Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PENNY SIMMONDS: I move, That the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to start by thanking the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful consideration of the bill over the past four months. To briefly recap, the purpose of this bill is to redesign the vocational education and training system, restoring regional decision-making and increasing industry leadership in vocational education and training, particularly in the areas of standard setting and work-based training. The bill is significant and involves substantial amendments to the Education and Training Act 2020. It contains both new policies and amendments to existing provisions in the Act, and it enables relevant secondary legislation.

With regard to the polytechnics, Mr Speaker, as you know, the bill will re-establish a network of regional polytechnics, and from 1 January 2026, the relevant programmes, functions, assets, and staff will transfer from Te Pūkenga to these polytechnics. Cabinet has taken and announced decisions regarding which polytechnics will stand alone from 1 January 2026 and which ones will join the new federation of polytechnics, and there will be a few that will remain in Te Pūkenga for now, as they continue to build their financial sustainability prior to decisions being taken early next year.

With regard to the industry skills boards, the bill enables the establishment of industry skills boards, each of which will have responsibility for a defined group of specific industries. Cabinet has taken and announced their decisions regarding the industries that will be represented by each of the eight industry skills boards. They will be statutory standard-setting bodies with majority of industry governance: six of the eight on the board will be from industry, ensuring that vocational education and training remains responsive to both new and emerging industry developments, as well as current industry needs.

Work-based training: there’s going to be a transition period for work-based training for up to two years, whereby the management and arrangement of work-based training and programmes will move from Te Pūkenga to industry skills boards. This is a temporary transitionary measure that will allow time for new work-based training programmes to be developed at private training establishments, polytechnics, and wānanga, and it will provide for continuity for those learners who were enrolled prior to commencement of the bill.

Submissions and recommendations came in to the committee and out from the committee. The committee received 210 written submissions, a relatively modest number in comparison to when Te Pūkenga was set up—I believe, from memory, there were about 2,000 submissions back then. The vast majority of them were against the setting up of Te Pūkenga, so the 210 written submissions were relatively modest for this in comparison. There were 32 submitters heard at oral hearings, including representatives from industry, employers, employees, and students in the vocational education and training system, as well as submissions from current work-based training divisions within Te Pūkenga and from Te Pūkenga itself. I’d like to thank the committee for their careful consideration of those submissions, and I’d also like to thank all those who did take the time to make submissions and also to those who appeared before the committee. The submissions have been carefully considered by the committee—I know that they’ve put a lot of time and discussion into consideration of the submissions—and they’ve helped to refine the bill and the proposed functioning of the new system.

The subsequent changes to the bill recommended by the committee are mostly technical in nature, to help ensure that the bill is workable, is fit for purpose, and to improve its clarity and consistency. These changes are outlined in the committee’s report. I don’t intend to go through all of them today, but I would, however, encourage anyone interested to read that report. The recommended changes do include an amendment relating to polytechnic council membership, and minor and technical amendments to provisions relating to the polytechnic federation.

Strengthening the bill to ensure that industry skills boards will be driven by industry needs—and this is a key concern for industry. This includes ensuring representation of employers and employee perspectives, and preventing people with ownership or governance interests in providers from sitting on an industry skills board.

Technical amendments to the transitional provisions in the bill to improve clarity, workability, and consistency: I intend to propose some additional changes at the committee of the whole House stage. The primary changes I will propose will support the timely establishment of the new entities and the smooth transfer of programmes, students, staff, and assets. Therefore, I will bring an Amendment Paper to seek to change the commencement date of the bill, to ensure all preparation for the new system can be made prior to the proposed transfer date of 1 January 2026 and the new entities can be ready to operate from that date. The Amendment Paper will also include some further technical amendments that have been identified in recent weeks. These include additional provisions to support the transition of the work-based training divisions to ensure the bill includes all provisions necessary for the effective transfer and operation of programmes, assets, staff, students, and activities associated with work-based training. They also include some further tidy-up amendments to ensure all appropriate provisions relating to record-keeping and annual reporting are included in the bill, and to correct any remaining drafting errors.

I also want to acknowledge and thank polytechnic staff and industry-training organisation staff. Their professionalism over this time of change has ensured that students have not suffered through the changes, and I want to acknowledge that professionalism of that staff and the work that they have done under difficult circumstances. I have visited all 10 of the institutes of technology and polytechnics that will be stood up, and I’ve met with not only the senior management teams but also community leaders from their local community. Without exception, they have all been pleased and relieved that they are getting their polytechnics back in their regions. I thank also the communities who have stuck with their polytechnics. If there has been one thing that has come out of this adversity of Te Pūkenga, the one good thing has been that local communities have realised how important vocational education and training is, how important industry training is, and how important polytechnics are to their regions.

In closing, I want to again acknowledge the valuable suggestions made by the committee and thank them for their work to bring the bill to this stage. I commend the bill to the House.

Members, the time has come for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Good evening, members. We are on the second reading of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Whāia te iti kahurangi, ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei.

[Pursue excellence and if you should surrender may it be to a lofty mountain.]

Tonight, I speak in the second reading of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill. This reform aims to restore regional decision-making, increase industry leadership, and reflect local training needs. Tonight, in her speech, Minister Simmonds played down the number of submissions made to the Education and Workforce Committee, but she avoided sharing with this House what, in fact, they said. The reason for that is because it’s difficult to find a reasonable number of submissions—despite acknowledging some good intent in the bill, it falls well short of the promise that the National Government made. Only 11 percent of submitters supported this bill.

Glen Bennett: 7 percent?

