Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This is a significant day for vocational education and training in New Zealand. This Government is putting trades and vocational education back on the map. We are bringing together a coherent system of on-the-job apprenticeships and off-the-job training for the first time in 30 years—the first time since the National Government abolished apprenticeships in the 1990s.

This bill will help us to create a new system that’s simple to understand and easy to navigate, that’s responsive to the needs of learners and employers, and that’s flexible enough to keep changing and evolving as the needs of New Zealanders change and evolve. This bill gives effect to our objective of creating a unified and cohesive vocational education and training system. The bill helps to create a new, unified network of off-the-job education and training, support for on-the-job apprentices and trainees, and newer learning modes like online and blended learning.

The bill puts industry and employers in charge of determining what their skill needs are through the creation of workforce development councils. Unlike the industry training organisations (ITOs) that they replace, workforce development councils will have a standard-setting role in off-the-job training as well as on-the-job training. A new, unified funding system will bring an end to the perverse incentives that we have in our current system, where on-the-job training and off-the-job training compete with one another, rather than being seen as integral parts of our skills development system. Contrary to the claims by some who should know better, this bill will not result in on-the-job apprenticeship training being moved into classrooms. In fact, quite the opposite: this bill is about ensuring that we have more on-the-job learning opportunities available to more people and that they and their employers have more support in the process.

For learners, the changes that we are progressing through this bill will result in more support while they’re training, and courses and training that are more relevant to their work. It will result in an easier pathway for them to continue their learning when they have to move—as people often do: they have to move employers, they have to move places, and sometimes they have to move between on-the-job learning and off-the-job learning.

For employers, the new system will deliver a much greater focus on ensuring that they get the skilled workers that they need—something that employers are crying out for. Employers will get more support to upskill their own workforces—something that we know they are keen to do. It will result in greater consistency in the skills, courses, and qualifications that are offered, with a much bigger focus on supporting those employers who don’t currently engage in on-the-job training.

These reforms respond to huge changes that are taking place in the world around us, and they recognise that learning is no longer limited to a classroom. Learning is something that can happen in any place, at any time, and trying to draw a distinction between learning that happens in a work-based context and learning that happens in a classroom or tertiary provider - based context is arbitrary and unnecessary.

The reforms signal a significant paradigm shift in the way we think about education and training—away from thinking about learning as a system or as an institution that learners need to organise their lives around, to, instead, thinking about learning as something that needs to flex and fit around the lives that people lead, including their work. We’re talking about practical, purposeful, real-world learning. That’s what vocational education and training is all about.

I do want to thank the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their diligent consideration of this bill. I want to thank the 236 individuals and organisations that took the time to submit on the bill. The select committee’s proposed amendments demonstrate that their submissions have been carefully considered. Some submitters thought, for example, that for the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST)—the new, unified network of delivery that I spoke of—academic freedom should be unfettered by the functions of workforce development councils, while others indicated that the current provisions provided too much academic freedom to the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, and more preference needed to be given to industry. That is probably a good sign that we’re about in the right place, but there are improvements that can be made. The committee amended the bill to clarify, in particular, how academic freedom provisions interact with the workforce development councils.

They’ve added a requirement for the councils to collaborate with providers, in particular the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, when they’re performing their standard-setting functions and developing qualifications. They also are designed to ensure that they’re not limiting the freedom of staff and students to comment and engage in research and on the ability of the providers to appoint their own staff. However, the particular functions of a workforce development council do sometimes overlap with the provider’s freedom to regulate the subject matter of its courses and to teach and assess its students in a manner that it views appropriate. That’s why these provisions have been further clarified to provide greater clarity. I do welcome the committee’s amendments to these proposals. They make sure we’re getting the balance right between academic freedom and ensuring that we achieve our objective of putting industry in the driver’s seat.

The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology’s charter sets out the enduring principles by which it must carry out its functions. Following recommendations from submitters, the committee has amended both the functions in the charter of the NZIST. The functions are amended to clarify that the NZIST is to conduct research with a focus on applied and technological research and that they will deliver a wide range of vocational education and training, including vocational, foundation and degree-level and above provision. The changes to the charter include the requirement for the NZIST to work collaboratively with workforce development councils to strengthen their commitment to equitable outcomes in pursuing equitable access for learners across all regions, and requiring the NZIST to work to expand training to more small industries and businesses. There is huge opportunity for us if we can get more training and more apprenticeships in small businesses across the country. I welcome the committee’s amendments in that regard.

Several submitters expressed their support for workforce development councils to be owned and led by industry, and the committee has made some amendments in order to strengthen those provisions, including an outline of how industry can be involved—that the Order in Council must now include an outline of how industry can be involved in the councils, requirements for the redistribution of assets and the transition between ITOs and workforce development councils, and any conditions on workforce development council functions. The Minister can also amend or revoke an Order in Council on reasonable grounds or if requested by specified industries. I do support the committee’s amendments in that regard.

There was some concern from submitters about ITO staff who could lose jobs in the transfer to the new system, and the committee has inserted similar job protection provisions for ITO staff, as were already in the bill for those who were working at one of the existing polytechs and institutes of skills and technology, and the Government supports those as well.

At the appropriate time, I’ll be moving a Supplementary Order Paper that prevents a provider from charging a trainee a compulsory student services fee until 2022. It’s important to note that once trainees are transferred from ITOs to providers, they become students as well as trainees, and the Government did not want to see that meaning that they would automatically be charged the compulsory student services fee. That would be a significant impost on around 50,000 apprentices in the vocational education and training system: potentially $15 million of additional costs in fees. We want to stop that from being something that happens, so we put those transitional measures in place—bearing in mind, of course, too, that most trainees are not eligible for student loans in order to meet those kinds of costs. So it’ll be a transitional provision, and I’ll be moving that one by Supplementary Order Paper, along with several other small and technical changes.

