Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): I'd like to just make a riposte here to the statements that the Minister has made talking about the speed of this bill which I spoke to in my first contribution agreeing that there is haste and saying that because of the uncertainty of the reforms people are changing jobs that it's damaging the industry. So the solution is instead of having uncertainty of reforms to have certainty. That's why the commencement date is what it is.Well let's reframe that. Instead of having an uncertain badness his solution is to have a certain badness. That just simply does not make sense. The commencement date of 1 April still needs some reflection.Furthermore with that commencement date the Minister is almost alluding to the fact that it will be somewhat business as usual. I think these were the words you were saying: a long transition to change it if we wanted was what he was saying. Well can I just point out that with a commencement date of 1 April several key things happen.First of all there's disestablishment of the local polytechnic councils and the local government arrangements. So that's quite significant with the 1 April commencement date. But secondly something more structural happens on 1 April. That is the polytechnics become subsidiaries and under the Companies Act certain obligations befall them. More specifically under the Companies Act when you're a subsidiary you must act in favour or accordance with the wishes of the parent. More specifically what this will mean is that polytechnics as a subsidiary will be unable to talk against to criticise or to critique the NZIST and therefore by obligation the workforce development councils and the Government. We will lose that ability for rational debate around how to make it better how to critique the parent how to critique the system through the structural formation of subsidiaries of polytechnics on the commencement date of 1 April.I don't think that's helpful. None of us like criticism but how do we improve unless we critique ourselves or we're externally critiqued? It doesn't really matter where the critique comes from. But what this bill will do with the haste that this is moving through is it will put an end to the ability for those in the sector at the polytechnic level to reasonably critique and offer comment against the direction that the NZIST and therefore this whole policy direction will be and I just simply don't think that's helpful. I don't think that's useful. I don't think that's a tenet of a good system.Again with a longer commencement date this could maybe be looked at and thought on again. There could be more time to anticipate what we actually do want: comments from the sector even though they may not be comments we want to hear. We understand that in a subsidiary arrangement they may not be able to do that. How do we change things? How do we figure it out? How do we maybe put removal of doubt clauses into the bill that says No no it will still actually be OK for a subsidiary to critique their parent body"?But again on this sort of haste—the Minister has agreed that the bill is moving at haste and made arguments—I mean you've really got to say people are leaving the sector because of uncertainty. The bill's causing the uncertainty; this whole policy is causing the uncertainty. It's a somewhat circuitous argument. So I would come back to the position that this is moving too fast everyone in the sector is—well certainly most people I speak to—saying that 1 April is not a date that can deploy or even attempt to successfully deploy the policies that the Minister is looking to bring into play. And again I'd ask him to reconsider the commencement date."