SHANAN HALBERT: 11 percent—and this simply fails on many levels to set up a vocational training system in Aotearoa that we can all be proud of. In fact, it makes it worse.

There is widespread agreement that financial viability is the core challenge for the tertiary sector and the vocational sector in particular; however, in this legislation, any attempt to solve this challenge is absent. The Minister repeatedly says that Te Pūkenga was not financially viable, despite it returning a $16.7 million surplus last year, as it was intended to do. Yet she cannot show any evidence that these reforms or her plan will result in better long-term viability for our vocational training sector and polytechnics in particular.

On the other hand, Treasury did give advice that there remains a risk that these changes will not be able to fully sustain the financial challenges faced by institutes of technology and polytechnics prior to the establishment of Te Pūkenga. We’re going backwards.

Consultants have indicated that $190 million may be needed to restart the 16 polytechnics, and yet there’s only a minimum of $177 million in Government funding set aside to support this. This legislation and these reforms do not set our polytechnics up for success. It puts them at greater risk and does not even provide them with enough funding to undertake the Government’s reforms.

What do we see because of this financial instability and uncertainty? More cuts. NorthTec, Toi Ohomai, te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Otago Polytechnic, WelTec, Wintec, Whitireia—they continue. This legislation is resulting in more job cuts, more programmes lost, and more campuses closing as a result of Minister Simmonds’ and the National Government’s choices.

At the end of last year, it was indicated that the sector would lose up to 900 fulltime-equivalents, close 550 programmes, and close approximately 30 delivery sites. I’m hearing every week from the sector that these cuts and closures are only going to increase under this reform. These are real jobs lost, real opportunities for students gone, and key centres of learning, many of which provide for our most remote regional communities—places like Kaikohe, Kaitāia, Tokoroa, and Rotorua.

This is at a time when we are in desperate need of more apprentices. We’ve already lost 19,000 construction workers, and last year, 3,700 fewer individuals enrolled in building apprenticeships and there were 9,000 overall fewer apprentice completions across all fields year on year under this National Government.

We are losing specialist programmes that provide key skills for our economy—for example, the timber machining apprenticeship at Toi Ohomai in Rotorua, the only programme of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, is set to be cut. This is a skill that is not delivered anywhere else, and it’s going to be lost under this Government. These cuts hurt our regions. The Minister says that the staff-to-student ratios at polytechnics are too high and job cuts are necessary. Her officials say that in the regions, this is just not realistic. It’s a clunky measure. It doesn’t work in Wairoa or Ngāwhā. We don’t live and die by it. It’s a difference of opinion from Minister Simmonds to her officials and to me.

The cuts to jobs, programmes, and campuses as a result of these reforms hurt our young people, our regions, and our economy. Civil Contractors New Zealand Chief Executive Alan Pollard summed it up well when he said on these reforms, “It is not about training, but it is about cutting costs.” That is the summary of this piece of legislation. When I think back to only the week before last, our select committee completed our report and within less than two weeks, here we are in a second reading. I’m unsure if she even listened to the recommendations in that report.

Industry experts and organisations have had a lot to say about this legislation. They were hopeful and they were led down a garden path that they would have more leadership under this legislation. The Minister, in fact, promised industry a stronger role under these reforms. That is a broken promise and industry have been short-changed by the National Government in this legislation.

Their submissions to the Education and Workforce Committee reflect the sentiment best. DairyNZ told us that this legislation will not work and that industries have not been given greater authority and the industry skills boards (ISBs) haven’t been given more leadership in funding decision-making. BusinessNZ echoed this, saying that ISBs don’t have the power to set the standards that industries require. ISBs don’t have the powers industry has asked for and they don’t have the funding that they need under this legislation—$30 million is not enough to do the same job that workforce development councils were doing for $60 million. That is half the funding and that is under-serving our workforce, our industry, and our communities.

The themes of industry submissions reflected in the ministry’s departmental report show that they feel ISBs aren’t independent enough and that they aren’t industry-led, as was promised time and time again. They also noted that there is not enough transitional funding.

Industry, like Treasury, has warned the Government about these reforms. Alan Pollard again said in his submission, “Make no mistake; in our view, there is a massive risk here. If we don’t get it right, the Government’s reform is not going to be delivered.”, and that is the mess that we find ourselves in. We’ve been building the plane as we go, and despite the numerous submissions during select committee hearings—and, again, only 11 percent of submitters unconditionally backed these reforms—little has changed in the second reading in this legislation.

What we do see in the changes post select committee is a further reduction, though, of Māori representation, and some over the other side will be happy about this. This is what they voted for. This legislation has now removed the requirement for industry skills boards to act in a matter that contributes to an education system that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi and supports Māori-Crown relations. Alongside this, the provision that councils of polytechnics should include Māori has also been removed, and this is consistent with Minister Simmonds’ consultation document on the tertiary education strategy that she proposes moving forward.

The reality of this legislation is that, as I said, the plane is being built as we go. Here we are in a second reading with a dead horse of a piece of legislation, with no financial plan, that creates worse outcomes for regional communities, for kaimahi, staff, and for learners out in those communities, and the Minister undervalues both their feedback and submissions, the recommendations that they have made, and the recommendations that came from the Opposition that didn’t move forward. I do not support this bill and I don’t commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to begin my speech by acknowledging the people who should be at the heart of our education system, whether it’s tertiary, primary, or secondary: the learners, the staff, and the communities in it, particularly in the tertiary education space and in the polytech space. They’ve gone through nearly one decade of churn with the original Te Pūkenga reforms, and now they’re going through this process, which disestablishes Te Pūkenga.

