Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill

I want to talk about both clauses 1 and 3 in this particular set of calls that I want to make here. The first is that we, on this side, have focused, as is our job, on the bits of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill that we oppose, and, therefore, the reason we oppose the bill as a whole. But I do want to talk about something where the Government has made some changes that impact on the title of this bill and also on clause 3, “Principal Act”.

Actually, this bill repeals the Modern Apprenticeship Training Act. The Labour Party is actually very proud of the introduction of Modern Apprenticeships when we came into Government at the end of 1999. The reason that we are proud of that, and why I think we should note it today, as this bill repeals that Act, is that in the 1990s the system of apprenticeships that New Zealanders had come to know over many decades was dismantled by the then National Government. It took away the idea that many New Zealanders had experienced that you would come up through an industry—it was often, in those days, a Government-run one like the railway workshops or somewhere like that—and you would learn your trade. You would become an apprentice, you would get the skills that you would then take into your later life, you would add a lot of value to your community, and you had a career.

We were proud of the fact that when Labour came into Government in 2000 and had seen the destruction of that apprenticeship system through the 1990s, we said enough was enough. We brought in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. We tried to put it in the context of that old value of learning a trade, getting an apprenticeship, doing the hard yards, and then going off and working, perhaps for yourself or for another business. We took that into a modern era. We said there would need to be a range of different apprenticeship options for young New Zealanders, and thereby we created the Modern Apprenticeships system. Over 15,000 people went through that Modern Apprenticeships system in the first 8 years of that decade. The Labour Party knows that those 15,000 New Zealanders received high-quality training within the New Zealand Qualifications Framework and got their start in their chosen career.

But we also acknowledge that, having done that, it was time for a review of that system. The incoming National Government mucked around for a couple of years, and did not do much at all. It was a critical period to be mucking around in, because it was the period in which we had to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes. But then, after that, the Government finally got its act together and brought in the New Zealand Apprenticeships scheme, which brings together all of the different types of apprenticeships there are. That is what this bill establishes.

I think it is important to note that the Labour Party does support the idea of New Zealand Apprenticeships. We like the idea of a more coordinated process. We like the idea that the pastoral care aspects that were so critical to Modern Apprenticeships are now seen right across the board in the tertiary funding that the current Government has put in place. So the Youth Guarantee scheme is an example now of the idea that you cannot just set someone off on an apprenticeship and hope for the best. That is now understood. That is what lay behind Modern Apprenticeships—the idea that you would have a coordinator, somebody who was responsible for making sure that the training actually took place, and the young people involved appreciated that. That is now understood and shared across the board.

But we also accept that in the changing employment market that we now have apprenticeships are not just about those aged under 24. That is what Modern Apprenticeships were targeted at. So we actually agree with the idea of broadening that out. My colleague Carol Beaumont has already mentioned the lack of women in industry training and apprenticeships. One of the ways of breaking through that is to lift that age barrier or get rid of the age barrier and say that women who may need to retrain and go into a new area could do that through an apprenticeship-based system. That was not possible under Modern Apprenticeships; it is now possible under this new legislation.

I think it is important to put that on the table. It is inherent in the proposed title of the Act, the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Act, because what it does is repeal the Modern Apprenticeship Training Act and changes what was called the Industry Training Act 1992. I want to put on the table that there are aspects of this bill that we do actually support. It would have been nice to be able to say we support this whole bill, because there are those aspects that we thought were good, but we could not do that, because this bill fundamentally undermines the Act that it claims to amend in clause 3, the Industry Training Act. The essence of the Industry Training Act, the principal Act under clause 3, is that that Act is about organising industry training across an industry, not providing funding for individual businesses to do business-specific training.

Why should the Government fund that? We have not had a single Government member stand up in this Chamber today and say why they are fundamentally changing the nature of industry training with this legislation. Why would a Government that is supposedly all about fiscal discipline and looking after the taxpayer decide that it is a good idea to provide funding for industry training to people who are not industry training organisations or to businesses who may well simply train for their own skills? Even Business New Zealand, the greatest ally of this Government, came to the Education and Science Committee and said it was not sure about this. It was “cautiously supportive” but said there needs to be a review really quickly to make sure that industry training money is not going into activities that businesses should be doing themselves.

And then we again wondered why the Government would fundamentally undermine the Industry Training Act in clause 3 by taking away one of the three core responsibilities of industry training organisations, which is skills leadership. Skills leadership is vitally important in the role of industry training because it is business identifying the skills needs that are out there. One of the main reasons we decide to fund industry training is to ensure that we are looking ahead. What are the skills that are needed in the future? Under this bill we have a situation where no one is responsible for skills leadership. Is that not an amazing thing? The Government has brought a bill to the House to make nobody responsible for looking ahead to what skills New Zealand needs. How absolutely ridiculous, short-sighted, and without any strategic plan.

