Walker HamishHAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): I rise to speak in support of Sarah Dowie's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) SOP 438 which seeks to exclude the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) from this bill the transitional arrangements that convert existing polytechs into this mega polytech. This bill is absolutely going to gut the province of Southland not only cost jobs at SIT but it's going to cost the province a lot in the long run. SIT is the heartbeat of Southland. The negative consequences of this bill come from the centralisation of assets and the centralisation from the decision-making powers. My colleague Sarah Dowie who's currently travelling to Parliament in a plane at the moment and I have been fighting this for well over one year. This will send the Southland community back to the days of the 1980s-1990s when we had a declining population.SIT and the Southland community have a proud history of innovation and you only need to go back a couple of decades when a group of innovative Southlanders got together and they came up with the idea of free fees at SIT the only institute in the country to offer this. SIT was able to do this due to the fact that decisions could be made locally on the ground. If we go to this one mega model where all decisions have to go through head office you will stifle that innovation. The bill currently presents a centralised New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology that will be slow to adapt lack that innovation I just spoke about and be risk-averse. Losing those local decision-making powers from the locals who know the area who live in the area is a step backwards.I want to talk about SIT's innovative approach to recruiting international students. These students don't have just a financial impact into the community but they benefit the entire community as they often stay in Southland. They keep our churches open. They keep our schools going. They provided much-needed work on farms for farmers. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country in Southland. We're short of workers. We need these students who often become much-valued members of a community.We also have a huge skills shortage in Southland. We need Southland to push forward which is why five years ago we came up with the regional development strategy to attract 10000 new people to Southland by 2025. The fact that a wonderful lady by the name of Penny Simmonds who's been at the helm for 22 years has probably the most innovative approach to attracting international students—because of SIT's small nature she can go overseas they can move quickly with the times and the market they can recruit these international students and the only assurance they've had from the Minister of Education over the past 12 months is We're not going to put that at risk." but there's no detail in the bill.You only need to look at the TAFE model overseas in Australia and recent surveys on that model from international recruitment agents show that it's very hard to follow. It's unresponsive because most students the one-size-fits-all model—students go to the larger centres. SIT has 13000 students therefore will no doubt miss out.The other area I have significant concerns about is the ring-fencing of the assets at SIT. You need to look at the last financial year. It had $38.5 million in assets; $7.5 million was raised by the local community to get SIT off the ground. The cash reserves have been built up and invested back into capital projects and into areas like accommodation blocks into programme development equipment and facilities for students' general wellbeing. Taking away those decision-making powers from a local level you lose that connection from the province from the local decision makers who know where to put that money. What the Government's basically saying is that the head office decision makers in Wellington know better than the people in Southland.This is probably the biggest reform that'll send Southland back definitely in my generation. I acknowledge Minister Hipkins for fronting up to a public meeting in Southland where several hundred people turned up in orange T-shirts: "Stand Up for SIT." I just hope the Minister will listen to those concerns and seriously consider having a carve-out for SIT. It's the most innovative and best-performing polytech in the country."