils. Go and google the Ōtorohanga model and the model about finding out from local business what the local skills are that you need to train up local young people. Simeon Brown wouldn't know because he doesn't talk to business but let's actually make sure that the rest of us do. So go and check the Ōtorohanga model.The flip side of that is that for the first time in a long time actual industry is going to have control over 80 percent of the spend in vocational training through the workforce development councils. They are going to say "This is workforce planning that that Government they took away the leadership around workforce planning from the ITOs deliberately under Minister Steven Joyce." I sat on the Education and Science Committee when they did it. They said "We don't need any workforce planning leadership." Now we get in question time a whole lot of questions about "Where are all the specialists you need? Where are all the doctors and the nurses and the speech language?" Well we had no workforce development because that Government—that Government—which was the previous National Government took away any leadership around it.The workforce development councils are going to take us back to the support we need talking to business and industry and sector and saying "These are the skills we need for New Zealand to go forward. These are the skills and these are the numbers of skilled young people that we need to make sure that they can be in employment the right employment trained retrained untrained and retrained again as they go through their lives. This is the way forward. That Minister Chris Hipkins—he's visionary. He's got it down pat and we support."