Little Andrew: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionLittle Andrew: Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14378. Text is subject to correction.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): You know it is an incredible thing as I rise to speak on the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill that as the rest of the country is celebrating the blowing up of Parliament when some parts of the country are celebrating a more indigenous event—that is the events at Parihaka the events about peace—and at a time when the Opposition is trying to assist the Government and support this bill we have the mad rantings of the members of the Government. How amazing it is that otherwise respectable members like Tim Macindoe should want to go back 10 years but refuse to go back to 1992. How is it that members like Colin King can talk about the last 5 years but whose brain sort of does not compute when it comes to 1992? Then there is Cam Calder who had the temerity to talk about the vast army of the living dead. I thought he was talking about the National Party conference a few weeks ago but of course he was talking about the age of industry training during the Labour Government. But again he failed to acknowledge the disaster zone that this National Government left apprenticeships and industry training in in the period between 1992 and 1999.That party when it was in Government the last time all but destroyed the hopes and the dreams of young people in this country to get on and get practical skills to get apprenticeships and to do on-the-job training. That was the legacy that the last Labour Government had to pick up and address and fix up which it did with aplomb from 1999. Let us not forget the damage the vicious damage that the National Government from 1990 to 1999 did to industry training in this country. And National members all hang their heads in shame as they should—as they should. I am still waiting for the apology. I am still waiting for the official apology. Maybe it will be the next generation the young bucks of the National Party the Simon O’Connors of the world who when he cannot run a full marathon has to run a half-marathon. But that is still an achievement. We do not detract from that. Fresh from his half-marathon plodding over the bridge—maybe he can offer the apology for what his predecessors did to industry training. Let us make no mistake. But I want to say in the spirit of generosity and as we the parliamentarians of this generation hunker down while the rest in the Commonwealth countries celebrate our blowing up let us hunker down and let us offer the Government this support.This bill stands in stark contrast to the National Party’s efforts last time it was in Government in 1992. The 2000s were about rebuilding industry training and apprenticeships in this country because the truth is that we had a massive drop-off. Ifyou talk to tradespeople today—you will not talk to many under the age of about 45—they will say “Where is that generation behind us?”. There is an emerging generation of those who started their apprenticeships under the last Labour Government. They are in their late 20s and early 30s now but there was that big gap. There are those who are in their 60s now waiting to retire at 67 and pick up their superannuation some who are being asked by their employer—Tracey Martin: 67? 65.ANDREW LITTLE: I know that New Zealand First supports us on this because it wants universal superannuation just as much as we do. But I have met tradespeople—tradesmen actually because they are all men. I met one recently who at the age of 68 has been asked by his employer whether he would be happy to work for another 5 years so that it can get the latest group of apprentices up to speed before he retires. He is a linesman. He cannot—John Hayes: Why don’t you retire?ANDREW LITTLE: Because Mr Hayes I have a lot more years to offer this Parliament than you do. The people of the Wairarapa will have something to say about that. I venture to suggest that I probably have offered a bit more to this Parliament in the last 2 years than the honourable member has in his time here which is a lot longer than that. But I want to say this. There are some 68-year-olds Mr Hayes—and you might want to take a lead from them—who are keen to retire and who want to make way for the younger generation but because they are in trades occupations their employers are saying to them: “We need you to stay.” These are tradespeople whose job it is to clamber up ladders in the dead of night during the fiercest storms in Canterbury and the rest of the country to restore power and make sure that we can all snuggle up in our warm beds—snuggle up in John Hayes’ warm bed in the Wairarapa—Dr David Clark: Please no.ANDREW LITTLE: No no not with him. No he can snuggle up in his warm bed but the rest of us do not have to join him—the rest of us do not have to join him. Employers want the tradespeople to be able to do the fantastic job they do but they are an ageing workforce. So we have to do more.Hon Simon Bridges: Hey you get back to snuggling up with John Hayes.ANDREW LITTLE: “Mr Anadarko” over there—his client companies they need their tradespeople as well. Maybe one or two of them will be pulled from Kaikōura although Colin King was not so sure. But we need those people. We need people to be going into apprenticeships and into industry training. This bill will go some way to do that.There are a couple of things I want to comment on about it because this is important stuff. Apprenticeships are important. They have been important in this country since the age of Julius Vogel—the only Premier for a long time who took seriously the rebuilding of infrastructure. Of course now we have got a generation of politicians who want to sell our infrastructure. At least Julius Vogel had the vision to build our infrastructure and he understood the value of apprenticeships which is why we have had them since that time. We have been very thankful for those generations of workers of indentured tradespeople who have come from other shores to add to our industry training and apprenticeship training capacity. That has been very important.Industry training is very important too. On-the-job training is vital. There is a part of our cohort who do not take easily to sitting behind a desk and learning theory. They learn on the job and they are very important to us too. We have world-class on-the-job training. We have had a world-class on-the-job training system under our industry training legislation and we need to continue that.The reality is as we know as I think this Government knows and as we too would acknowledge that where we got to in the 2000s was that there were some industry training organisations that were more into empire building and building up their accumulated reserves than they were into training people. I agree with the Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment and I agreed with him at the time when I was a union secretary about the criticism of those industry training organisations that could boast extraordinary bank balances but not much by way of the output of industry training and apprenticeships. So it was right that there should be some reform. It was right that there should be some rationalisation. One of the very good things that this bill will do is set up a programme and a means for proper rationalisation.I remember when I sat on the board of the Tertiary Education Commission and we were dealing with industry training organisations. There were about 46 of them at that time including one I remember very well which was the New Zealand Equine Industry Training Organisation which had only seven trainees. It is appropriate that I should mention that on this day of great equine achievement and indeed equine training achievement with Mike Moroney and his achievements at Flemington today. But the New Zealand Equine Industry Training Organisation had only seven trainees and we did wonder whether an entire organisation should be built around that. But the Tertiary Education Commission at the time had no levers to pull to not just encourage but sometimes compel those amalgamations and mergers and now we will have the means to do that.One point I do want to make is that I want to just acknowledge the strange sort of approach to tripartism. The industry training organisations always reflected a level of tripartism. The current legislation provides for workers’ representatives in governance and of course employers. This bill makes explicit the role of employers in the governance but then the bill goes from section 6 on employer governance to new section 11 for workers’ representatives to be in governance. I am not quite sure why that should be reflected in that way.There will be some questions I think that will be raised as we examine this on how existing industry training organisations manage themselves. I think the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation will stand out for attention because one of the problems it has here is that this is an industry that is crying out for more apprentices and it has not had them. That is partly because 50 percent of its apprentices up to now have been labour-only contractors. They have not been employed under conventional employment agreements. We might want to say that under this legislation we should have more conventional arrangements in order to encourage apprentices. But we will support this legislation. We see great hope for it and we will examine it closely in the Education and Science Committee.