Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It's a pleasure to speak tonight on the Estimates and I'll be speaking to two main components: to fees-free referenced in the Estimates on page 27 of the transcript and to the review of vocational education which is page 24 of the transcript of the Estimates with the Minister.To talk to fees-free: well clearly that's been a flop. There's just no other way you could look at a $197 million underspend for participation rates that went down. Let's be clear: participation was one of the key objectives of the Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE). The Minister around about November 2017 said the RoVE would increase participation by 15 percent. In fact 80000 were predicted and 50000 turned up. There are fewer learners after fees-free than before. What we know from the Canterbury study is that only 6 percent of students in that study said fees-free made a difference to them; the rest were already going to university. It's the wrong lever; it's not the right lever to pull. You would achieve different objectives with fees-free but to say participation increase is one of them is not correct. And the $197 million underspend—in fact the Minister didn't even announce that himself on the day the $197 million was announced; Grant Robertson actually did it.The Minister's offered comments before. In fact in the Estimates when it was raised with him around the underspend this was put to him: So do you agree with the comments of Chris Hipkins who once said that a significant underspend is bad project design by Ministers?" The Minister replied: "Yes." Well he sort of needed to because on 24 February 2017 when he was discussing underspends in Investing in Educational Success he said "Whereas they've poured that money in it's barely been touched and that shows the whole concept was badly designed from the beginning." On 11 July 2015 he offered a similar comment on the underspends indicating that it was poor management saying that he called the underspend in special education "incompetence". We just heard from my colleague Nikki Kaye on the underspend in building. So with his own words underspends are incompetence.An incompetent Minister—and I'd put it to you that the fees-free is clearly an indication of incompetence. It is the next KiwiBuild closely followed by the RoVE—the Reform of Vocational Education—which will be the third KiwiBuild in evolution. The amalgamation of polytechnics removing local autonomy and centralising apprentices under polytechnics—it will fail. How do we know it will fail? Well I don't need our analysts to tell us that. Let's look at the Minister's own documentation. The programme business case says that in the short term there will be nearly 14000 less industry trainees 2310 less apprentices and 2248 less learners at polytechnics. That's the short term. It actually gets worse in the medium term: 18000 total industry trainees who will not be participating.The programme business case goes on to say "Well what is the likelihood of some of the risks actually happening?" The risk of workforce disruption: almost certain. Participation in vocational education dropping: almost certain. The needs of industry and employers not being met: again almost certain. The needs of the regions not being met: almost certain. Here's the spinner—the risk of the new model not achieving the desired outcomes: likely. Not my information—your information. Download it. It's your data. Then it was backed up of course by the regulatory impact assessment (RIA). So if you don't like what the Tertiary Education Commission is saying about all of this about the RoVE why don't we see what the RIA is saying—the regulatory impact assessment by the Ministry of Education and Treasury—on the quality assurance assessment: "the panel does not find the RIA fully convincing and complete at this stage"—wow.Again if we look at some of the risks the additional costs of the proposed approach—the certainty of additional costs was all medium for the workforce development councils the regional leadership groups and the mega polytechnics. Now maybe the benefits are going to be there. Maybe we're missing something. Maybe it's not all about the costs. The certainty of benefit for the Crown getting cost efficiencies: low; employment and productivity benefits: low; the community voice and better skills across all industries: low. So the costs: medium risk to be high; the benefits: low. In fact this written parliamentary question from about an hour and a half ago—thank you Minister for sending it to me—my question to him was "What is the net economic impact of the reform of vocational education?" and he wrote to me "It is not possible at this point to accurately quantify the broader benefits sought from the reforms"—wow.All this risk—80 percent of submitters saying "We don't think one polytechnic is going to work for us" and by the way I think it diminishes the voice of the 20 percent who sent in form submissions including Southern Institute of Technology—yes they may have been a form submission but many of them actually spent a lot of time and a lot of effort writing what they put. It wasn't just the default submission. So 80 percent against; this will fail in your own words."