Beaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:16951. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour):Like my colleagues I am rising to speak in opposition to this Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill. I have to say like a couple of people who have mentioned this that this is a lost opportunity. I just want to explain before I speak specifically on clause 15 of the bill—and particularly in relation to new sections 11A and 11B around industry training organisations and also persons other than industry training organisations receiving funding for industry training—that the reason this is a missed opportunity is that we had a real chance to get a bill that dealt with something as important as industry training and apprenticeships to have support across the House. That would have been I think a very important signal.In some regards this is one of the key structural problems in our economy—the skill shortages that we have in trades and technical areas—and the fact is that we have high unemployment especially for young people at a time when we are having to import people into Christchurch to rebuild that city because we do not have enough skilled tradespeople. When there is a change of Government and we get a real building programme going in Auckland for affordable housing we will have the problem of a shortage of tradespeople to do that work.That is a really important structural problem in our economy. It is absolutely disgraceful that we are not dealing with that and we could have. There was an opportunity with this bill to get real consensus on something as important as industry training and apprenticeships. I think the public of New Zealand want to see this issue sorted out because people know that it is important in our economy to have the people who can do that skilled work. It does not necessarily require them going to university to get a degree but it does require them going through what is a time-tested and very very worthwhile process and that is an apprenticeship—an apprenticeship to get a skill that is really important and valued in our country. But in fact what we have done here is miss that opportunity. We have missed that opportunity.As others have said we will be voting against this bill. The Government will force through a bill that actually potentially undermines those important needs that I have just outlined. Our first reason for thinking that that is an issue of concern is this almost I think ideological provision. So instead of industry training organisations being able to get about and do their job we are going to enable funding to go to others to do this. Who will those others be? Those others will be large businesses. They will not be small businesses and they will not necessarily be delivering the industry training that we need delivered which is to provide people with the sorts of skills that are transferable—the sorts of skills that we need across a whole industry and that are not specific to a particular business.When the industry training scheme started I was on the board of an industry training organisation and at that stage that was clearly what happened with the funding. The funding came in and it basically went out to the larger businesses in that industry to do training that actually in all honesty they should have been doing themselves—business-specific training.This industry training and apprenticeship money is not to do the training that businesses need for their own specific needs. That is a cost of doing business as is health and safety training. Those things actually pay real dividends to a company. There is no question about it. Any good employer knows that if you invest in training and if you teach people what they need to do you will get better outcomes. Productivity will rise. There is research evidence after research evidence on that.But the question here is what are the things that are particular to that individual business and what the things are that we need for people who are going to be tradespeople in a particular area. What are the things that they need to have that will mean that they can operate at that business at another business at a different business again? That is the question here and by providing the opportunity for particular companies to get funding to do industry training we think there is a real risk there that what will in fact happen is business-specific training. It is yet another example of the commitment to privatisation. So we are very concerned about that provision in new section 11A set out in clause 15.In some ways ironically—before I go on—this is undermining what has actually been some reasonably good work in terms of reviewing industry training. We have not been ideologically opposed to the need to look at how industry training organisations have operated. We have said: “OK yes there are things that need to change.” and there has been some work done there. Industry training organisations have gone through a significant period of restructuring and are well tooled up potentially to go forward here but now ironically the Government is legislating to undermine their ability to do their job. That seems just absolutely ridiculous.The funding—just to summarise—going to those specific businesses potentially benefits individual large businesses at the cost potentially of small businesses. It will undermine the good work that has gone into restructuring and it potentially means that we do not deal with the real industry skills needs that we have in this country.This leads me nicely into my second point and the second major concern we have had which is about removing the skills leadership role of industry training organisations. It is almost like there is a pathological opposition across the Chamber to being strategic or to planning for anything. It is like somehow the invisible hand will tell you where there are skills shortages and what the needs going into the future of a particular industry might be. Well actually that is an absolute nonsense. We do need to collaborate at an industry level and to get together to say what the emerging trends in this industry are what the changes to technology that are happening in this industry are what we are seeing in terms of the people coming into the industry and whether we need to broaden the pool of talent that we are accessing—and I am going to come to that point in a minute. But that happens at an industry level not an individual business level and that skills leadership role for industry training is being taken off industry training organisations. That is just a complete and utter sham and a nonsense.We have skills shortages. I absolutely challenge somebody opposite to stand up and tell this Committee that there are not major skills shortages in this country. I know that none of the members opposite can do that because we know it to be true. The public know it to be true and to do something about that we need to be strategic and we need to plan.I do have to mention one particular thing that my colleague Dr Megan Woods touched on and it was that under new section 11B “Obligations of industry training organisations” one of the obligations is to “have regard to the needs of Māori and other population groups”. It is critically important that we deal with the absolute gap that there is in industry training and that is the lack of women in industry training. When 1 percent of the trainees in building and construction are women and it is 6 percent in infrastructure and 7 percent in electrical supply there is a problem here. As was mentioned the National Council of Women came up with a very sensible suggestion about dealing with this which could also have been part of this bill and that was to put women specifically in there as one of those targets if you like. We are talking about the majority of the population. We are therefore reducing the opportunities available to women but this is also meaning that businesses are not necessarily accessing the full pool of talent.Supposedly the Government strategy is to have greater economic independence for women. Rather than paying our aged-care workers what they are worth and dealing with pay equity the strategy of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is that women will move into higher-paid roles and get better incomes that way—including in non-traditional jobs like those in trades and technical industries. Well that has been a resounding failure and an opportunity to really push that in this bill has been missed.I think again if we are looking at ensuring that our economy has the trained people that we need in those trades and technical areas but also flipping it over if we are making sure that people in this country have an opportunity to get good-quality skilled work that provides a range of opportunities for them and their families then there is a real problem here. There is a real failure to address that in this bill.