Hipkins ChrisDEBATE ON PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENTDebate resumed from 14 February.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): It is a great time to be a New Zealander. This is a country on the move: a country with a proud independent foreign policy; a country with a Government that is determined to give New Zealanders the opportunity to improve their quality of life and to achieve their full potential; a Government that has lifted the incomes of 350000 New Zealand families already through the Families Package; a Government that has lifted around 64000 children out of poverty already and we are only just getting started; a Government that is delivering strong economic growth of around 3 percent and forecast to stay at that level; a Government that has delivered near-record unemployment at 4.3 percent—the second-lowest in a decade of course and just slightly higher than the last quarter which was the lowest in a decade. This is a Government that is delivering consistently strong Budget surpluses and is going to continue to do so in contrast with the woeful track record of the last Government. It is a Government that is delivering responsible management of the Government's debts. I'm very proud of the achievements this Government has already had under its belt in its short time in office so far to date: banning overseas speculators from buying up New Zealand homes because we believe that New Zealanders should be at the front of the queue not the back of the queue when it comes to being able to buy a house; stopping the sell-off of State houses so that we can accommodate the New Zealanders who so desperately need somewhere to live and who were neglected.I have to say we are proud of the Provincial Growth Fund which is already investing in 136 projects which are estimated to create over 12000 jobs—over 12000 jobs—in the regions throughout New Zealand. The National Party hate it because they know that in the regions New Zealanders love it. They want to see jobs created in the regions of this country and they have no real ideas around how to do that because they spent nearly a decade telling New Zealanders it wasn't possible to create jobs in the regions. Well we're getting on and doing just that.Last week I announced on behalf of the Government some bold reforms to vocational education and training.Hon Grant Robertson: About time.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: About time." the Minister of Finance says. That's what the country has been saying over the past week since we've made those announcements. We desperately need to see more education and training in the regions around New Zealand but the system we inherited from the last Government was seeing cut after cut after cut to our polytechs and institutes of technology. But we also need to know that in addition to seeing more education and training delivered in the regions we need it to be more relevant. We need more apprenticeships.We need a much stronger link between training that's delivered on the job through apprenticeships and training that's delivered off the job through our polytechs and institutes of technology. We also need to see industry stepping up and playing a bigger role in determining the skill requirements that they need because it's no good business and industry saying they're not getting the skilled workers they need if they're not involved in helping to solve the problem. We want to create an opportunity for them to provide leadership and be more involved in setting skill requirements and in helping to meet the skill needs that this country has.We want more consistency in the national qualifications—the vocational qualifications—that are being offered throughout the country. Let's not forget that it was the National Government in the early 1990s that abolished the apprenticeship system in the first place. Twenty-five years later this is a Government that's not afraid to take the big bold moves required to put back together vocational education and training in New Zealand. The system of separating out on-job training from off-job training and treating them as if they are completely separate systems has not worked. It has not served New Zealand well and we are going to fix that.I do want to provide some reassurance though that this is about ensuring that we are getting more education and training in the regions. Of course there will continue to be a place for regional distinctiveness—that's vitally important. We want to see more links between the education and training offered through polytechs and institutes of technology and the regional and economic development strategies in regions. It works well in some parts of the country at the moment but it needs to work well in every part of the country.And it cannot work well in some parts of the country by some institutions eating the lunch of others which is what is happening at the moment. Some of those institutions are doing well by going and raiding students from the others and that is not sustainable and we need to change that. We don't need every one of our polytechs to have a campus in Auckland. We actually want them focused on delivering education and training in the regions of New Zealand. We cannot sustain a system that in the last year alone required $100 million in bailouts from the Government just to preserve the status quo which is serving fewer and fewer students. We actually need a system that is gearing up for growth that is going to see more people involved in vocational education and training so that we can build the houses that we need. But at the moment one of the constraints is we don't have enough tradespeople to do it and it is the same with infrastructure. Our primary industries are crying out for skilled labour on our farms in our food manufacturing businesses and at the moment the system is not delivering those. We're going to fix that and the National Party needs to front up and say what they would do about it because they seem all content on complaining but they don't seem to have very many solutions.That's possibly because they're a little bit focused on a few other issues like who perhaps their leader might be. I'm a little confused as to who the leader actually is because it seems that some of their MPs don't even know. Take Matt King for example—one of the most honest members they have in the National Party. When asked about it he said "I like Simon. I like Judith. I like a few of our leaders." How many they have is unclear at this point but he went on to say "Look there are a number of people in our caucus that can lead the party and I'd be happy with any of them." What a ringing endorsement for Simon Bridges—not exactly a ringing endorsement. He did say though—if Judith went for the job and had the support of the caucus—"I'd support Judith as well".Nuk Korako was even more ambivalent: "There's a number of people who would make a great leader. We'll just see." was the comment from him—and I think we probably will see. But then there was a lot of what my colleague Grant Robertson called the ATMs in the National Party: the "at the moments". Gerry Brownlee saying that there is no leadership up for consideration "at the moment" and then we had Tim van de Molen saying "Simon's doing a good job at the moment". That was the chorus coming out of the National Party last week. But then what should be alarming to Simon Bridges was the quote from Judith Collins that will have a shiver down his spine. "I'm very clearly not ruling anything out." was the comment from Judith Collins. Then—even worse—from Judith Collins: "My job is to do whatever the caucus needs me to do." If someone needs to get blood on their hands for the National Party caucus Judith Collins is not afraid. She's ready. She was limbering up in the House the other day while Simon Bridges was doing his speech. Of course the National Party caucus opinion on Judith Collins is quite divided as Anne Tolley let on. We got the quote from the Anne Tolley who said "You either love her or hate her." Well that's a statement of fact of course but the question is who falls into each camp at the moment in the National Party? Of course then we had more comments from Judith Collins herself including what would fall into the category of damning with faint praise: "The caucus has voted for the leader and he is doing the very best job he can." I don't know that there could be a more ringing un-endorsement of a party leader than what we just saw from Judith Collins and from the National Party caucus. But of course I've read this book before. I'll tell you how it goes. What goes is that the caucus goes into their room and they're like: "We've got to attack more things the Government is doing." So they bark at every passing car and then New Zealanders simply see them as a torrent of negativity and the polls continue to go down and they wonder why it is happening to them when they are barking at every passing car and they are scoring all of these little victories that they think are victories. But they're actually just reinforcing the problem that they've got which is that New Zealanders no longer understand what the National Party stands for. All they know of the National Party is that they want to spend more money they want to borrow less money they want to cut taxes and they've got no idea how to reconcile all of those things. They're opposed to everything that the Government's doing and yet they've got no ideas of their own. The National Party has simply lost their way. The National Party of 10 years ago has vanished replaced by a very depressing mob who are going to have plenty of time to be depressed before they figure out what to do."