The changes outlined in this bill are ambitious and they are transformational. Our Government isn’t willing to stand by while New Zealanders are denied the education and training opportunities that they deserve and while employers are crying out for the skilled workers that they need in order to deliver for New Zealand and fulfil their objectives. We are not going to accept the ongoing decline of our vocational education system, which we have seen over the last decade. That is something that we will never do on this side of the House. We want a robust, vibrant vocational education and training system that delivers to all New Zealanders in every region across the country, that meets the needs of all employers. That is what this bill is about. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, It’s a pleasure to lead the National Party response to the reform of vocational education. The second reading is an opportunity to report back on select committee deliberations and construct a line of argument going forward, and for us, that line of argument will be why we will not be supporting this bill. This bill is quite clearly the next fees-free flop. It will damage the regions, it will damage polytechnics, and it will damage vocational education. Mark my words: this bill will bankrupt tertiary education.

The Minister of Education spent the first five minutes of his time talking about the ideology. It’s almost as if he needed a testimony to himself. He needed to reaffirm that the ideology is still there, because the delivery won’t. We know that’s not going to happen, and the detail behind it isn’t there as well. So why don’t we just spend half the time talking about the ideology behind it all, and then we’ll worry about the delivery later.

I’m going to talk to the submissions we saw in the Education and Workforce Committee. There were 236: 148 individuals, 19 unions, nine of the industry training organisations (ITOs), nine Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand (ITPs), 41 representative peak bodies, and nine others. I thank them all for their submissions. I would also note that 75—that is roughly only a third—were in support of the bill, of those who expressed an opinion. There were also 65 changes that were made by officials in consultation with the select committee. I’m going to address eight of those. I’ll discuss the change, the advantages—because some of them I think actually did improve the bill—and then the disadvantages as we see it as well.

To the first point, changes one and three, clearly, this is hurried legislation, because even in the definitions of the bill, we can see there are substantial issues arising. In paragraph 37, the wording is a “training contract”, and the point was made that that sort of verbiage, that wording, had caused problems in the past, particularly for volunteers and those who are self-employed, and so a reference back to “training agreements” was used. You’d think that would’ve been self-evident in the first draft.

It also talked about work-based training. It was added as an amendment to the definition that work-based training also needed to include assessment. So, again, the very first part of the bill—amendments made pointing out how hurried this is. Now, this is also consistent with the submission from the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG), who said, “We have some concerns about the timetable of the reforms. A longer transition programme might reduce some of the risk.” So here we have an independent body saying, “Too rushed, too hurried—stretch it out, if you’re going to do this at all.”

I want to move to the second of the eight points. I think there is some improvement in the requirement for workforce development councils to collaborate with industry. I think that it makes a lot of sense, and I’m pleased; it’s a good addition. However, to us, the functions of the workplace development councils are still not clear, and there’s deep unhappiness in the sector with the clustering of ITOs together into these workforce development councils. How do we account for information technology being put with quarries and being put with manufacturing? What is their commonality as a group? How will their voices be represented? So a lot of unhappiness in industry around the clustering of workforce development councils.

The third point I wanted to talk to is the training levy. The training levy was raised as a concern by a number of submitters. Federated Farmers and the Master Electricians had concerns that the training levy would replace Government funding. I think that is a valid concern. The Crane Association of New Zealand said that levies would be a significant burden for not-for-profits. Now, on the other side of that—and I said I’d be balanced in my approach to this—we need to remember that a levy requires 60 percent of the weighted headcount ballot by members. So, hopefully, there is an opportunity for each sector to offer what they think a levy should be, whether it should be in place or not, but we do need to take on board some of the submissions we heard and make sure that it doesn’t replace Government funding and that we do take some cognisance of not-for-profits.

The fourth part I want to talk to, the fourth change, is ITO assets. I think this is one part that was strengthened. What happened here was there’s no compulsion—or what the amendment is is that there’ll be no compulsion for ITOs to hand over their assets to workforce development councils. This also makes a lot of sense, because a number of the ITOs—their founding documents and their charters are based on trusts, all sorts of other things. It’d be very difficult for them to undo their assets and pass them across. Furthermore, the cash balance that they were required to hold to show they were representative of an industry—surely, that wasn’t going to be handed across to a workforce development council. So I think that addition, change number 29, is actually quite useful.

The fifth I want to talk to is academic freedom, and this received a lot of submissions from people who were very concerned that their academic freedom was going to be compromised. The solution that the committee came to was to, effectively, put in a removal-of-doubt clause, and I think that goes some way towards resolving that issue. However, net-net, I would submit that academic freedom is less in this bill than before. The reason for that is the academic boards from the regional ITPs, the regional polytechnics, are disestablished and aggregated back to the one mega polytechnic, the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST). How can that be improving academic freedom? The bill is taking it away from the regions. That is a net-net loss of academic freedom. So we still have grave concerns that that’s not addressed, and we do not believe that a mega polytechnic will satisfactorily respond to that.

I want to then talk to administrative regions, change number 54. This is a very strange thing, and I’ve WPQed this and I’m really no wiser, I have to say. But administrative regions, what are they exactly? Do they cross iwi boundaries? Are they geographic boundaries? Furthermore, when the assets are sucked up into the NZIST and we’re told “Oh, don’t worry, they’ll be applied back in your regions.”, is it the regions as we understand it now, the territorial land authority regions, or are they these strange administrative regions? What is this nebulous administrative region? That needs a lot more explanation than has been put into this bill.

The seventh of the eight changes I want to talk to is the conversion of polytechnics to Crown entities. Now, one part of the bill I think is better: the reporting of the subsidiaries is picked up a little bit by including them in section 45L of the Public Finance Act, which then allows them to have more formal reporting than was in the bill beforehand. That’s a good thing, particularly over this transition period, particularly, I think, if we look at the January to March—so ITPs are disestablished on 1 April, and what the proposal is from January to March there’ll be a revaluation at the end of March, and that’s the end of the financial year, and then from April through to December. I think quite sensibly, what the recommendations were were that by including ITP subsidiaries in the Public Finance Act, we actually will be able to report year-long. We won’t have two reporting periods—one three months and one nine months—and that’s very important for comparative analysis.

The problem here is—and it was pointed out by the OAG, and I’d ask the Minister of Education and his team to look at it as another Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). The problem is the Public Finance Act allows a transfer of functions to allow that reporting across a year, not a conversion of functions, and yet the wording in the bill still talks about the conversion of polytechnics. This is the advice we’re getting from the OAG: why would we want to not make that simple change, make it easy for ourselves? It’s going to be hard anyway revaluating at the end of March, hideously hard. Make it easy—why would we not take that advice? I’d put it to Government that they think about an SOP that just changes that wording from “conversion” to “transfer”.

