Fenton Darien: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionFenton Darien: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14381. Text is subject to correction.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): I rise to support the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill and welcome putting apprenticeships back into theIndustry Training Act of 1992. Before I get into the bill may I say I think the previous speaker Simon O’Connor is feeling just a little bit envious about the progressive Labour Party. It actually is prepared to confront the issue of gender representation and perhaps before he criticises this party he should have a look at his own in terms of representation of women in that party. If he does not think there is a problem about women in industry training he should go and have another look at the figures.One of the things I think is a little bit sad about this bill even though we support it is that we are repairing an awful lot of damage that was done during the 1990s particularly to apprenticeships. As we have heard tonight Labour had to bring in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme and deal with trying to put apprentices back into the picture after they were taken out of the picture by a National Government in the 1990s.I also just wanted to reflect on the last election and what Labour was committing to do about apprenticeships particularly around young people. I want to tell listeners that actually if Labour had been in power by now we would have had every at-risk 15 and 19-year-old either learning or earning and we would have provided for 9000 unemployed New Zealanders to come off the unemployment benefit and into apprenticeships with a subsidy of $8727 equivalent to the dole going to employers willing to offer a permanent full-time job. I went and talked to quite a lot of people during the last election particularly those running group and shared apprenticeship schemes and so on and they were very enthusiastic about this policy and very condemning of the fact that the National Government had run down industry training with $55 million cut from industry training. This is at a time when unemployment is now up to 170000. There are 294000 people actually jobless and 113000 people looking for more hours. It has declined by 20 percent under National so it is pleasing to see something in the House at last after nearly 6 years of a National Government addressing the issue of apprenticeships.I also want to draw the attention of members opposite to the purpose of this bill. It is of course about providing opportunities for young people and older people to get the appropriate skills and qualifications that are portable that are relevant and that are going to enhance their employability. This is not about employers doing favours for people by offering them apprenticeships; this is about making sure that we are building the skills that we need for the future of our country. Without the industry training that we have had over many years we know that it has caused a huge problem. It has also added to our low wages in New Zealand. Industry training and apprenticeships actually get people with skills so that they can take on the kinds of jobs that we need in this country—we are going to make things that the rest of the world needs—and they will make those people much more employable.As others have said also we import skilled workers. I think there is no greater example of that than in Christchurch at the moment. It is disgraceful really that 3 years after an earthquake—3 years later when we knew there was going to have to be a rebuild—we are now importing something like 17000 or 18000 workers from overseas from other countries to help with the Christchurch rebuild. It has to be done but when Shane Jones sees the unemployed young Māori in Northland from where he comes you cannot blame him for asking why it is that that is happening when we are bringing in skilled workers in Christchurch. It is a failure of this Government to address the need that was clearly coming.I think it is very important that the Education and Science Committee has a very close look at industry training and apprenticeships because I think there are some rorts still going on and they are different rorts from the ones that the members opposite decided. It concerns me for example that we have people training to be hairdressers in industry training who are paid $10000 to $20000 to learn to be hairdressers yet theyare on minimum wage—in fact they are on training wages which is about $11 an hour. That is supposed to be tied to credits. In fact did this Government not reduce the number of credits that you have to have or can have to be paid a minimum wage or training wage? I think there are some quality issues there. I think there are some rorts for young people and that does concern me. I hope that the select committee takes the opportunity to have a look at that.I think another obvious issue at the moment is other areas of skills. We all talk about building and construction but it really bemuses me that we are having a debate in this country about truck drivers at the moment. We have an industry that is simply unable to get people to drive trucks even though we have had industry training in that area for some time. Why is it that people do not want to do that job? My colleague Andrew Little talked about the building and construction industry and how many apprenticeships are actually labour only which seems to me an incredible rort actually. That is a terrible rort. They are supposedly apprenticeships but the apprentices are not even being paid properly. They are supposedly self-employed with no security of employment and paying their own ACC.One thing that happened in the last year was that Mainzeal Property and Construction went bust. But before that it applied to Immigration New Zealand to bring in 100 Chinese workers to work in its business called King Facade. People objected to that at the time and the unions objected to it on the basis that this was a job where New Zealanders should be being trained—that is we did not need to be importing Chinese workers to do basically what is a job where New Zealanders could be trained and have a profession and have an occupation that would hold them in good stead. The sad thing about what happened to those Chinese workers of course is that they all got sent home when Mainzeal Property and Construction went bust. So not only were there opportunities lost for New Zealand workers but also those Chinese workers were not treated particularly well.Anyway as I said at the beginning Labour is committed to supporting this bill and that we have the skilled workforce that we need. We want New Zealanders to have jobs and opportunities and we want to make sure that we hold the Government to account and make sure that it gets moving on this. It is a serious concern that we have a shortage of skilled tradespeople and I think it is a disgrace that we have overseen the loss of thousands of apprenticeships under National—thousands of opportunities for industry training. Our young people have suffered. The 20 percent drop in the number of Modern Apprenticeships and a 37 percent drop in the number of industry trainees are shameful. It has fed into the unemployment of our young people. It has created a whole problem for the future. I am glad that the Government has seen sense and has brought this bill to the House and we look forward to supporting it. Thank you.