I want to talk about what we do find disappointing about this bill and why we do regard it as a missed opportunity. One of the things that this bill has failed to do is it has failed to guarantee any kind of staff or student representation on the governing councils of the newly established institutes of technology and polytechnic (ITP) councils. The second thing we’re quite disappointed by is that during the select committee process, what were already weak provisions for Māori representation in the bill were stripped even further during the select committee stage. The third reason—and, I guess, the most important reason—why we’re disappointed with it is that it doesn’t actually do anything to enhance sector viability.

In fact, the Treasury analysis of this reform said that the newly established ITPs could expect financials that were the same, if not worse, than before Te Pūkenga was established. So, in other words, we’re going back to the status quo, but, somehow, it’s even worse than before. This is what this bill actually does: it returns us to a status quo that already wasn’t working, but it makes it not work even further. I really want to stress that point because the impacts of the reforms and what we’re going through—I mean, you could make a sort of utilitarian argument that if, on the other side, we were going to emerge with a vocational education system that was more inclusive, that was more equitable, and that served the needs of learners, communities, and the regions better, then all the pain would be worth it, but that’s not the case. It’s just all pain and no gain.

Look, I really want to acknowledge the submissions that were made by the Tertiary Education Union and the Tertiary Institutes Allied Staff Association. When we asked them, during the select committee hearings on this bill whether, in their opinion, if the reform that we’re going through was now more or less disruptive than what they went through when Te Pūkenga was merged and all the polytechs were consolidated together into a single entity, both of them replied that this process was significantly more disruptive than what went on before, and we’re seeing the job-cuts effect. There were 855 job losses last year and 1,000 are expected in this year. Contrary to the Minister for Vocational Education’s rhetoric about how they’re overstaffed, for a sector that had only about 8,000 staff, losing about one-seventh of the staff is absolutely devastating to the capacity of these regions, and also the capacity of these institutions to remain as ongoing and viable concerns.

But the good news—well, this is still bad news—is that we are able to change things through people power, right? We’ve seen the Government back down on some of the more egregious proposals, thanks to the lobbying and front-line work being done by communities across the regions. In Northland, thanks to the efforts of Green list MP and future Te Tai Tokerau MP, Hūhana Lyndon, they’ve already backed down on some of the staff cuts that they were planning to undertake, thanks to all the public hui she’s done. I was there about a month ago and she’d organised a public hui, and there were about 200 people there. That’s really impressive for a town of that size, and really impressive when it was pulled together at short notice, as well.

We do know that the Government has withdrawn from proposals to close the Tokoroa and Taupō campuses, thanks to the efforts made by communities. I really want to acknowledge the local communities, who have been at the forefront of lobbying—particularly the Mayor of South Waikato District, Gary Petley—and I really want to acknowledge the probably quiet work that the National MPs who represent these electorates have been doing in the background. I know that you guys can’t be vocally opposing a lot of these reforms, but I think that on one hand, it’s kind of a dual-pressure strategy. You have the Opposition making a lot of noise and putting a lot of pressure on the Minister and then you can do the quiet lobbying on your side, and it all adds up to a win for the communities, whatever that might look like.

Carl Bates: This bill is a win for the communities—that’s right.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Well, no—not according to any of the advice that the Government has received, and not according to what’s actually happened so far, Mr Bates.

I really want to talk about how we need to stop avoiding the chopping and churning of various policies when Governments change. The Government right now is setting a tertiary strategy that will outline the way forward for the tertiary sector. Now, the offer that I’m going to make to the Minister—which I’m not going to make through some botched hit job through the media, like the Prime Minister did with the energy reform hit job, and the more successful hit job that Erica Stanford did—is that we do want to work with the Government on an actual cross-party tertiary strategy that will actually endure a change of Government, because when the election happens next year and, God willing, I end up as the tertiary education Minister, I don’t want to have to rip up what’s already been done before. I really want to put some certainty in the hands of learners, in the hands of communities, and in the hands of the regions, because they deserve better than chopping and changing, and all the job cuts and all the uncertainty that’s gone on so far.

I want to move on to what we do think the solution should be. The solution should be to look at what they do over in Australia, where financial viability is of concern, but the primary concern is actually educating learners. The free technical and further education (free TAFE) programme in Australia has been an absolute success in terms of outcomes. This Government has talked about how they want to reduce the amount of people—particularly young people—going on to be beneficiaries, but the free TAFE programme in Australia shows that when someone has gone through the free TAFE programme, they’re 37 percent less likely to end up on the benefit, and over half of those people who have gone through the free TAFE programme have actually seen their incomes increase. It’s made an absolutely big difference, as well, for disadvantaged learners—particularly students with disabilities, Aboriginal Australians, and women learners, as well.

Having a programme like free TAFE—and, look, the Minister knows what a success free polytech has been to her community over at the Southland Institute of Technology. It’s absolutely led to the revival of Invercargill.

So we do think that education programmes that actually treat education as a public good, as they should be, rather than as being for private—you know, we do have quite a narrow conception of financial viability, and, look, I’m happy to attack the Government’s programmes on the basis that even their own advice doesn’t say that they’re financially viable. That was the initial advice said by the Treasury, and there’s actually even more damning advice that the Treasury later produced. I’m not able to discuss it because it’s still in the middle of a media pitch, but when it does come out, it will reveal that, actually, this thing is not that financially viable.

But the wider point is that financial viability is an overly narrow metric, and, actually, we should see education as a public good and not as something that should be assessed on the narrow metric of financial viability. Should it be one of the measures? Absolutely. Should it be the predominant measure? I don’t think so.

