Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well as my colleague Paul Goldsmith has said we support to select committee this Education and Training Amendment Bill and the general tidying up of the technical components of the amendments. But we do have some concerns around clause 12 extending the prohibition on providers of charging a compulsory student services fee to trainees that transfer over to Te Pūkenga the new mega-merger Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand entity. That inability to charge those compulsory student services fees is a risk to our tertiary education organisations because they are being asked to cover more and more services for our students. Now nobody is denying that our students need to have these services and in fact the legislation would allow tertiary institutions to charge for them individually but it would be absolutely impractical to be doing that on an individual trainee by trainee basis. This really does continue a trend of the Minister exerting influence over the fees that institutions can charge while expecting those institutions to do more and more and not giving any extra support from the Government. I just want to outline some of those extra things those extra student services that are being asked of our tertiary institutions. We're looking at a new code of wellbeing and safety that will be issued in 2021 to take effect in the beginning of next year. It builds on an existing interim code. The sorts of things that it expects institutions to be able to do are: to be more responsive with more student services and teaching and learning approaches to meet diverse needs of the learner population; to provide more training and support for staff and that's now including accommodation staff security and cleaning staff; peer support training; better protection for learners who want to make complaints and resolve disputes; and better consistency within and across providers for dealing with emergencies. Now nobody is saying we don't want these better services for students but how are the providers going to provide them if they can't charge fees for new trainees if they can't increase existing student services fees and if they don't get additional revenue from the Government? They're saying that in the new wellbeing and safety code we'll have many more dimensions to this support—so community and stakeholder consultation. That's involving not only students but staff whānau local community and iwi in identifying and defining wellbeing and safety and issues with provider learning environments—a whole-of-provider approach going beyond just student services but looking at promoting an environment and a culture that enhances learning wellbeing across all levels of institutions. It's looking at the learning environment both physical and digital providing positive teaching learning and living experiences. So that's not just in the formal education environment but as learners develop personally and socially—that's going to be a challenge as students are particularly social at that tertiary education stage—and individuals' wellbeing and safety needs across a whole range of contexts effectively looking at their social physical spiritual and cultural needs throughout their learning journey. Now these are not insignificant requirements of student services on institutions but they can't charge any student services fees for new trainees to do this and they can't increase their compulsory student fees for existing students and they aren't getting any further money from the Government except that they did have some money promised to them. So we can look at it in the context of the $25 million that was promised to the tertiary institutions for student mental health and addiction services. It was announced in July 2020 but not one dollar of that has been able to be spent yet. The $25 million was allocated in the midst of COVID-19 and it was explicitly sold as helping students through the pandemic. The education and health Minister at that time Chris Hipkins said and I quote The lockdown has been hugely disruptive for students. Many of them have had to relocate and move to online learning isolating them from … peers and tutors. Mental health is a priority for this Government and it's never been more important to ensure that our young people have access to the help they need when they need it." Except they haven't. So getting money out for student services such as this should have been able to happen quickly. But what did they do with the $1.62 million per annum that was to go to the institutes of technology and polytechnics? Well once it would have gone out to them and they would have straightaway got it into student services. But this time and for anyone who's worried about what happens when there is centralisation that money went to the mega-merger polytechnic institute Te Pūkenga. That slow cumbersome bureaucratic morass has sat with the money and they are still in discussions with the Ministry of Health about how to use it. Remember this was money for student services that was announced in July of last year and is still sitting waiting to be allocated. So this Education and Training Amendment Bill prohibiting institutions from charging a compulsory student services fee for trainees that transfer into this mega-merger institute Te Pūkenga are going to be sitting there getting access to services but not being charged for them. This is another example of the Government making announcements and putting impositions on to institutions but not getting the money to them to be able to do it. These institutions only have three ways of getting money essentially: student fees Government income or international student income. They don't have the international student income because this Government will not allocate managed isolation and quarantine places to the universities who have guaranteed that they would pay for them to let international students in. They're not allowing the trainees to be charged for compulsory student fees and any money that they are making announcements about getting out for student services is not getting to the institutions and is not getting to the students. It is a continuation of the Minister exerting his influence over our institutions which should be autonomous entities that should be able to make decisions for themselves and should be able to get services out to those students quickly. But they certainly can't do it if they don't get the funding to be able to provide those services.While we support this legislation to the select committee stage there are certainly issues that I'm sure we will be debating in this bill but also in the additional bills that come through for education over the coming months. Thank you Madam Speaker."