The last point I want to talk to is around employment protections, and, very, very wisely, this Government saw the danger coming towards them. What on earth was in your head removing employer protections? That transition from the subsidiary ITPs through to the big mega NZIST, the mega polytechnic, in the bill in its first place—Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act was removed, and all employment protection provisions. How on earth did that get through in the first draft? My goodness! Thankfully, you’ve seen the danger to it. I’d submit it’s because we pointed it out in the first reading, that it absolutely needed to be reworded, although it concerns me the intent underlying it. It concerns me the intent for workers’ rights. It concerns me the intent for job losses, because the first statement we made when this bill was announced, around about 6 February last year, was that there’d be a thousand job losses in that, and I think that number’s increasing. I’ll absolutely stand by that number and submit that it’s increasing.

So this is a failed process. It’s an ideology that will fail. It will bankrupt the tertiary system. If I reflect on the Tertiary Education Commission, who were in front of us at the select committee yesterday, we asked the chief executive, “At any point, have you said to the Minister, ‘We don’t support these reforms.’?” He quite honestly—and I appreciate his honesty—said, “Yes, initially, we said we do not support these reforms. They will not work.” Well, clearly, they then got along to a position where they think they can deploy it. I don’t think they can, and we have grave reservations on this side of the House for this bill. Thank you, Madam.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m absolutely delighted to be standing here to speak in the second reading of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill. I just want to start, though, by saying that we’ve just heard a speech talking about the different components of the bill, but what we didn’t hear in the previous speaker Shane Reti’s speech was a solution to the issues that are currently facing the vocational training sector.

💬 Matt Doocey: Well, you’re the Government.

What would the solution have been from that previous Government? Thirteen of the 16 current polytechs are running deficits; the enrolments have been declining since 2010. I heard someone over there—I’m not sure who it was, but they said, “Oh, you’re the Government.” That’s right. That’s why this side is doing something about it, because by doing nothing, the previous Government had already put vocational training under serious threat—serious threat. If we as a Government on this side of the House continued to do nothing, we would see the vocational sector go further into decline, and we’ve already heard the Minister of Education say that he refuses—he refuses—to take that position.

Now, this is an exciting bill. This is a day where we are putting vocational education back on the map. I’d have to say that I was actually really delighted—you would think, that we had actually sat in different select committee hearings, and I can actually say, even though we split up into subcommittees, that I sat with Dr Reti for most of those same select committee hearings, but you would think that we were listening to different people in those select committee hearings. Most of those 236 submitters, many of them individuals, some organisations, were actually in support of the intent of this bill. Even those organisations and people who wanted to see changes made in the bill, most of those people and organisations were actually fully in support of the intent of this bill.

This bill addresses the four challenges with the current system. Our skills shortages across sectors—we hear about that a lot, and we heard about that a lot in the submissions during the select committee process. That’s the first one. The second one: the untenable split in vocational systems. It was confusing. You had people or organisations that were competing against each other. So this is a bill that will consolidate those particular systems. The inequity of some polytechs doing well and others not—as I said, we have 13 of the current 16 polytechs that are running deficits; only three that are not running those deficits. There is a huge inequity there. We’ve been told in this House that, “Oh, no, maybe we should be looking at this quite differently because there are three that are doing all right.” Well, I don’t think it’s OK that inequity exists like that. So this is what this bill is addressing. The fourth issue that this bill addresses is the lack of industry input in the current system, and that was something that we heard time and time and time again from industry saying that they want that tidied up. So the select committee did that.

Now, I actually want to thank the Education and Workforce Committee, the full committee, in the work that they did. Due to health and my forced absence in the end, I wasn’t there for the final deliberations in this bill. But I was very, very glad that I was able to be part of the committee up until that point and hear the many submissions that we heard. I’d have to say that, of all the bills that we’ve had before us as a select committee, in the Education and Workforce team, I think this is one that we probably put a heck of a lot of diligence into the work that we did. You can see that looking at the departmental report. It is extensive, and the changes that were recommended are ones that the subcommittees went through and deliberated on and talked about, and our officials in those subcommittees were amazing. They were incredible because they came back time and time and time again—so thanking all those members of the select committee but also the officials, who were so diligent in the work that they did as well.

We’ve heard today that this bill is around modernising the learning of the sector. We’re actually starting to look outside the square, looking to the responsive changes in the world. Learning doesn’t just have to keep happening the way it’s always been because that’s the way we’ve always done it. We need to look at the issues, we need to hear from the sectors, and we need to change up what we’re doing to make it better. Now, we heard all of those points that Dr Reti took out and said, “These won’t work.” Well, I challenge Dr Reti that we actually went through as a committee and based these changes on evidence. We based them on evidence of learning and modern learning, and changing up that way of how the world is existing. And we based it on the needs of the sector and what the sector asked us to look at.

As Dr Reti rightly pointed out, there are lots and lots of changes that were made from select committee. I’ve already pointed out that the departmental report is extensive, but a couple that I just want to briefly, briefly touch on, because I know that I’ve got colleagues here that are touching on the rest, is that a number of submitters expressed support that the workforce development councils be industry owned and led. As I said before, that came through time and time again: industry were really concerned that that had to be a major component. So as a committee we looked at that, and the Minister outlined the changes that we made, but we were responsive to the needs of industry, and those changes can be seen having come through from the select committee process.

The other important consideration was the one that Dr Reti talked about right at the end of his contribution—around the important consideration given to the concern shown from submitters that industry training organisations (ITO) staff would lose jobs in the transfer of the new system. We heard that we’d taken our eye off the ball. I would actually challenge that because, if you read the original bill as it stood, clause 33 in that bill already had the provisions for the transfer of polytech staff to the NZIST. So it already existed. What we were told, though, was that this didn’t cover the transitional ITO transfers, and even though there was the intent that that would happen, under clause 33, it wasn’t transparent enough in people’s minds. So that was where the changes were made. And, yes, that’s a great thing because we now have that protection for those staff members.

