Young JonathanJONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Thank you Mr Chair for the opportunity to speak in the committee stage of this bill. I come from Taranaki from the city of New Plymouth where we have the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki (WITT) as our polytechnic that serves our region. It has a campus in New Plymouth and one in Hāwera and it serves 3500 students. It has recently had a new chief executive who is leading that organisation with great energy and vision and it has what I consider a particularly high-class board of councils that are all local people who have a great passion for our region and who are professional experienced and connected to our community. There are many aspects of this bill which I think do not assist with the ongoing development of a centre of excellence that we wish and know WITT can become for our region. I think that is in particular around losing independence or losing the ability to actually determine their future by becoming a subsidiary of the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology. The kind of homogenisation of the tertiary sector training for skills and trades in technical areas does not actually befit I think New Zealand particularly well because Hawke's Bay is different from Taranaki it's different from Northland and it's different from Waikato and we have different needs. The Minister will full well know the decisions that his Government made that affect one of the significant industries or perhaps two or three industries in our region. So I want to speak to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 429 which I have lodged and that's regarding independence by our local polytech to be able to manage and control its assets. We need to have that flexibility that nimbleness that I don't believe a national organisation will afford.In our particular region the Government has sought to transition our very effective and professional workforce away from the oil and gas sector. Yes they will have transferable skills; unfortunately many of those transferable skills take them out of the country to other countries around the South Pacific and Asia-Pacific in particular. The sort of skill base that we need in our region is unique and it needs to have I believe management and decision making around that and particularly the assets that support the training that is needed for our region for I think regional control around those assets—I think it's very very important.I'm sure that the Minister has been to our site in Bell Street where WITT operates from and I'm sure he will understand that it's down a residential street; there's virtually no parking as you approach WITT. So the council and the community of New Plymouth may at some point in time wish to relocate and have different areas in which they can do their training from. I think that the nimbleness around this is best left for local people.The previous speaker my colleague Lawrence Yule mentioned that the polytech in the Hawke's Bay received a bequeath—the benefit of a considerable piece of land. Look I doubt very very much that we're going to see those sorts of bequeaths come which are a huge benefit to local communities in terms of their training facilities if the concern is that those donations—and often in the millions and tens of millions of dollars—just end up in Crown ownership. I think that when people make an investment into a local community they want those local communities to have control and management of their local assets.So my SOP is requesting a carve-out that WITT and its council—a very professional dedicated group of people who I trust implicitly for the future of WITT's ongoing success—would in fact have the ability to control and manage their assets and that it wouldn't just be absorbed into some national pool. Thank you Mr Chair.