Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. So I rise to speak in opposition to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) in this its third reading. Much does seem quite minor and technical about it but what it does is continue this Government's theme of not trusting those that are out on the ground delivering education whether it's at the early childhood end of it or at the tertiary sector; of not trusting those that are delivering the education to make the right decisions; and of pulling the decision making back into the centre and particularly back to the Minister. In the early childhood education sector I have no doubt this legislation will lower quality will make it more difficult to set up new centres will reduce competition and will increase prices to families having to access these services. Some of the legislation also continues the Government's theme of wasting public money and also not understanding business processes. Let me give you the example of the police vetting which is now requiring prior to commencement work applicants for non-teaching and unregistered positions to be vetted. This will be a nightmare for police. It will put unnecessary strain on police resources at a time when they clearly need to be freed up for much more serious issues that they are having to deal with. When we brought this to the Minister's attention in the committee stage the Minister said he was looking at streamlining this process. Now what does that throwaway line even mean? We hear things like that: streamlining; work smarter not harder. What does it mean? The reality is if 30 people apply for one position the police will have to vet those 30 people applying even though only one person will get the job. That is not a good use of police resources. National strongly opposes the Minister having the new provisions regarding the network management of the early childhood education sector. We certainly opposed the consultation phase being truncated at a time when the early childhood sector was under incredible stress and they begged for more time and a better time for them rather than during COVID when they were having to deal with shortages in their centres and were not able to put in submissions. But the Minister carried on with this as he is inclined to do. The Minister said It will all be OK this network management planning because there will be national and regional policy statements and it will all be strategic and planned." Except nobody knows what is going to be in those national or regional policy statements. Nobody knows what the Minister's strategy is or what his planning is and so anyone wanting to set up a new centre is shadow boxing. They don't know what they're going to be judged on. They don't know what the criteria will be. Here it shows again the naivety of having no understanding of business processes. When a centre is being set up considerable amounts of money are being spent on the planning processes on the collation of materials on looking at demographics and work patterns etc. That is commercially sensitive material that they have had to spend considerable money on pulling together. So how is that going to be protected when it goes in to the Minister and his bureaucrats to look at? My colleague has already pointed out: what will the Minister do when he gets that application with all the commercially sensitive information but doesn't perhaps like the look of that provider? Is he going to sit and wait till he gets a couple of other providers that he knows of somehow and thinks might be better? And then is he going to share that commercially sensitive information with them if they haven't collated it? So there is a whole question around dealing with commercially sensitive information but we can't expect this Minister to know about business processes because we need to keep reminding ourselves he has never run a business. The simplification of qualifications and other credentials is the enabling part of the bill for the workforce development councils. The workforce development councils were part of this Minister's brainchild of merging all the polytechnic sector together. That's worked extremely well for him hasn't it! So he's now got to put in this legislation which allows the WDCs the workforce development councils to be able to approve these qualifications. This was previously done by people in industry who knew what sort of training industry needed. But the Minister in his wisdom has set up workforce development councils and if you take a look at the composition of those workforce development councils you have to look very very hard to find anyone with any industry knowledge or experience—but they need to be given the opportunity apparently to simplify these qualifications. Let's look at the increasing flexibility in this legislation for the Government to set requirements on compulsory student-services fees. These are fees that the tertiary providers set. Now the Minister of course can't possibly trust tertiary providers to know how to set these fees. He can't trust universities polytechnics and private providers to set compulsory student-services fees. He has to be the one in there meddling because he knows best. This is the long arm of Government trying to dictate to those at the sharp end of education delivery. Be it early-childhood delivery or tertiary delivery it is the long arm of Government dictating because they know best. They can't have this pesky market or competition having an influence; they want to reduce choice and at the same time reduce quality because people making a decision at the centre removed from the front line of delivery never have the best information to make decisions. So we are opposing this legislation which the Minister tries to say is "just technical stuff" just stuff to enable them to roll out their policy. Well he's quite right. It allows him to continue on with this relentless trundling of centralisation. Whether it is the tertiary education sector whether it is three waters or whether it is the health sector this Government knows only one ideology and that is centralisation—Ministers and bureaucrats making decisions. Those people on the front line of any of those services cannot be trusted to make the best decision for the people so the Minister is putting this legislation in place to ensure that he is the only one that gets to make decisions not those people out on the ground. We therefore oppose this Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) at its third reading. Thank you Madam Speaker."