I have heard from people who are working in the sector who are absolutely delighted at this change, around the surety that it gives them in their positions going forward. So I’m absolutely delighted to see this bill come through to the second reading. I’m delighted to also see the ongoing work that we heard from the Minister about the Supplementary Order Paper that he has expressed will be coming through when this bill gets to the next stage. So, without any further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity. I’m taking this call to oppose this legislation. We have been very clear about our concerns from the day this legislation was introduced, and during the select committee process, yes, I acknowledge changes have been made to this legislation, but still this legislation does not address concerns that were raised by us when it was introduced before the House.

The member who just resumed her seat, Jan Tinetti, said that there were some solutions needed to fix the polytech sector. I acknowledge that, but this is not the solution that we need. Just going in single-handed and bringing in a centralised approach is not going to fix the polytech sector. The polytech sector is also suffering because of the policies of the current Labour Government, because of their stance towards immigration, because of their stance towards international students. We know that there are several polytechs that have students already enrolled but they are still overseas because they cannot come to New Zealand to fill those empty seats.

So there are several polytechs suffering because of the policies of the current Government, and then this Government thought, “OK, let’s do something” and came up with this reform, which is a disastrous, I would say, reform in the tertiary education sector in the past 30 years—the past 30 years. This is not actually going to solve any problem in the vocational education and training sector; actually, it’s going to create more problems because these polytechs are struggling already—and with, later on, amalgamation and other changes, the transition to the new system, they’ll be struggling even more.

From day one, we have said that loss of jobs is a big concern for us with this legislation. Building capability in any sector takes several years. We need those people in the tertiary education sector. But, with this reform, I fear that we are going to lose that capability, and then it will be up to us when we come back into Government, after the 19 September, to restart again and build that capability to support our vocational education sector. I think that this is actually going to be a big loss for our workforce that is already there in the vocational education and training sector, and we cannot afford that.

During the select committee process, as I said, changes were made. I want to acknowledge all submitters. It’s because of their concerns that they expressed in the select committee process that changes to the legislation have been made. But, of course, there were other concerns expressed by submitters that were not taken fully into account, which I will touch on later on. I want to thank all the 236 submitters—those who submitted—and I also want to acknowledge the 71 submitters who appeared before the Education and Workforce Committee. Of these 236 submitters, the majority of submitters were individuals—148 individuals submitted; 19 submissions were received from unions; nine submissions from industry training organisations; nine from institutes of technology and polytechnics; and 41 from representatives and other peak bodies. I’m really, really grateful to all these submitters.

But then, because of the pressure on the select committee to report back this legislation as it was stated to be reported back, we had to sit in subcommittees. This is very important legislation, and for us in Opposition, all our education spokespeople wanted to be on the select committee to hear from these submitters, but they didn’t get the opportunity because we were sitting in subcommittees. Some submitters also were wondering why we had only so few members on the select committee. So we had to explain that to those submitters. So it would have been really nice to get enough time to work on this legislation in the select committee process, especially to have had all members of the select committee have the opportunity to hear from these submitters.

Now, as we have just heard from the Minister, there is going to be a Supplementary Order Paper to address some other concerns. So we can see that this process is a very, very rushed process, and anything to do with students and the future of our country should not be rushed like this. But this Government doesn’t care, because it’s all about this Government’s agenda to push this through. This process of pushing it through the select committee process by putting the time line, which didn’t work with the number of submitters that we had—we had to sit in subcommittees—works only for the Government. It doesn’t work for submitters; it doesn’t work for members, especially Opposition members on the select committee.

As I said, yes, changes were made. I want to acknowledge that. The other change that I want to acknowledge in the select committee process, as I have said before, is that the redundancy conditions for workers is something that we have been talking about from day one, from the day this legislation was introduced. That was addressed during the select committee process because, as the legislation was introduced, it was overriding the Employment Relations Act for workers that would be made redundant. The speaker before me, Jan Tinetti, said that it was about workers that will be transitioned from workforce development councils (WDC) to the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST). It’s not just about that. We know that some New Zealand Qualifications Authority staff will also be losing their jobs because their responsibilities will be transferred to WDCs.

The other issue that was addressed during the select committee process, which I want to touch on briefly, is academic freedom. This was actually a big concern expressed by several submitters, and it was important that it was addressed in the select committee process and that it was clarified, because with WDCs, the workforce development councils, having that kind of overarching leadership role, it appeared that they will have full control of that; so that local freedom, academic freedom, was lost as the legislation was proposed.

So I want to acknowledge these changes and several other changes which were made in the select committee process, but still the approach that this legislation takes is the problem. The approach of this legislation is to reform this vocational education system by bringing in a centralised model. That doesn’t work, and we are quite concerned about that centralised model, because that centralised model takes away that localism, takes away that regional autonomy, and we really want to see that that regional autonomy and that localism is maintained, because if you’re talking about supplying a skilled people to local industries, we have to know what those local industries need. So that’s why that localism is important, and National is quite concerned about that. We will restore that localism in our vocational education and training.

As we have just heard from the member who resumed her seat, she talked about there being no opportunity for industry to provide their input in the current system. And, actually, industry said that they are not supportive of these changes. I don’t know what kind of industry she was talking about. We know the Tertiary Education Commission is not supportive of these changes. Treasury is not supportive of these changes. So the Government is just pushing it through, wanting to look like they’re trying to fix the polytech sector. They’re not going to fix the polytech sector with this. Actually, they’re going to create more problems in the polytech sector.

With workforce development councils, in regard to that, there were several submissions. Those submitters said that they were concerned about the disestablishment of ITOs—industry training organisations—but that concern is out of the scope of this legislation. So there were several concerns that came through during the select committee process. They were put in that category of “out of scope”. So how can we say that everybody was heard and that each and every concern has been taken into account in this legislation? It hasn’t been—it hasn’t been.

Going to the point of localism, I want to bring this to everybody’s attention: there were more submitters, those who supported localism, who didn’t support a centralised model, and there were fewer submitters who supported that. Fifteen submitters were opposed to that centralised NZIST model which is being proposed through this legislation. Only three submitters supported that centralised model. So that is very clear, and we are very confident in our position. We are opposing this legislation because we truly believe that this legislation is actually going to create more struggle for the vocational education sector. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. First speech of 2020, here I go! I’ve been told to be short and snappy and to the point. So the first thing is, just with regard to comments that—

💬 Simeon Brown: Particularly the “to the point” part!