💬 Tracey Martin: Typical.

As Tracey Martin says, it is typical. It is typical of a Government that cannot see past today.

What we need is industry training organisations doing more work in terms of skills leadership. We heard from Careerforce, a very high-functioning industry training organisation, about the fact that it had sat down with Health Workforce New Zealand, the Government’s body for finding a strategic way forward for the health workforce, to identify the needs of those health care workers who are often forgotten: the people working in rest homes, the people providing in-home care. They need training. They are looking after our grandparents and our parents. They have been left out too often when industry skill plans are developed. So Careerforce has been right in there with Health Workforce New Zealand, providing that skills leadership. That is gone under this bill. It is gone. It is now no one’s responsibility. But the officials came and said that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is going to be doing a lot of work and it is going to be talking to industry. This should be industry-led. Why is the Government saying it wants no one to be responsible and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment will have a little bit more of an oversight? It is not good enough, and undermines the very purpose of industry training.

So in two hits—the opening-up of funding for industry training to non - industry training organisations and to specific businesses, and in taking away the skills leadership function—very sadly, this bill is wrongly titled. It is not the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill; it is the “Privatisation Agenda Bill”. It is furthering the privatisation of education, this time in the industry training sector. Steven Joyce, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, who is responsible for this bill, has an ideological commitment to privatisation. He does not know why it is a good idea in this instance, he is just doing it, just as is being done right across the education sector. It is wrong. Education is primarily a public good. We all benefit from it. We should all have a role in making sure it is a quality system. We should all have a role in making sure that the taxpayer funding is being well spent.

This bill goes in the wrong direction, it undermines industry training, and it is fundamentally flawed. I wish we were voting for it, because I believe that apprenticeships and industry training represent a key part of our future productivity and wealth as a nation, but we cannot vote for a bill that is driven by such narrow-minded ideology and that takes away one of the core parts of industry training and skills leadership. The Labour Party will be opposing this legislation.

I would like in this call to address clauses 1, 2, and 3 in reverse order. I want to pick up where my colleague Grant Robertson left off in acknowledging where this piece of legislation, the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill, sits within the tapestry that is the history of industry apprenticeships and skills training in this country. I think that it is a big missed opportunity, as we have been saying throughout our speeches on this bill at every reading. We have really missed an opportunity to add something to that history. We are immensely proud of what the Labour-led Government coming in in 1999 did in terms of reinstating apprenticeships training in this country, because it is so critical to us being the country that we want to be and the country that we can be.

I do notice—if I flick very briefly to schedule 2, which lists out the consequential amendments to the principal Act that is referred to in clause 3 of the bill—that one of those pieces of legislation that is amended is the Maori Housing Act of 1938. I just want to acknowledge the proud history we have in this country of Māori trade training, and how that has been such an important part of our history. What we did during and after World War II, in terms of training a workforce and producing a stock of good houses for this country, is something that we can rightly be proud of.

💬 Grant Robertson: Someone ought to write a thesis on this.

My colleague tells me that someone should write a thesis on this. As I referred to in other readings of this legislation, this was the subject of my PhD thesis. It is an area that I am incredibly interested in. It has shown me the potential of what a well-crafted trade training scheme can be, and this is not it.

What we have heard about from submitters on this bill, if we are thinking about the Acts that have gone before it and about the legislation that we are amending here today, is the lack of pastoral care that this bill contains. What we know from history, if we do look at history, is that pastoral care is absolutely critical to the success of any apprenticeship training scheme. We know that the success of the Māori trade training scheme of the mid-20th century was as much about the technical skills that the largely young men were able to gain, in terms of framing and plastering and all those kinds of things, as it was about the matrons in the hostels, who were absolutely critical to the success of those schemes. The fact that the Government is passing legislation that completely does away with the emphasis on pastoral care is not something in which I can have any faith that we are enacting a piece of legislation today that is going to stand us in good stead and set us up with the kinds of skills and apprenticeship training that we need to be the kind of innovative country we need to be in the 21st century.

I said I was going to do it in reverse order, so I will talk about clause 2 of this legislation. Of course, I note the commencement date of this legislation, in terms of the Act coming into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. What we do know is that already the tender process for the privatisation of training has occurred. We already have four tenders in for non - industry training organisation providers of skills training. I spoke in the debate on Part 1 of this bill about seeing a large health-care provider that is one of these tenderers—surprise, surprise—and that we are in real danger of having business specific training put in place rather than industry-specific training. That is something that is absolutely critical. It is critical when we are using public money, when we are spending taxpayer funding, that we are doing stuff for the industry good and we are doing stuff to make New Zealand a better place, not subsidising what a large corporation would otherwise pay for itself.

