Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I take this opportunity to speak on the appalling situation that's unfolding for our vocational education sector under the growing dominance of the Te Pūkenga monolith created by Minister Hipkins to somehow magically fix the issues of the sector. Don't get me wrong there were some issues: a small number of polytechnics not operating in a business-like manner; some too small to be viable on their own; a funding system not meeting needs; unhelpful competition between industry training organisations and industry training providers; and most significantly a multitude of different ways that funding had been stripped out of the polytech sector over successive years—base grants degree top-ups funding of clinical placements adult and community education funding. The list goes on and on to amount to tens of millions of dollars taken out of the polytech sector until one day Minister Hipkins disingenuously said This sector is broken. I know how to fix it. I'll amalgamate them all cause enormous anxiety and disarray even though I have done no modelling on how this will fix the problems and the feedback from the consultation says overwhelmingly it will not."So let me list where the Minister has gone wrong. Firstly the Minister took a $48 million net deficit problem in the sector pre-amalgamation and turned it into a $110 million net deficit forecast for the sector this year. And to achieve that outstandingly bad result the Minister used $200 million of public money on consultants and transition costs to make the problem one and a half times worse. Now be very sure to understand that that money wasn't spent on students or staff or industries or communities but on consultants and head office. Secondly the Minister has caused such anxiety and uncertainty in this sector that the most experienced and high-performing managers have left the sector and in at least some of the polytechnics if not all staff turnover has doubled.Thirdly we now hear there could be around 600 jobs lost from the actual polytechnics to address the financial problem and to make room for the 450 Te Pūkenga head office non-teaching staff that will take $100 million a year to run in an entity that the Minister assured us would not be just adding another layer of bureaucracy to the system. Mind you the Minister also assured us that the best from each polytechnic would be taken and used by Te Pūkenga so I'm struggling to understand with marketing departments and sixteen polytechnics why Te Pūkenga had to use an external marketing consultant.Fourthly the introduction of a new unified funding system without a technical system to deploy it will from next year give the Minister a whole lot more control to play favourites in the sector with large contestable components of funding. At the same time it will reduce the funding of those pesky private providers which socialists so desperately despise and will reduce the funding for distance delivery of education the very mode of delivery which enables flexibility for students and employers and financial viability for campuses with small classes. Who would have imagined in these times of COVID a disincentive to use technology enabling flexibility?Fifthly allowing Te Pūkenga to establish an operating model with seven long silos ascending from grassroots up into the centre of the great controlling monolith—none of this nonsense of entities working together at a community level or making decisions in the region but layer after layer after layer of non-teaching bodies in that great centre of Te Pūkenga. And now Minister Hipkins we wait with bated breath to see what will come of the regional skills leadership groups' regional plans which will probably duplicate the work of economic development agencies and actually tell us what any person walking down the street could tell us: we have skill shortages in most industries. But I'm sure they'll recommend rationalisation and more direction from the centre.If a business had done what Minister Hipkins has done they would be out of business and owing creditors millions. But actually he would never have been given that amount of money to fulfil an ideological dream without a sound business plan in the private sector and therein lies the problem: it is so easy for this Government to waste other people's money on ideological vanity projects."