I mean, I know it’s the embodiment of me: short and snappy and to that point. Just to start this off with the amazing comment made by the previous speaker, Parmjeet Parmar. Now, it’s been recognised that 13 out of 16 of the polytechs, when this Government came into Government, were going to fail. They were failing. They were in deficit. It cost this Government $100 million to keep them open. That’s taxpayers’ money; $100 million of taxpayers’ money because the previous Government and the previous Minister for Tertiary Education—I think his name was Steven Joyce—knew that there was a budgetary hole, and maybe this was part of his budgetary hole because he knew that a hundred million dollars of taxpayers’ money would have to be put into the polytechs to keep some regional educational vocation provision. But the previous speaker just blamed it on this Government’s policies around international students, who can’t now get into the country.

I’m going to make a jump—I’m going to make a leap—but I’m going to say that that speaker is talking about the actions we’ve taken to protect this nation from coronavirus. That’s the only thing I can think of, because with regard to international students, it’s been a couple of years and the polytechs were already in deficit before we even came in and we even made any changes. So I think it’s an enormous stretch for the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee to then say that the reason why polytechs are in trouble is because of the coronavirus. It’s a stretch. I’ve got to say, it’s a stretch. Somebody else might be able to connect that, but it’s a wee way out for me.

So the other comments that have been made by Shane Reti—and I like Shane Reti. I enjoy listening to Shane Reti. I mean, there is a man of intelligence and integrity. I believe that to be true. Sometimes he’s wrong, but he has intelligence and integrity. Now, what he talked about there was he said that this legislation is rushed.

There is a reasonable amount of urgency. Definitely that is true around fixing the vocational education system in this country. One of them is because we can’t keep pouring $100 million into a broken system. The three polytechs that actually were making money, even if we talk about their ability to do that locally and regionally—the only reason why, for example, the Southern Institute of Technology was able to stay in the black was because not only do they have an amazing community and a wonderful trust down there that supports them but they had a campus in Auckland. So they were not able to actually keep themselves in the black based on their localism; they needed a campus in Auckland. That goes to show that the regional provision was not able to work under the way that it had been set up previously.

The other thing I find fascinating—and I want to thank all those business owners and industry training organisations (ITOs) and Māori enterprise and so on that came to see me specifically so that I could draw them and go through with them where the areas of concern are in the model that we’ve got here because of the scaremongering put together by the National Party.

💬 Simeon Brown: Could have done a Facebook video.

So the young man calling out is Simeon Brown. He doesn’t actually know the topic, ladies and gentlemen, but he’s happy to call out.

Anyway, so what they were—and it was actually employers and the ITOs. They came and they said, “We absolutely know that this has got to change. This has got to change. We’ve got young people coming out with debt and they’ve got qualifications that are useless when they show up at our door. We need to make sure that we have industry input into the standards.”

The workforce development councils—there are twofold parts to them. One of them is based on the Ōtorohanga model—that is the New Zealand First influence inside the workforce development councils. Go and google the Ōtorohanga model and the model about finding out from local business what the local skills are that you need to train up local young people. Simeon Brown wouldn’t know because he doesn’t talk to business, but let’s actually make sure that the rest of us do. So go and check the Ōtorohanga model.

The flip side of that is that for the first time in a long time, actual industry is going to have control over 80 percent of the spend in vocational training through the workforce development councils. They are going to say, “This is workforce planning that that Government, they took away the leadership around workforce planning from the ITOs deliberately under Minister Steven Joyce.” I sat on the Education and Science Committee when they did it. They said, “We don’t need any workforce planning leadership.” Now we get in question time a whole lot of questions about “Where are all the specialists you need? Where are all the doctors and the nurses and the speech language?” Well, we had no workforce development because that Government—that Government—which was the previous National Government took away any leadership around it.

The workforce development councils are going to take us back to the support we need, talking to business and industry and sector and saying, “These are the skills we need for New Zealand to go forward. These are the skills and these are the numbers of skilled young people that we need to make sure that they can be in employment, the right employment, trained, retrained, untrained, and retrained again as they go through their lives. This is the way forward. That Minister Chris Hipkins—he’s visionary. He’s got it down pat and we support.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and happy New Year. It’s great to be back. The only part of that speech that I agree with the Associate Minister of Education on was, “I like Shane Reti.”, because I do like Shane Reti, too. He’s a good man.

The Minister said in her speech that 13 of the 16 polytechs were failing because they were in deficit. Well, according to her logic, 11 of the 12 DHBs must also be failing because they are in deficit, and also this Government is in deficit, so is this Government also failing? An extraordinary thing for this Minister of the Crown to be saying about her own Government.

It’s a pleasure to be able to take a call on the second reading of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill. I’d like to just start by acknowledging the Minister of Education for bringing this bill to the House. This bill does make significant reforms in this area. I’d like to also acknowledge the chair, Parmjeet Parmar, who was able to shepherd this very complex bill through the select committee. It’s several hundred pages long and it’s something which I and all the members of that committee spent a lot of time reading, those submissions, and trying to get a good understanding of what the Government’s changes are. I’d also like to acknowledge all the submitters who submitted, and the 94 who came to appear before the select committee.

These reforms represent a significant risk to training and apprenticeships here in New Zealand. The Tertiary Education Commission programme business case says that this bill will lead to 18,000 fewer trainees across New Zealand over the medium term, and 2,300 fewer apprenticeships. When the Minister says that this bill is putting trades and apprenticeships back on the map, he could not be further from the truth. This bill does exactly the opposite. Also, the additional cost of these reforms—a cost of $200 million to $400 million over six years to bring these reforms into place, and an additional cost of $50 million per year just to make the system work.

I’d like to also just point out from the submitters their concerns over what this will mean for their industry. I’d like to quote from the submission from the New Zealand Association of Registered Hairdressers, where they said that, “While we understand the desire for some change, we do not support the level of risk for our apprentices and our industries associated with the implementation of this … bill. … In fact, members are already holding back from taking on new apprentices as they struggle with the uncertainty of Government statements on this issue.” This bill is already having a negative impact and it hasn’t even been passed.