What we are doing here today is shameful. We are taking money away from the public provision of industry training, which is the absolute underpinning of the economy that we have in order to be in the 21st century, and putting it into the pockets of private businesses, which will absolutely leave out small to medium sized businesses. What we are seeing is not the small to medium sized enterprises that are already tendering before this legislation has its commencement date under clause 2. What we are seeing are large corporations. Small to medium sized enterprises are going to be potentially left behind in this. In Labour we want to back our small to medium sized businesses. We do not want to back just the big end of town. The fact is that we had businesses come to us at the Education and Science Committee and tell us that this bill was going to be to their detriment because there is a Government that is absolutely content at looking after its mates and backing the big end of town, and that is absolutely shameful. We are in danger of undermining our skills in industry training in this country because of ideological commitment on the part of this Government in an absolute blinkeredness to anything but big business. Well, small businesses mean something to the New Zealand Labour Party. They always have and they always will.

💬 David Bennett: Oh, yeah right—get real.

The fact is that that member sits there and chirps but never takes a call. He will sit there and pipe up from time to time, but when business came and told the committee how detrimental it was going to be, there was not one murmur from the Government members on that committee. I would like to hear a call from a Government member on that committee that addresses small to medium sized businesses are going to fare under this legislation. So rather than just the squeakings of that member over there, perhaps we could have a substantial contribution.

Before I conclude, I want to turn to clause 1 of this bill—the title. I think one of the very interesting things that a submitter came to us and said was that it is debatable whether the bill could include the words “industry training” if other organisations can qualify for funding in this way. The very substance of this legislation belies the title of this bill. The Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill perhaps does not seem apt when, in our minds, this is a piece of legislation that undermines what industry training is about. It undermines the industry good that we need to be looking to when we are spending public money. It is a simple transfer of public education money into the pockets of corporations. It is a continuation of the privatisation agenda.

So I would like to suggest some alternative titles for this piece of legislation. I think that the “Privatisation of Education Act (Part 3, Hot on the Heels of Private-Public Partnerships and Charter Schools) Bill” could be a more apt name for the piece of legislation that we are debating in this Committee today. I think that if we were not going to go there, Government members might like to consider an amendment that goes along the lines of the “Ideological Blinkers of This Government Bill”. That would perhaps be a more apt name, because this bill is all about this Government’s commitment to privatisation in our education system and not about visionary thinking about what is going to make a better country, a better economy, and what will equip our workforce with the necessary trades skills and education that are required for us to go forward into the 21st century.

We on this side of the Chamber know that if we really are going to address inequality in this country, then having robust industry training, robust apprenticeships, and good skills training is absolutely critical, and this legislation is doing everything it can to undermine it. I find the name of this bill, the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill, a little absurd given that all the players involved in industry training came along and told the Government that the bill was not going to work. It seems a little like it is a piece of irony that we are in this Chamber debating today. I would like to have a Government member take a call and tell us how it is that this bill is supporting industry training because, in our mind, all this is doing is undermining industry training. To give it that title in this legislation is nothing short of shameful.

Why does a Government member not take a call, get on their legs, and justify their position? Why is it that the Government thinks that it can run industry training and that industry’s voice should be silenced? So perhaps that is another name that we could give this bill—the “Government Knows Better Than Industry Training Bill”. That would be another contender for my alternative title of this legislation. It is a sad day that we are not here today debating a piece of legislation that is going to enrich the tapestry of a history of industry and apprenticeships training in this country, and that we are about to pass a piece of legislation that is going to undermine it.

I rise to speak on clauses 1, 2, and 3 of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill, as well. I think that the title is important. I do want to acknowledge the point that Grant Robertson said, which was that including the words “and Apprenticeships” in the title is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that another irony about this bill is that, on the back of reviewing industry training, on the back of some really hard yards that have been undertaken by industry training organisations to look at how they need to function to go forward and provide industry training and apprenticeships that we need as a country—that we desperately need as a country—what is happening with this particular bill will undermine their ability to do that. It will undermine the “industry” bit of industry training. That is the irony here, because instead of industry training organisations providing industry training, we will now have corporate training. We will fund, as Dr Woods has said, and we will put public moneys into organisations other than industry training organisations to provide industry training.

The fact of that is what that will lead to is not industry training, but training that will be relevant to the particular business that is undertaking it. We know what that looks like. That will be training that is specific to the particular ways that that business operates and the particular needs, machinery, and technology that it uses, and not to what is needed across the whole industry. The real risk for the people undertaking the training is that they will not end up with qualifications that they will be able to take with them in the industry. They will end up with qualifications that are narrowly focused on particular businesses.