I want to conclude with a note of thanks to all the submitters for all the hard mahi that they have put into this bill. As the Minister correctly pointed out, there were only 210 submissions, which is a relatively small number of submissions, but, of those, there were definitely valuable insights that they contained, particularly the submissions made by the union movement, which really illuminated the scale of disruption and the damage that was going on. Look, the Minister talks about how this is an industry-centred reform, but, actually, of the around 38 industry submitters, only eight of them gave their full support to the changes. So if even industry—which is supposed to be walking hand in hand with this National Government—isn’t fully supportive of the reforms, then it really speaks to what’s actually happening on the ground.

Learners deserve thriving polytechnics that cater to their needs, so get behind the Green Party’s “Save our Polytechs” campaign. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill in the form that has been reported back from the select committee. I would like to thank all the submitters for taking the time to submit during the select committee process, and I would also like to thank the advisers for their support that they provided to the committee while we were considering this bill.

In the select committee, we have made several changes to this bill. As the Minister said in the speech, most of the changes are technical changes, so I won’t go through all those changes. But what I would say is that we know that New Zealand’s vocational education and training system has been in decline for some years. Instead of fixing that issue, what the previous Government—the Labour Government—did was they decided to come up with this idea of a mega-merger. That was a complete distraction from the actual issues that needed to be dealt with. Instead of dealing with those issues, they thought, “Bring in a big distraction and let’s merge all these polytechs, and let, you know, people not talk about the actual issues of the financial stability or sustainability of these politics and the operational issues that several polytechs had. So instead, bring in this mega-merger so people get confused, people stop talking about the actual issues.”

But the ACT Party, from day one, has been saying that that is not the right approach, and we wanted to give control to the regions. We are really pleased to see that this bill is going through our process here, and that it has come to the second reading today. We really want to give the control back to regions so that they can make the decisions based on the needs that they have in the local industries, and also see what suits the students there.

I also want to mention that as a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, there were some changes that I advocated for on behalf of the ACT Party, and we managed to get those changes done in this legislation. I’m very pleased to say that these changes are really important changes because we do not want to see any kind of ideological thinking being entrenched in this legislation, because these kind of ideological thinkings, when they are entrenched in these education legislations, they just lead to failure. We have seen that in the past, so we need to do some things differently. We need to look at what is best for students, what is best for the future of our industries here in New Zealand.

I would like to highlight two changes which ACT managed to get in this legislation: one is in new section 318, inserted by clause 22, which is about “Matters to be considered when appointing members of polytechnic’s council”. The member from the Labour Party did speak about it, and what I want to highlight here is that when you are appointing members to a polytech’s council, what would you take into consideration? I would take into consideration merit. I would take into consideration their ability, their proficiency. But those members want to focus on gender. Those members want to focus on those people’s ethnicity. I think by just focusing on gender and ethnicity, we are not going to deliver what polytechs should be delivering. Because that is just empty virtue signalling, and we don’t believe in that. That is why I, as a member of the ACT Party on the committee, advocated for these changes. I’m really pleased to say that that change has been done, those subclauses are removed, and that those subclauses are replaced with one which says, “(1) The council of a polytechnic should, as far as is reasonably practicable,— (a) reflect the communities in the region that the polytechnic serves,”. I think this is really fit for the purpose, and I’m really pleased that this change was made in the select committee process.

The second change I want to highlight is in new section 370, inserted by clause 23, and this is about “Performance of industry skills board’s functions and duties”. It says, “When performing its functions and duties under sections 367 to 369, the industry skills board must act in a manner that—”; and then at least five subclauses. There was one clause that has been now replaced with another clause. That clause said, “(c) contributes to an education system that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi and supports Māori–Crown relations.” That has now been replaced with “has regard to the needs of Māori and other population groups as identified in the tertiary education strategy issued under section 7”.

What is the core function of these industry skill boards? We know that according to this legislation, the core function of industry skills boards is going to be to plan for workforce needs, to set and maintain skill standards and qualifications. So how is that subclause going to work? Because, in our view, that is just a distraction, and we want to see that polytechs are focused on what they should be focused on. These kinds of ideological distractions are not good for us. They are unnecessary. They are unhelpful for New Zealand’s industry future. That’s why we oppose these subclauses and are very pleased to say that we have managed to get changes done in this bill.

I really look forward to seeing this bill go through the committee of the whole House and the third reading of this bill. The ACT party supports this bill. Thank you.

Mr Speaker, this is an important and, I guess, a well-signalled reform bill. I want to thank the select committee for their work. New Zealand First doesn’t have quite enough members of Parliament; we need to get at least another couple so we can cover each of the select committees. So we don’t have a member on that select committee, but I do get to speak, as part of my role as our education spokesperson, with a lot of providers and stakeholders around the country, so I have some understanding of the complexity that there is in the vocational education sector and the diverse and numerous range of providers there are.

I want to make three points. The first one of them is about restoring regional decision-making. Now, Labour loved centralisation. I think that’s unarguable. I mean, we had that in health, we had that in the water sector, and we had that in education at the very least. It’s kind of the New Zealand disease that when in doubt, we restructure something. I guess you could argue on that side, we’re probably doing the same kind of thing again. But this is the New Zealand disease. Actually, if I might say—I was going to leave this until towards the end of my speech—Francisco Hernandez made a comment about a strategic approach, not just in education but across so many areas, and that if we could do that to provide some stability between changes in Government over a period of time, New Zealand Inc. will be much better served by that. We just have to come to that level of agreement about what it is that we broadly agree on. There might be some little bits here or there, but broadly speaking, that’s where we need to go.