The second point I’d like to raise is the loss of regional autonomy in this bill. There has been mixed views from our polytechs to this question, but what is true is that they are all losing local decision-making. They are losing control over their local assets, and they will no longer have control over these decisions at a local level.

I’d like to quote from two submitters from two polytechs where they raised significant concerns about these issues. Firstly, from Otago polytech, where they said that this bill will impede “local decision-making and flexibility and compromises innovation by providing for the dissolution of subsidiaries, defines an excessively narrow mission for the NZIST, and compromises academic freedom.” And I’ll touch on academic freedom shortly. The Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) said—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: You didn’t even turn up in Dunedin.

—in their submission—and there’s the member for Dunedin South complaining about the SIT and talking about how bad they must be at their job, when in fact they’re one of the most successful polytechs in the country. I think that she should be ashamed of the comments that she’s making. The SIT said, “SIT and our Southland community are concerned that this proposal will inhibit the innovation and competitive edge that has made SIT successful in the past.” They go on to say, “these SIT initiatives are a crucial driving force of SIT’s recruitment ability, and are integral for SIT to attract and retain domestic and international students to our Southland community to address Southland’s pressing skills shortage requirements.” That goes again to the heart of how this bill is affecting the regions and affecting their need for skills across New Zealand.

Finally, I’d like to touch on the issue of academic freedom, where there has been a range of submissions from all sorts of sector groups on this issue. The Tertiary Education Union even submitted, making it very clear that they were not pleased with the crackdown, essentially, of academic expression and academic freedom in this bill. They made significant recommendations, which have only just been partially fulfilled in the changes the select committee made. I raise this issue because whilst there may have been a change made by the select committee to ensure that academic freedom is put back in place, in part, for the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, this does not flow through to any subsidiaries that it currently allows for, and that is a point which I think there will need to be more debate on in the House.

So, overall, Madam Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. The National Party continues to oppose it for a variety of reasons, but we do thank the submitters, we do thank them for their views, and we look forward to the committee of the whole House stage. We will be bringing rigorous Supplementary Order Papers to the Table to make positive changes so that we can make this bill work in a better way for New Zealanders. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill in my first speech in the House this year. Happy parliamentary New Year, colleagues.

I want to first ask the question, because it’s come across from both speakers on the Government side of the House and, actually, arguably from members of the Opposition that we have the same shared values in what we’re trying to achieve here, with that being a coherent, connected-up, working sector for institutes of technology and polytechnics, and industry training organisations of polytech vocational education—however you want to characterise it. It does, however, seem that the rubber hits the road, or the argument really starts to get quite argy-bargy, when we talk about how we’re going to achieve that. From what I’ve managed to discern from speakers from the Opposition, they’d prefer to keep the status quo on life support. That status quo—as was raised by the Associate Minister of Education Tracey Martin—is such that we, as this Government, inherited from the former National Government a situation whereby 13 out of the 16 polytechs across this country were in the red financially. They required support to the extent that since we have come into Government, we have had to put up over $100 million in order to keep them alive.

Speaking to a number of those who are engaged in the polytech sector, those who are quite high up the hierarchy, who I’d hope that members of the Opposition—the likes of Dr Shane Reti—have also spoken to, it would very much seem as though the implication that has been derived by those members of the polytech sector community is that the former Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce was trying to run the sector into the ground and, essentially, disestablish it publicly to such an extent that it had to be turned into private provision. This is something which I have heard from a number of those within the polytech sector.

💬 Nicola Willis: It’s hearsay.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: If the Opposition are able to mention anecdotes and conversations with those out in the community, I will quite happily refer to those out in the community in Southland—the likes of Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) and Otago. So, again, I want to really draw attention back to the fact that we seem to have shared vision, at the very least—if you could call it that—or a shared understanding of what we’re trying to achieve here: a unified vocational education sector. It just so happens that this side of the House actually wants to do something about it, whereas the other side of the House has a lot of critique, but not a whole lot of substance about any forms of alternatives.

For example, the speaker who just sat down—Simeon Brown from the Opposition—mentioned the fact that it’s going to cost between $200 million and $400 million for these reforms. What’s the alternative? Well, the alternative is to continue pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a system which is not serving communities, which is not currently serving all of the learners, and which is not currently—obviously—serving those who are in charge of these polytechs. So I’m genuinely quite confused about what the National Party is proposing here, except the tearing down of what appears to be an opportunity to work constructively to build the best possible vocational education sector for this country.

Indeed, as many submitters before the Education and Workforce Committee mentioned—I’m stoked that I got to sit in for a portion of it. Unfortunately, now, I’m no longer a member. But many of those submitters spoke about how this was the most transformative change to the vocational education sector in a generation, and there was an opportunity here to do some really exciting things. So it might surprise members of the Opposition, but I’m quite excited to see what Supplementary Order Papers they bring to the Table, because hopefully, thankfully, we there will have some constructive debate—I hope.

I’m also fascinated to hear from members of the Opposition—the former National Government—that they are big fans of localism. I’m really, really excited about the potential that that offers for us to work together as the Greens and as National on reforms to local government and handing over more power to local government and more resources. I’d like to mention my good colleague and my mate Ron Mark—Minister Ron Mark over there—for the work that he did during his time in local government, because we have seen on this side what can really happen if community members are engaged in the decisions that are made at higher levels.

💬 Nicola Willis: And yet you’ve centralised the polytechs—what a contradiction. Have you read the bill?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: So when it comes to what we are trying to achieve here—it is contained within the bill; it is contained within the bill, Nicola Willis—there will be the establishment of the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Training. The pathway, the transitional means by which we get there, is laid out in one of the explanatory notes within the commentary, which states—and I quote—“Initially, each polytechnic would become a Crown entity subsidiary of NZIST, until its undertakings transferred to NZIST (or another NZIST subsidiary) by the end of 2022.” The really important thing to recognise about that, if you speak to people who are in the thick of the sector, is that this offers an opportunity for a sense of contraction, to get an understanding of the environments that these vocational providers are operating in, and then to expand in a conscious and meaningful way, whereby we have a network of joined-up providers.