I do think it is absolutely vital that people understand what is being suggested here, because we know and we would all agree that there are real skills shortages in this country. Labour has long been a party that stands for skills training and that stands for apprenticeships, because we understand and know, as do most New Zealanders, just how vital those trades and technical skills are. How important are they for our manufacturing industry? How important are they for us in terms of building and construction, or infrastructure development, for example? Those are some of the areas where we have got massive skills shortages. We need industry training and apprenticeships to fill those skills shortages. That is supposedly what this bill is about. There was a real opportunity, and it has been missed. I think that is a crying shame.

In 2008 when this Government came in, there was a skills strategy in place. There had been work undertaken. It had involved industry. It had involved Business New Zealand. It had involved the Council of Trade Unions. It had involved various Government agencies—the Tertiary Education Commission, the Ministry of Social Development—and a whole number of people looking at what was needed for skills across all of our industries. What was the first thing that the Government did with that? Well, it chucked it out. Then it said: “Let’s not bother meeting any more to talk about these things. Let’s not talk about a skills strategy for this country.”

This bill could have provided an opportunity to strengthen industry training and apprenticeships. We could have had some consensus on that. I would urge the Minister or any of the members opposite who know about this bill to explain why that opportunity has been deliberately missed. Why is it that instead of strengthening industry training organisations and instead of asking what we need as a skills strategy at an industry level across the whole country, we have a bill that undermines industry training organisations, that starts a path of privatising industry training and removes the ability of industry training organisations to provide a leadership role in their industry? Why? Nobody across the other side of the Chamber is willing to answer any questions in this. It is just appalling. This is vitally important for our country.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage to talk about clauses 1 and 2 of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Amendment Bill. I particularly want to start my contribution by talking about the commencement date of when this Government is planning to do something about industry training and apprenticeships. The sad indictment on this particular Government is that we have got in front of this country right now the example of this Government’s appalling track record on taking industry training and apprenticeships seriously, because right now Christchurch is largely being rebuilt by immigrant labour.

💬 David Bennett: Oh, what a lie!

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member cannot say that.

Well, David Bennett does not seem to have visited Christchurch to see for himself, but it is largely being rebuilt by immigrant labour. Many of them are Irish. You know, I have got nothing against the Irish—I am of Irish ancestry myself—but, actually, those should have been jobs being held by all of those New Zealanders who are sitting on the scrap heap of the dole queue instead. [Interruption]

Well, here we go. The Government has finally woken up. It has finally woken up 3 years too late. It had 3 years to actually be training New Zealanders to rebuild Christchurch. That is the opportunity that was missed. It is an absolute indictment on the lack of strategy from this Government for having a thorough industry training and apprenticeship approach and strategy. If it had had that, then it would have listened to the Labour Party, which, within 2 months of that earthquake, started begging the Government in this very debating chamber to actually bring in industry training and to add to the apprenticeships in order to prepare for the rebuild of Christchurch. The Government ignored those calls.

Now we have got the building industry screaming out to the Government—still, 3 years later—saying that it is 5,000 apprentices short of what the building industry needs. That is the track record of this Government. In its sixth year of Government, it has got rising unemployment—certainly in the Waikato region it has been rising.

💬 David Bennett: No, it hasn’t. That’s not true.

Well, there we go again. David Bennett does not even know the unemployment figures from his own region.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! It is not about unemployment.

💬 David Bennett: Prove it.

Well, the member wants me to prove it, Mr Chair. Am I allowed to respond? If he goes and looks at the last quarterly figures released by the Waikato region, they increase from 6.1 percent to 6.8 percent.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is not about unemployment; this is about industry training.

Well, thank you, Mr Chair. I was just responding to the member opposite, but I will now focus back on the bill itself.

What this bill does is, yes, some useful things. As some of my colleagues have said, it is a shame that we cannot support the bill in its entirety, because there are one or two things that it does that are useful. Sadly, as this Government is wont to do, it has got privatisation at its core. It has also got the narrowing down of what we are trying to achieve in terms of people’s education, and is that not a theme from this Government as well? It has done that with compulsory education as well as industry training now. It has taken a very broad concept that gives people a very broad set of skills that they can apply across industry or across different careers and different things that they might want to pursue in their lives—that is what the compulsory education system is supposed to help with. Both with the compulsory education system and now with industry training, the Government has taken the approach of narrowing things down.

In this bill, it is doing it by not requiring the bodies that take care of this area to be industry wide. It can be just an employer. What we start to get is the narrowing of skills that are actually going to be imparted to people as a result, because although an employer might have specific skill needs for their particular business, they will not be necessarily engaging in preparing those people for a skill base that is to be used right across their industry. I can see that a couple of the members opposite are quite interested to learn that this is a bill that is going through in their name that does this.

I move, That the question be now put.