Anyway, Labour established Te Pūkenga, as we know, by merging 16 polytechs and nine workplace training providers, and that only really started operating at the beginning of 2023. The issue which I’ve heard around that centralisation model is the loss of regional autonomy and that for a lot of the particularly smaller areas, dealing with Wellington was something they did not enjoy at all. Wellington did not listen to them; the bureaucracy did not listen to them.

I also heard that the WDCs, the workplace development councils, were often overly political and ideological. This bill is about stripping—

Shanan Halbert: Te Pūkenga was based in Hamilton.

ANDY FOSTER: These are the things, Shanan Halbert, that I actually heard from people in the comments. I didn’t get to sit in the select committee, but I certainly hear these kind of things around the country as I meet with people.

So what this does is it re-establishes 10 regional polytechs, leaving the remnant in federation polytechs. Secondly, it establishes the industry skills boards to replace both the WDCs and to undertake a lot of training work.

In terms of regionalisation, one of the things that I really wanted to talk about is that I’ve seen a lot of great work being done by education providers with local communities, with local iwi, with local councils, and that’s really, really important. I think that bringing these institutions back to a regional model allows a lot more of that. The one I’m most familiar with is in the NorthTec area, where the idea of centralising around Whangārei is very, very important. But there’s a knowledge there that it is not going to look after the people out in Kaikohe and Kaitāia and Kerikeri and Mangawhai and Dargaville. That’s really, really important as well: how do you serve those people?

If I might say, one of those problems that we have here is sometimes saying that one-size-fits-all, one-amount-of-money-per-student-fits-all, will not work in some of those areas. We need to take a whole-of-Government approach because, otherwise, what will happen is the drop-out rates, the inability to participate rates in those far-flung areas, will be much, much higher. Those communities, which are often deprived anyway, will suffer as a result of that. So in doing this, we need to make sure that we look after not just the core but also the areas around, the more far-flung areas. That’s a really, really important part of the regional model.

The importance here is not just getting people into courses; the importance is getting people through those courses, getting them qualified, and lifting their opportunity: the kinds of things that we’ve heard already in this debate going forward—and I see them nodding on the other side.

The second point that I wanted to make is about the work-based training which is going to the industry skills boards. New section 367, inserted by clause 23, sets out a range of important functions which, actually, if you look at them, are basically the same as the WDCs, but it also takes over the actual training process. I think we’ve already heard Parmjeet Parmar referring to new section 370. Actually, there’s a whole lot of really, really fantastic outcomes that have been talked about there in terms of what we expect these Industry Skills Boards (ISBs) to do.

But there is one thing that I think we need to make sure that we don’t do and that is to put forward these organisations, which often were skills-based organisations which have now been embedded in Te Pūkenga; they will come out of Te Pūkenga, sticking them into an ISB and then, sometime less than two years later, they’re going to come out and be something different again. Some of them are all ready to go now. What we don’t want to do is to put them through that double-handling process. If I mention MITO, BCITO, and Connexis in particular, those organisations are ready to go now. So I hope, as we go through this process, that we actually allow those organisations not to have to go through the bureaucratic ISB process but can actually go and be established in their own right, straight away. That would be a much more efficient, much more effective way of doing things.

The third point I want to make before I conclude is a particular point that the Opposition made in their differing view, and that’s the one about talking about chronic underfunding issues that the sector faces. We hear this all the time. That’s probably true about just about every sector in our country. Now, the Green Party will probably say, “Well, just tax the living daylights out of everybody.” That’s a guaranteed way of making sure we’ll actually all end up poorer. What we have to do is we have to earn more money as a country so that we can afford the quality public services that we need, and that includes education. We need to lift productivity. That’s been a long-term blight on our country. We need to stop getting in our own way. We need to reform our resource management and other bureaucratic processes.

We had a question today about why some people are leaving our country. Well, in some cases, it’s because we are driving them out of the country. That, I put on the previous Government—and we’re trying to fix that problem.

We met with an engineering organisation today: 20 percent difference between the salaries they earn in New Zealand and the salaries they earn in Australia; same company. We need to bridge those gaps, and until we do that, we are pushing things uphill.

Te Pūkenga might have been founded with good intentions, but poor delivery and the lack of regionalisation, the bureaucracy sitting in Wellington—not a good model. New Zealand First has a strong belief in local and regional decision-making and just not relying on central government. We want real-world skills training leading to employment. Relationship with employers is really, really important and I think that often falls down. We all hear that. Many parts of our vocational workforce are crying out for new staff, particularly in an ageing workforce. There are lots of good jobs, great careers, delivering real value to New Zealand. That is the objective which we’ve got to focus on to strengthen regional responsiveness, to improve industry alignment. We want graduates to come out with the skills and the capabilities that employers need, and to ensure a more sustainable governance structure.

I commend this bill to the House.

A five-minute call—Ricardo Menéndez March.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill. I want to echo the words from my colleague Francisco Hernandez, who talked about the importance of centring decisions that the Government makes in vocational education sector with the needs of learners and the staff that are ultimately there to support them to be their best selves as well as the local communities and their needs. This is what should be driving Government policy decision.

This bill, though, does not do this. As I was listening to contributions from previous members, I think particularly the ACT Party member who was talking in her contributions about how she does not wish for things to be ideological. Well, let me tell you what: you can’t escape it. You can’t escape ideology, because let’s unpack the ideology behind this bill. This bill, for example, does not guarantee that the polytechnics’ governing council will have staff or student representation. That’s an ideologically driven decision. So while political parties can claim all these platitudes of common sense and lacking ideology, there’s always something driving that. In this case, for example, the cons of the bill that do not guarantee representation of staff and students in the governing council is critical to the ideology of the Government: that local communities actually do not know what’s best for them, that learners don’t know what’s best for them, that the staffers who are in charge of training the next workforce don’t know what’s good for them.

