Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa in this committee of the whole House stage of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill. I just need to respond to a few of the points that have been put forward by members of the Opposition and also to add my support or tautoko to what the Minister of Education the Hon Chris Hipkins has put forward. The first thing that I think is just really important to raise is that during the second reading of this bill and actually indeed during the parts that I contributed or participated in at the select committee stage of this bill when we were hearing from stakeholders and from members of the community who will be impacted by these reforms I spoke across the aisle to members of the National Party because I am really keen on all of us working together for something that is going to be transformational and therefore a massive opportunity in vocational education for this country. I'm therefore quite gutted that they seem to have acted outside of that opportunity for good faith collaboration particularly because during the second reading only last week I asked for them to share their Supplementary Order Papers that they alluded they were going to put up this time around in this committee of the whole House stage. What they have done is kept them secret—keep all the cards close to their chest until they could table them just before this reading now which has meant that they have presented the opportunity for themselves to essentially filibuster and not contribute and it feels like the opportunity for meaningful collaboration and creative collaboration has been squandered. So I'd just like to say it's gutting—it's gutting. The previous National Governments and the reason that we have ended up in this situation with this need for reform and for transformation is that polytechs were left to flounder. That is immediately demonstrable if you look at the bill that we had to pick up when we came into Government and the fact that the vast majority of these polytechs were in a situation where we had to come as Government to their financial rescue. That's not at all to say that everything was going wrong but it is to say that the party which often holds themselves out to be that of financial sustainability or good planning when it comes to the economy really left us in a bad place here. I'd state as well with regard to that that I've heard from a number of those inside the polytech sector—inside Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics and Industry Training Organisations—that it appears as though that could arguably have been a conscious decision by former Ministers of Education within the National Party Governments because they wanted to see that transition into privatisation.If that's the case to bring some good faith to this argument they're more than welcome to put that explicitly on the table because I feel that would be a much more constructive contribution than what they're currently offering with attempting to slowly remove on an ad hoc basis through every single individual Supplementary Order Paper every single one of the polytechs that are named in this bill.I also think just in my final minute and a half—because this will be the only contribution from the Greens in this committee of the whole House stage because I think that we have had a thorough debate so far—that I'd like to reiterate—Hon Tim Macindoe: This is the place for the detailed consideration.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —that it's important—I understand Tim Macindoe that you'd like to filibuster but I'd really like to see some good legislation passed—when it comes to the average age of entry for those in the polytech sector. The average age in which one comes to study in a polytech is around 27 years old. I mentioned this in the second reading of this bill. The reason that that is important is because it highlights the lived experience of those who are in the polytech sector. They are often those who have left school who have potentially tried a little bit of tertiary education have decided to maybe try some form of occupation but then have decided to ultimately retrain. This is important because it indicates the ongoing changes that we are going to see in our economy as there is less predictability for those who are working people. It is really critical that we consider the potential that we have to build on a positive future when it comes to vocational education because of the opportunities that it presents in terms of minimising people's exposure to the precariousness of the gig economy but also to the challenges that we are going to face in a just transition to a climate neutral Aotearoa come 2050. The Green Party of Aotearoa is proud to add support to this bill.