I’d also like to touch on a number of the points that were raised in the first reading—which I’m thankful that the Opposition are no longer speaking about, because it’s demonstrably untrue, if you read the bill—that there will no longer be on-the-job training. There will absolutely continue to be on-the-job training. In fact, that’s a really important component of the vocational education sector. What this vocational education and training reform amendment bill does is bring it together in one piece of legislation, so it is more accessible for the general public. It amends the Education Act 1989 and integrates provisions of the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Act 1992.

So too, I want to talk about the charter, because I think that that is a really critical point, and I’d note that a number of submitters, including those from polytechs, raised that they thought it was really crucially important that we had this charter here to outline the principles that will guide NZIST. I think it’s really important to speak to within Schedule 3—that being clause 3—that the role of NZIST is to meet the needs of regions throughout New Zealand. To do so it must—and I quote—“(a) offer in each region a mix of education and training, including on-the-job, face-to-face, and distance delivery that is accessible to the learners of that region and meets the needs of its learners, industries, and communities;”. That is critical for the sake of future planning, and when you add to the mix the opportunity that’s presented with workforce development councils and specialisation in regions, where they get to do and show off what they do so well, we have the potential to turn this ship around.

I just, finally, want to touch on the experience of those who are actually inside the system and navigating it as learners. The average age of those who are in the vocational education sector who are educating or upskilling themselves and taking on that task of learning is 27 years old. That is substantially older than the average entry age of those who go into university, for example, and the reason for that is the different life experience that somebody within the vocational sector brings to being a learner within that sector. They are, typically, those who got straight out of school and decided to go into work, or they are those who tried a bit of study, found out it didn’t quite work for them, and then decided to go into work and study something else. There is a variation—Tim Macindoe—of different ways in which this could play out. But the really important thing is that these are people who are deciding to retrain after they have got some adult life experience, and I think that demonstrates the need for there to be some real structure, some real rigour, and a real blueprint of opportunity for them to pick up after they graduate from that vocational course.

So, in summary, I’m really confused about what the National Party are putting forward. I would invite them to share their Supplementary Order Papers that they are threatening to drop on the Table, last minute, in the committee of the whole House, because if they really want to collaborate, there’s an opportunity to do that. I’m always open for a yarn; always open to creative ways of problem solving. I think on an issue like this, when we’re talking about tertiary-level education that’s outside of the university system and that is providing for those who are edging toward their thirties, who have a little bit of work and life experience already, that we should be doing our utmost to come together as a Parliament to actually make it work in a cross-partisan manner.

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is proud to support this bill at its second reading.

I apologise to the member for not giving her her two-minute warning bell—I was engrossed in Speakers’ rulings on interjections—and if I could just remind the member who’s about to take the call that a number of Speakers’ rulings refer to interjections being rare and reasonable. I’m sure she won’t interject on her own speech, though.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was struck by the contradictions in Chlöe Swarbrick’s speech in which she spoke of the value of localism and then championed a bill which absolutely defeats localism, defeats regional control, and puts absolute primacy on centralisation—on the Government knowing best and the regions not being trusted. That is why, and on a fundamental level, National opposes this bill. I reject the member’s characterisation that what is most important here is a unified sector. Actually, what National thinks is most important is students being served well, our workforce being prepared appropriately, businesses getting the skilled people they need, and communities having the skills and training they need. We think those goals are far more important than some idea of unity and perfect centralisation. We absolutely reject that ideal.

Now, you have heard speakers on this side of the House address many of the challenges and problems that this bill will create for our tertiary sector. But sometimes the words of the Opposition aren’t given as much credence as they should be.

So I want to turn to the words of the Tertiary Education Commission, an entity, controlled by the Government, who did a risk assessment of the proposals in this bill. Now, what that risk assessment said was that the following risks were almost certain. Let me run you through them. The first was that there was an almost certain risk of extreme workforce disruption. In an economy which already has external threats and is slowing down under poor economic management, extreme workforce disruption is the last thing that we need.

The next thing that the Tertiary Education Commission warned was that there was an almost certain likelihood of a major drop in participation in vocational education—an almost certain risk of a major drop in participation in vocational education. That risk has been quantified. This is on-the-job training. This is the training that members around this House, when we go and visit small businesses, when we go and visit our trades people, when we go and visit developers, they say to us that this is what we need more of. They’ve quantified that the risk of these changes—in their programme business case, they said that New Zealand could lose 1,800 industry trainees; 1,800. That is people who would be training on the job to get the skills they need for a growing economy, doing the work that our businesses and industries need done. We’re at risk of losing 1,800 of them because of this job, and, furthermore, 2,310 apprentices. The people that we need to learn on the job and get the skills that they need to contribute to our economy won’t have those opportunities because of this bill. Remember this isn’t my assessment; this is the assessment of the Government’s own Tertiary Education Commission.

The third risk they warned of was that, they said, there was an extreme risk that the needs of industry and employers would not be met, and that this would have an extreme impact—the needs of industry and employers won’t be met. So instead we’ll have this centralised entity running all of our polytechs and industry training, the Government-knows-best model, and, actually, the needs of industry and employers—the very people who will be employing the people being trained—won’t be met. There will be a poor match up because of the loss of regional autonomy, and that is very concerning indeed.

The Tertiary Education Commission also warned that there was a likelihood that the needs of regions would not be met and that this would have an extreme impact, exactly as we’ve been saying on this side of the House, that contrary to Chlöe Swarbrick’s assertion that this was some version of localisation, actually, the needs of regions won’t be met. They also warned that it was likely the new model will not achieve the desired outcomes and that it would have an extreme and negative impact.

This bill will be opposed by National because it is a typical Labour example of centralisation and Government knows best. We have grave concerns about the loss of regional autonomy. We have grave concerns that the regional leadership groups will be advisory at best and that there will be a significant loss of community-controlled assets. When I hear those numbers about the potential risk to those on in-the-job training, I know that this bill will let down the businesses that I speak to regularly who tell me that what they need more of is employees and people coming through with skills that match the needs of their industry. They don’t trust that a centralised polytech body will be able to deliver that. This is a terrible bill and National opposes it. Thank you.