If they genuinely believed in that, they would be guaranteeing staff and learners a seat at the governing table, because their experiences and their voices are critical to ensuring that we have vocational education institutions that reflect the needs of the future generation that will be supporting our economy. It’s rich that we have a bill in front of us that does not tangibly increase the financial viability of vocational education institutions when the Government is so hell-bent on pushing young people in particular off income support and into education or work.

The second part: work. Well, that’s made a lot harder by this Government because we have seen how there are thousands and thousands fewer jobs available than there were when the Government first came into power. It’s a conscious decision to drive up unemployment to lower inflation, making our youngest people pay the price.

When it comes to the educational institutions, we’ve seen how many campuses across the country are at risk of closing, and my colleague Francisco Hernandez talked about the amazing work one of my colleagues Hūhana Lyndon has done in rallying her local community to save one of the local campuses. If the Government was genuinely serious about providing those vocational education opportunities for young people, they would be indeed resourcing those vocational education institutions. They would lower the cost barriers for people to enter into vocational education, and they would be supporting them in placements that they may need to be doing should they have a course that requires them to do so.

Instead, all that we are seeing is just buzzwords by the Government members in their contributions about things like productivity, without showing us exactly how this bill actually even increases productivity in and of itself. We’ve got the ACT Party celebrating the deprioritisation of Māori representation when we know that Māori, due to successive Governments’ decisions, have been failed by our education institutions and are overrepresented in unemployment statistics—not through fault of the communities, but actually through Governments who have actually dispossessed and prevented many communities from accessing education.

Vocational education should be lifted to the same degree of pedigree that we have with universities. We shouldn’t be treating vocational education as a sort of smaller sibling of our universities and instead recognise that vocational education plays a critical role in supporting the future workforce, particularly in helping us diversify and grow our economy’s skills. Because, you know, when I see the New Zealand First Party rally around their anti-migrant rhetoric, I don’t see them even at least being consistent with putting New Zealand first and actually calling for greater funding for our vocational education institutions. Instead, they’re supporting a bill that does not meaningfully improve the financial viability of these very same institutions that will help our local workforce grow their skills and their talents.

This is why the Green Party cannot support this bill. I want to commend our learners and the union movement who represent the workers in our vocational education institutions for the strong advocacy for having a vocational education system that centres the needs of learners.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to acknowledge Gus Gilmore from Te Pūkenga, who is in the gallery, and the work that his team is doing across the country as Te Pūkenga goes through this journey of having to undo the challenge that was created by the previous Government and implement, and plan to implement, the bill that is in front of the House today. I appreciate the huge amount of work that his staff are putting in across the country to prepare for what this bill will deliver, and that is regional polytechnics with governance locally. Having actually sat on the board—the council—of a regional polytechnic, I appreciate the value of local input into ensuring polytechs that deliver education in our regions. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill, a bill that amends the Education and Training Act 2020.

We’ve just heard this term “flip-flop”—rather we’ve—

Grant McCallum: Can we have that again? What was that?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I’ll come to it—I’ll come to it. We have heard buzzwords being used. A previous speaker—Ricardo Menéndez March—was saying there are a whole lot of buzzwords going about, and one of the buzz phrases that I’ve heard recently is flip-flopping: “Business is telling us that they don’t like all of this flip-flopping.” Often, they will say that Governments do flip-flops, but it is my contention that it is this Government, this Parliament, that does all the flip-flopping, and that is what we have here. It seems to be flip-flopping that’s based on vanity, and it’s vindictive and it’s full of lazy terms.

So we’ve heard the Government members all speak about, “Oh, we have to get rid of these things that are ideological.”, they say. They don’t say what it is about that ideology that they don’t like, what their ideas are, and why it is that they don’t like, for instance, workforce development councils. So we heard Andy Foster say that they were ideological. What about them was ideological? What about them—

Andy Foster: No, I said that people had told me they were ideological.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, he’s correcting me. He said that people told him that workforce development councils were ideological, not that he thinks that they were ideological—

Andy Foster: I didn’t say that.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —but he still said it in his speech. Now he’s informing the House that, in fact, he didn’t not say that they weren’t ideological. Work that sentence out, Hansard.

The point is that we have not heard arguments for why it is that the Government members are so opposed to the Education and Training Act as it stands and why they are so opposed to workforce development councils. They seem to be being changed really in only two ways. One is the name: they are going to be industry skills boards. The other is in the funding. So perhaps—

Shanan Halbert: And the Māoris.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, a third change as well. I’m reminded of the changes to Treaty and Māori issues as well. So maybe rather than changing the name from workforce development councils, it would have been simpler just to call them “cut workforce development councils”, because that is what this Government is doing. They’re cutting the funding for work that it appears everybody in this House agrees with. We all want a more productive economy. We all want our training to link up to the jobs. That seems like a very basic thing.

I’m not hearing any noise from the Government members now telling me that I am being ideological and that they somehow disagree with it, because I don’t think they do disagree with that very basic premise. If they do, I would really love to hear them articulate that in a speech so we can have it on the Hansard.

Now, I want to move now to polytechs and this flip-flopping. So we know that the Labour Government had a problem, and it was before I was in Parliament, that there were many polytechs that were losing a lot of money, so the polytechs were put together in an effort to save the polytechs in the regions that were not making money and that were losing money.

Now, you might note that I’m the member of Parliament for Dunedin now. I wasn’t then. Of course, Dunedin is renowned for its wonderful tertiary education at both its university and its polytechnic.

