Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. Te Pūkenga the mega-polytechnic and industry training organisation (ITO) brainchild of Chris Hipkins and Labour's centralisation ideology has so many problems. Where to start? The mess Chris Hipkins has made of our vocational education sector used to make me angry but now I am just heartbroken at the waste: waste of good staff waste of community and industry engagement waste of credibility with international students waste of money and most importantly waste of what used to be a world-class vocational education and training for our students.The Minister has stated that the financial situation of the polytech sector was why he embarked on this failed reform. He harks back to financial projections that were manufactured to support his ideological pathway. They were never peer reviewed or supported by those experienced and knowledgeable in the sector. They were a work of fiction to suit his narrative. He points to the bailouts of a handful of polytechnics that were in financial trouble. Well I would say to him: why did he just throw money at them to bail them out? That was irresponsible with public money. He should have undertaken specific remedial action to get them to known ratios like staff to students staff to teaching hours teaching hours to programme and then he should have peer reviewed their support services costs against like institutions and then he should have looked at alternative operating models for them. All the information is there to do it but of course he couldn't do it because he knew nothing about how to run a successful polytechnic or ITO and he refused to listen to those who did or offered to work with them. In his naivety he simply thought he knew best. We know he received a business case from Te Pūkenga in October and it told him that Te Pūkenga needed an additional almost $1 billion to operate—that's right almost $1 billion—because he brought everything together with these entities but they can't combine or operate centrally because they all have different IT systems different student management different finance different HR different online delivery. Anyone with an ounce of experience and common sense would have seen that problem before they started. We've already seen the fiasco of a chief executive leaving or being pushed out because he wasn't achieving the unachievable set by the Minister and a chief financial officer leaving after less than three months because he realised the Minister was asking for the impossible. Then we had the acting chief executive and chair going out on a consultation roadshow in August-September of this year saying to staff Nothing to be concerned about with your job only the chief executives will be impacted. You'll be lifted and shifted to Te Pūkenga at 1 January next year." Bad luck with that. The next layer of staff—the HR managers and chief information officers—are getting their marching orders as we speak but hey they are being consulted on it. Every polytechnic has been told to wind back expenditure by 3 percent regardless of whether they are operating efficiently or are in financial trouble. Fair or sensible? No of course not and how about recruiting international students into Te Pūkenga? The Associate Minister of Education talked about co-governance also and said that that hadn't been discussed—whoops! That has been advertised in the last couple of weeks. And the international student numbers? Australia is doing well but not us. Closed borders visa fiascos immigration policies not supportive of students and of course Te Pūkenga are all causing us problems.International agents and partner institutions don't even know what Te Pūkenga is. Other countries market universities institutes of technology colleges and polytechnics. They're all internationally known entities and we market Te Pūkenga. What is it? What does it do? This Labour Government have made a colossal mess of our vocational education sector. National will disestablish Te Pūkenga. Thank you Mr Speaker."