This is a split call. Jo Luxton.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m really pleased to stand and take a call on this piece of legislation. Before I begin my contribution, I just want to reiterate what some of the other members have said that we constantly hear: this negative, negative, negative from the other side—it’s all doom and gloom, but no solution, no alternatives, just negative. Well, actually, we can’t keep going as we have been going within our vocational education space because the polytechs are suffering and if we continue to go the way we are, we’re going to have to keep continuing to pump millions and millions and millions of taxpayers’ money into them, which is not going to be a very good outcome for our taxpayers.

What this piece of legislation does is take into account students and employers. I will say that the previous speaker, Nicola Willis, is the only speaker from the Opposition that I’ve heard talk about students and their needs. So I would like to acknowledge her for that. What we have seen is that there’s been a total mismatch between what skills employers require from their students and the skills that students are coming out from polytechs with. What this piece of legislation does is going to streamline that; the industry will have more say in the training.

I’d like to commend our Minister of Education for being ambitious for our vocational education system and aspirational for our learners. I commend this bill to the House.

I’m pleased to rise to take a call on the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill. I’d just like to briefly speak to the last speaker’s contribution. Jo Luxton said that we cannot carry on as we were, spending millions of taxpayers’ money on some sort of failed model. And yet here we are spending, as my learned colleague Simeon Brown said earlier, $200 million to $400 million over six years on a policy that the Tertiary Education Commission have said quite clearly, as my other learned colleague Nicola Willis pointed out, will fail. The reason that it will fail is because centralisation, the grand mother ship of Labour, that they like to vacuum everything up into because they know best, is destined to fail because it is the local people, the local workforce who know best how to cater for the needs of their region.

The speech from Chlöe Swarbrick, which was basically based completely on contradictions and hearsay, brilliantly summed that up, where she talked so strongly about the need for localism and then backed a bill that does exactly the opposite. This grand centralised mother ship of Labour of “we know best”, they did it in education with charter schools, sucking them up into the grand mother ship model because they know best. But, actually, all of the evidence and their own Tertiary Education Commission have said that this is a policy that is destined to fail.

I don’t need to say much more on this. My learned colleagues have already pointed out all of the failures of this bill, so I’m not going to go into any more detail other than to say that we strongly oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I’m excited to take a super-brief call on this bill, because, actually, a lot of it has been said and it actually has all been said on this side of the House, obviously. But it is so clear that this side of the House is doing the hard miles, tackling all those long-term challenges facing the country that have just been lying dormant, ignored by the Opposition.

I would like to do a brief thankyou to our 236 submitters, because, as we have already heard, as has been extensively traversed, many changes were made by the Education and Workforce Committee that I’m also a part of, as a result of all of this feedback. One particular comment, though, I would like to put on the record. It was made by Wintec, the Tertiary Education Union branch. They mentioned unhealthy competition, and we’ve heard it already. It was unhealthy competition that saw 13 out of 16 polytechs in deficit that needed to be bailed out by taxpayers’ money.

When you ask the Opposition what their plan is, obviously they have no plan. They basically take their ideas from the Leader of the Opposition, who spent 17 minutes on Tuesday telling us that he had no plan. So what I would like to do is I would like to commend the Minister of Education on his vision for the education sector, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I doubt whether there are tens of thousands of people listening to this debate at this point around the country, but I am reliably informed that there are a few people who are eagerly awaiting this contribution from me, including a Mrs Sally Woollams of Whitford, who, along with her husband, Bill, yesterday celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary. So I would just like to wish the happy couple a very happy golden wedding anniversary. Like you, Madam Speaker, and many other members of the House, I’ve written many congratulatory cards over the years to couples with similar wonderful milestones, but that was the first time I’d ever written one to a couple whose wedding I’d actually attended myself, albeit as a very young fellow. Now, that has very little to do with the bill, so let me turn my attention to the bill.

Could I thank Chlöe Swarbrick for so generously mentioning me towards the end of her speech. I have no idea why she did that, other than the fact that I was smiling sweetly at her at the time. But I do want to say that I agreed with the point that she made towards the end, because I too am eagerly looking forward to the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that the National Party will be bringing forward in the committee stage of this very flawed bill.

It is a serious matter. It has huge implications for the tertiary education sector and for industry training, and throughout the course of this debate this afternoon, members of the Government parties who have tried to sell its benefits have studiously avoided the very real concern and criticism that we’ve had from the Tertiary Education Commission and from Treasury, both of whom have seen this as a very dire measure that will do enormous damage to industry training and within the tertiary education sector. So we will need to pay careful attention to the SOPs that come forward. I do hope that, as Ms Swarbrick said, she will be looking creatively and reasonably at all the measures that are being promoted because we have to improve this bill. Too much will be very much at risk if we get this wrong.

Goodness, Madam Speaker. I am the last speaker on this bill. When we became the Government in 2017, there were huge issues in this sector, and under the management of that great manager, Minister for Infrastructure, Steven Joyce, there was a $53 million loss in 2017 alone, and we had to immediately inject $100 million into the polytech sector. So there are some facts for the Opposition over there, who spent nine years in Government and left our vocational sector in such disarray.

Unlike the National Party, the Labour Party spent its time in Opposition actually coming up with ideas in policy, and one of those big projects, which we’re starting to see the fruits of, was the Future of Work. I really want to pay tribute to the work that Chris Hipkins has done in this area. This is huge reform of our vocational sector. It attacks and addresses the change in cultural norm that we have towards vocational education as being of significant value in our country, working with your hands and doing vocational work. It is something to be really valued. That’s what this Government is doing with this reform, making it work in a much more significant way.

I also just want to point out that the supposed huff and puff of the Opposition on this issue was not borne out by their behaviour on the select committee. In fact, they didn’t even bother to turn up to the region when the Education and Workforce Committee went down there deliberately, in Otago and Southland, to hear directly from those polytechnics. They didn’t even bother to turn up and hear what they had to say.

I heartily commend this bill to the House. I look forward to its passage throughout the House. It’s an incredible piece of work that’s been done, and it will bear fruit for our country.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Education and Workforce Committee by majority be agreed to.