Grant McCallum: Great student life.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: It is a great student life; you’re quite right. Great town. Now, the Otago Polytechnic was not in the financial strife that many others were. I note also in the south that the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) was also not having the same problems that other polytechnics did. However, what I also know is, at that time, the now Minister was in charge of SIT and that the now Minister was very passionate about the institution that she headed for approximately two decades. Good on her for being full of gusto for the institution that she led.

I know that because I recall her huge opposition to the mergers of the polytechs. She was very vocal about that. Then she managed to become a member of Parliament for National, and the Prime Minister has now made her the Minister in charge of polytechs. She’s lost some other things, but she’s still got the polytechs. This is very interesting that you would put someone who has such strong desires to break up polytechs and to bring back SIT at any cost—that it is going to be difficult for that Minister to look at the evidence and make good decisions. I say that because I think there have been some very bad decisions made. We acknowledge that she’s breaking up the merger. That is the flip-flop. But somehow or other, SIT is going to stand on its own yet Otago is not. That is very mysterious when you look at the various documents. They show that they are in similar economic zones. So Otago Polytechnic, we hear, is going to be part of the federation with the Open Polytechnic, and we heard also the Universal College of Learning.

So when I picked up this bill—a bill that I’ve not been involved with; I’m not on the Education and Workforce Committee—I thought, “I wonder where in the bill it will talk about this federation of Otago Polytechnic with the Open Polytechnic.” So I go to what will be new section 323, inserted by clause 22, and it is under the subheading, “Federation of Polytechnics”. It says, “Requirement to work in federation.” Then it says, “This section applies to (a) each polytechnic specified under section 315(3)(b) as an anchor polytechnic;” and then “each polytechnic designated under section 339 as a federation polytechnic”.

So then if you go looking for those sections, I go back to new section 315(3) and it just says, “An order may specify either or both of the following: (a) the region or regions served by the polytechnic (b) whether the polytechnic is an anchor polytechnic.” So it doesn’t give me the name of those polytechnics. So nowhere in this bill does it tell us about the Minister’s decisions that have been well publicised.

Then we look at what it is that the role of an anchor polytechnic is, and that is at what will be new section 337, and it must “provide the relevant services that the Federation Committee considers necessary to give effect to the purposes of the federation.”, and then it goes on. My point here is that we have heard over and over from the other side of the House that this is somehow all about local control. But I ask you, for Otago Polytechnic, how is it possibly about local control when it is not that anchor polytech? That anchor polytech is the Open Polytechnic, I’m told, because those names aren’t actually mentioned in this bill. So that seems to be going totally at odds to what all the Government members have said. I wonder if that is just because of their general dark approach on Dunedin, whereby the hospital where they promised to build a bigger and better one than what Labour promised; they just put it on hold for over a year. We have a wonderful medical school and now there’s going to be another one at Waikato trying to take areas where Otago students study.

So it seems that this Government is down on Dunedin, it is down on jobs, and we’ve had reports in the Otago Daily Times that the polytech might have to decrease their land area by 60 percent. This is a shameful bill and it’s terrible for Dunedin.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill. This bill is returning autonomy to the regions, as has been described, but also setting up a very useful system to allow for federation, which will keep long-term sustainability, it will enable cost-effective delivery, and it will be a very useful system. I commend the bill to the House.

Just reflecting on some of the comments that I’ve heard here this evening about thinking that this is going to give long-term sustainability, when there are no financials. There has been advice that has been given that this is going to put the polytech sector in, perhaps, a worse state than what it was, which was one of the reasons, back when it became Te Pūkenga, when the Government made that decision, that we wanted to see viability of the sector, because there was no viability back then. It was going backwards.

I’m really disappointed in some of the arguments that I’m hearing here tonight, that this is going to see local decision-making. Local decision-making is already happening. What it means for local decision-making is that courses are being cut, whole sites are being cut. How can that side of the House sit there when you’ve got the likes of Tokoroa, who are going to lose their whole site? A Government who has sat blindly on the side of seeing absolutely massive cuts in jobs in that town, watching a whole town become an absolute ghost town—that is on that Government.

Now, after we hear the cuts that are happening in the polytechs sector because of the changes that that side of the House are making, we are hearing that they are taking even more away from a town like Tokoroa. It’s not only Tokoroa; look at Rotorua, look at Taupō, where jobs are being cut completely from Toi Ohomai, an area that that side should be standing up for and saying, “Hey, what’s going on here?” But, no, they’re not. They sit there, and they sit really quiet currently about it because they know that what they are doing here, with this piece of legislation, is actually shameful for the sector—absolutely shameful. They refuse to admit that the sector was on a really good run because we were getting decisions made that went beyond local cost-saving measures, as to what has to happen now.

When you see the cuts that are being made in Rotorua, when you see the cuts that are being made in Taupō, when you see the cuts that are being made in Tokoroa, and you see that those places are being hurt badly, they should be really hanging their heads in shame. It is happening across the country. The reason that I am speaking about those particular areas is that it comes under Toi Ohomai. When you see that only 11 percent of submitters on this bill were in full favour, there are big questions that need to be asked. There are questions about the cost of the transition of this. We hear very little about this, but we know from what’s been in the media recently that there has been a release of information that shows that this is going to cost a lot more than what they were absolutely telling us it was going to cost.

It seems that there is very little plan around this, and when we hear them standing up tonight and they’re saying that local decision-making is going to be at the heart of this, we know, from what we’re seeing coming out now through the Official Information Act, that that is just not right. That local decision-making is having to be made to cut costs, and that means that young people are going to be having less courses being put in front of them and less choice being made in that area.

