King Colin: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
King Colin: Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13216] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 When we listen to Labour members talking about their goals and aspirations around tertiary education we know that we cannot have any confidence in them. Basically we have the old adage that a leopard will not change its spots and once something has been made crooked it cannot be made straight. Those could be quite good lines to use in addressing the title of this bill the Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill. 
It is quite rich when we hear Labour members trying to blame previous Governments for the model that they have carried on with for 8 long years in funding tertiary education. When we check out Labour’s policy on its website we find it quite interesting to see that Labour members have been the ones who have perpetuated this low-quality visionless numbers game. Labour talks about building up to some 250000 people in industry training. At the moment we have something like 140000 in industry training and we are having great difficulty in maintaining quality tertiary education at our institutions. Today we heard Labour’s boasting about getting close to 14000 Modern Apprentices. We have to remind people that there are 140000 people in industry training. The Government has spent over $200 million on trying to get a completion rate of just under 4000. Again we would be wise to consider this bill as amounting to 7 years of going sideways—7 years of wastage. 
It is interesting when we consider the performance of the Labour Government around tertiary education especially in industry training that the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation in Auckland last year had a 9 percent completion rate of its Modern Apprentices. The parallel apprenticeship programme run out of the Manukau Institute of Technology had a 90 percent completion rate. So today we are seeing the abysmal performance of a Government flagship policy whereas the parallel programme that has been produced and developed by the Manukau Institute of Technology and all the other institutes of technology around New Zealand is outperforming this sham that the Labour Party calls the Modern Apprenticeships programme. [ 
Interruption 
] I am sure that the member who represents the electorate of Waimakariri would be very interested to know that when we look at the conduct of the Minister—and he has a big part to play in this Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill—we see that when he talked this year about setting the fee maxima he failed to gazette it. It was part of our job on the select committee to ensure that we inserted another clause in the bill so that we could enact this year’s fee maxima. The Minister had overlooked it and he failed to gazette the fee maxima. 
When we look at the purpose of the bill we see that quite iconic line that states: “… without affecting the academic freedom and autonomy of institutions preserved and enhanced by the principal Act”. We know that that was stated previously in section 161 of the Act but the reason why it was put back in was that the committee felt that the Minister had too much authority. When we go over to new section 159AC “Revocation and replacement or amendment of tertiary education strategy” inserted by clause 8 we see it all laid out there that the Minister has an enormous amount of control. All the way through this bill we see that the Minister has quite unshackled authority. That scared the institutions and they recognised that there was a risk there. 
When we look at it all we see that we have had a capped funding arrangement at the industry training end and we have had universities providing high-quality education. We have had this industry training section in the middle that has been coming to Wellington about every 5 days on its knees and begging for money. The Education (Tertiary Reforms) Amendment Bill should be sorting out the industry training section.