Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Women): I do agree with the member Tracey Martin who spoke prior to me about really recognising the vital role that rural women provide across the country. As a rural MP I know first hand how important they are and also the challenges that they have faced over the last little while. But I was disturbed earlier in the House today to hear members opposite actually scoffing at the highest level of women's participation in the workforce ever. I found that a bit disturbing because I would have thought that that side of the House would be celebrating the achievements of women in employment as well as in leadership which I spoke about earlier. One of the challenges of course when you have such a strong growing economy is looking at how we provide even greater and deeper opportunities for our young people. As the Associate Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment I am particularly proud of the release of the Building Skilled and Safe Workplaces chapter of our Business Growth Agenda. This is one of six chapters that are really fundamental to how we are going about growing the economy. It contains the 55 initiatives that are currently under way as well as announcing 12 new ones. They are about ensuring that we are continuing to grow our economy and continuing to grow the skills that actually young and old New Zealanders have. Part of that announcement was the two new skills hubs in Auckland. The Auckland CBD Jobs and Skills Hub which of course is in the Wynyard Quarter will revolve around the extensive commercial development that is going on in that area. One of the keys though and one of the things you will hear more and more about is the partnership approach. These hubs are a partnership between central government local government businesses tertiary providers Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development and industry training organisations. We have seen the huge success of what has occurred in Canterbury with this very joined-up approach and I am particularly proud of the significant increases in the number of women in construction in Canterbury. This partnership is a vital approach and one that we are seeing as leading to even greater levels of success because of leveraging off one another. Of course today we have announced a new target to have 50000 people training in apprenticeships by 2020. No matter what part of New Zealand you are in we will see that there are more and more employers who are seeking out young New Zealanders who are willing to train in their areas whether it is the whole range of fields in construction—of course the primary industries are still crying out for more people to train in their areas. Another of the initiatives that have been under way is the Sector Workforce Engagement Programme. Yes there is one in tourism as well as horticulture the dairy industry one that is particularly important in my electorate is the one for the road freight operators and of course construction. When we have a significant building boom like we do now we need to make sure that we are training more young New Zealanders in the area of need. But there have been a few conversations over the last few days about the young people who are not in education employment or training. From what I have heard Labour is clearly out of touch with this particular group whereas our Government has put in a range of different initiatives. We are continuing to innovate whether it is the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative trades academies Youth Guarantee or the skills hubs that we have announced. We are also trialling an initiative called DualPathways which supports tertiary education providers in secondary schools to again as I said work in partnership with employers and industries. It means that students can be enrolled part-time in secondary school and part-time in tertiary education. We are working hard on that very group of young New Zealanders whom we want to provide with the greatest of opportunities whether they are male or female. I am particularly proud as I said before that we are providing more opportunities to young New Zealand women. This is a Government that is working hard to provide opportunities for all New Zealanders to make sure that they are valued for the work that they do and that they upskill in the areas where there is high demand high wages and greater opportunities in the future so that we can build a New Zealand we will all be proud of. Thank you.