Woods Megan: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16801. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill and set out again why it is that Labour cannot support this piece of legislation. I would like to acknowledge the work of the Education and Science Committee. If this was the Academy Awards I think you would be handing out an award for courage under fire to the Government members of the select committee. They had to sit there while submitter after submitter from industry training organisation to industry training organisation—and the Industry Training Federation and the Contractors Federation agreeing with the Council of Trade Unions—all traipsed in one after the other and consistently told the Government members of this select committee exactly what was wrong with this legislation how it was not going to work and how it was not going to fulfil the aims and the purpose of what we need in New Zealand with regard to putting strong and coherent legislation in place around how we fulfil one of the most important tasks which is that of ensuring that we have a trained and skilled workforce that is fit for purpose to work in New Zealand jobs.This bill is simply not going to do that. The Government members of the select committee were told time and time again but the tragedy is that these messages did not get through. The Government was simply not willing to listen. Government members were arrogant and out of touch. They knew best about what was going to work. It did not matter that industry representatives were coming up and telling them: “No no I’m sorry—what you’re saying isn’t going to work. This isn’t going to be fit for purpose for how we train apprentices.” To hear Government members of the select committee like the previous speaker Simon O’Connor describe this as a collegial environment is somewhat surprising. I guess it was collegial in that all the submitters agreed. They agreed that this bill will not achieve its aims. But Government members sat there and they hardly asked a question because they knew that the legislation that they were hearing submissions on at the select committee and that they were going to have to bring back to this House simply would not work.What was it that Government members were told about this legislation? When submitters came in it was very much what the other members of the select committee also thought. First of all they were told that this legislation was nothing but a continuation of this Government’s privatisation agenda within the education skills and training sector. We have seen it with charter schools we have seen it with public-private partnerships in our secondary education system we have seen it with the competitive tendering of level 1 and 2 qualifications within our polytechnic system and now we are seeing it within our industry training system. What we are seeing is that agencies other than industry training organisations are going to be eligible for direct funding from the Government to fulfil training requirements.This legislation is not what is going to achieve the aims of the Government. It allows these organisations to get direct funding. We see this as nothing short of an ideological commitment from this Government to make sure that it privatises privatises and privatises every bit of our education system that it can get its hands on. It is this ideological blinkeredness that meant that Government members of that select committee sat there and had to listen to submitter after submitter telling them how just giving money out willy-nilly without some kind of a more strategic approach to this was not going to fulfil the aims of what was needed for industry training in this country.Other speakers have talked about the other major problem that stops us in Labour from being able to vote for this legislation and that is the removal of the skills leadership function from industry training organisations. Industry training organisations are not simply organisations that are put there to channel funding through and to come up with standards. We think that actually there is a really important leadership function for industry training organisations and what they can do for industry in New Zealand. Other speakers before me have talked about the impact that this will have on small and medium sized enterprises and a number of organisations that are wanting to undertake industry training organisations actually fall into that category.Another element that was brought up is that the changes contained within this legislation are going to water down the ability for pastoral care within industry training in and within our apprenticeship system. Pastoral care and the ability to deliver pastoral care are an absolutely critical part of any successful industry training or apprenticeship scheme. My PhD thesis was about Māori trade training during and after World War II. The absolute success of that scheme was premised on hostels and it was premised on the matrons and the staff who were in there providing the young trainees with the care and the pastoral guidance that they needed through their time as trainees. You remove this element from our system of training at your peril in terms of course completions and in terms of people getting the kinds of skills that we need.The tragedy for us on the Labour side and I think the Opposition side of the select committee was that it was not any great surprise that National was taking this approach to this legislation. It was a disappointment because we saw a real opportunity to do something here but it was no great surprise because this is the Government that scrapped apprenticeships in the 1990s. There are often shrieks from Government members when you talk about how National scrapped apprenticeship training in the 1990s but it happened and it took the incoming Labour Government of 1999 to reintroduce something and to step up to the plate and put something in place.This is also a Government that has absolutely dragged the chain when it comes to skills training to rebuild Christchurch and to address the housing crisis in Auckland. John Key talked a big game before the last election in 2011 about how we were going to seize the opportunity how we were having Skills for Canterbury and how there was $42 million put aside and this was going to be dedicated. It took this Government nearly 2 years to start spending the money. It sat there unused because this was a Government that has absolutely no commitment to skills and apprenticeship training—too little too late. We are now 3 years into a rebuild. We could have had more New Zealanders with the requisite skills and training working on that and we have lost and squandered that opportunity because this is a Government that just does not believe in this as part of what a vibrant future for New Zealand looks like. That money sat there. Government members are shaking their heads. Well I am sorry; the facts are straight. The money sat there and the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment Steven Joyce claimed that he was not going to “frogmarch” people into training situations. This is while there was very little effort to get people into those schemes.We need to think creatively we need to think differently and we need to think beyond the narrow ideologically blinkered piece of legislation that we have on the Table before us. I have a member’s bill in the ballot which I sincerely hope will get drawn one day that picks up a piece of Labour Party policy from the last election. It is about using the money that we pay to young people in terms of unemployment benefit as a payment to employers to offset some of their cost of taking on more apprentices. The tragedy is that if we had actually adopted some of these pragmatic and very very sensible solutions we would have had more young people 3 years through their training who were able to take a really active part in the clamour for skilled labour in Christchurch that the city is experiencing at the moment. This is the kind of lack of thinking the lack of clarity and the lack of creativity we are seeing in this area. Instead what we are seeing is a desperate clinging on to the need to privatise yet another bit of our education system. Not content with our primary and secondary schools and our polytechnic sector now the Government’s sights are set very firmly on the industry training sector.There are real concerns about this bill. We are very disappointed that Government members of the select committee did not take the opportunity to listen to the people who are on the ground who are involved in industry and who know what it is really like and what is needed out there but instead clung to their very very narrow beliefs and produced a piece of legislation that Labour cannot support because it is to the detriment of apprentice and skills training in this country. For Labour skills training and the kinds of commitment we give that are absolutely vital to our future.