My fear is that what we’re seeing here tonight is the start part of the death of vocational education in this country—what a shame. When we had countries, back in 2022 and 2023, such as China, who were coming out here saying, “What an amazing model. We are really interested in your model. We want to see it.” They signed memorandum of agreements. Do they know that? Do they know that China were looking to see and follow our example? No, they don’t, because they have not done their homework on what this—the model, the current model of Te Pūkenga—was actually doing in this country.

This is ideological, and I’m going to say that it’s going to be a failed experiment, and I will come back here and I will say, “I told you so.” Because Te Pūkenga might have had the slow start, but they cannot deny that it was on the right side of where it was moving to. They cannot deny that; the evidence was in the select committee submissions. I have gone through and read a whole lot of them, and people are very, very disappointed in what this Minister and what this Government is doing. This is an absolute atrocity for vocational education in this country.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. What’s been fascinating me as I rise to speak on the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill is the number of experts in this House on Northland. Yes, I know Northland is miles above the rest—and that’s fine; we can all accept that—but, suddenly, all these people know all about Northland. Let me tell you what’s happening in Northland and why these changes are so important for my region: we are looking to stand up a polytech that will be enduring, that will serve our region, and that will look after the people in the North. Because the locals know what they want, they’re going to stand it up. It will work. It will be much better than a Te Pūkenga. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think I might just start my contribution by responding to the MP for Northland, who’s making these massive promises to his region: I hope that you are going to be able to deliver on them. The member for Northland said, in an RNZ article, that the Government has no intention whatsoever to close NorthTec, and he promises that. When there are concerns about what courses are going to be offered, how many students they are going to have—all the different options, all the different campuses—he deflects from those, doesn’t answer any of those questions, and quickly starts talking about how that’s an operational matter. I reckon they’re going to get tied up in a whole lot of semantics, to be able to explain—

Shanan Halbert: Tell us the plan!

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Yeah, that’s right; I thought we were going to hear the plan. No plan—no plan, Mr Speaker. One of the concerns that we have is that, in this process, only 11 percent of the submitters supported this proposal. There is no support for this proposal, and there is good—

Grant McCallum: Rubbish!

Hon Member: You said 11 percent!

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: 11 percent, sorry; 11 percent of the submitters. Oh, sorry, Mr Speaker, I’d better correct that statement. There was 11 percent support for this.

If I could just read a few headlines, some stakeholder commentary, for the other side of the House: the Tertiary Education Union—and watch them roll their eyeballs, because they hate it whenever we say the name “union” on this side of the House. But here, I’ll quote them: “Vocational Education announcement a disaster for regional Aotearoa”. What did they say in here? They said, “the only way the others have achieved standalone status is by slashing courses and jobs.” We know that this is the very issue that NorthTec is facing. I hope that MP returns to his people in the North when the courses are being slashed, when the land is being sold, and says, “This was in your best interests. This was the best thing to do. We had the best plan and the best alternative.”

BusinessNZ says, “Relevant Skills in Short Supply” and it has concerns about the legislation. Here’s the union again—they’ll hate this—“Supported learners carry the burden of the Minister’s delusion … describing [what is] high staffing levels as ‘abysmal’ ”. They’re not thinking about the human cost of this delusion. In fact, I actually think right from the beginning of this legislation, this was a campaign issue for the Minister. This has been a personal vendetta, and today, here we are, another step in the process of achieving the Minister’s goal of overturning—the flip-flopping. Who did that? The Minister did that. Who did that? That side of the House are the ones that are flip-flopping.

Here we have: “[This bill] will only further destabilise the provision of vocational education, as the bill provides no clarity on what the future of the sector looks like beyond closures and”—oh, another favourite of the other side—“possible privatisation. New Zealanders deserve better. They were promised regional autonomy but instead are having our tertiary providers hollowed out from within.”

I might also choose to quote my colleague, the spokesperson for tertiary and vocational, Shanan Halbert, who says that the reforms aren’t fixing anything. They do not fix the core issues for our polytechs, which is long-term financial viability, and now she is making it worse for Māori. He covered those in his contribution.

Here’s another one. Henry Cooke says, “Polytech reforms ‘risk work force’. Industry groups and the education sector have slammed the Government’s vocational education reforms, with one industry body saying they put the Government’s infrastructure programme at risk”.

Now, let me just turn to this: many submitters on the bill said, and we’ve heard it in the House tonight, that this is ideologically driven and it’s lacking clarity of purpose and a clear evidence base. They felt it reverses progress made under Te Pūkenga, and many also felt that their—

Grant McCallum: Regions know what’s best for regions, not Wellington.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Listen up: “Many also felt”—listen up.

Grant McCallum: No, don’t need to listen any more.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Oh, Mr Speaker, he’s not listening. “Many also felt there is no coherent plan or clarity regarding the functions of the new entity”. “Flawed” is another word that they use. There’s just article after article after article that I could quote—

Francisco Hernandez: Pick the ODT.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Ha, ha! Pick the region, pick the media outlet, pick the industry—they’ve all got criticisms because there is no clear plan. This is not delivering what the Minister was promising in terms of financial viability. It’s absent.

This bill does nothing to address the chronic funding challenges, putting polytechnics under greater financial pressure. There is no clear information about how much transitioning or reestablishing the politics is going to cost. In fact, we saw in yet another article, the RNZ article, that there’s an estimate of about $190 million, more than the total amount allocated to the Government for transition.

I’m really interested in the Industry Skills Boards (ISBs) because now the Minister of Education has suddenly created them a new job as well, because she wants to throw out NCEA, make a whole lot of subjects vocational only, and she wants the ISBs to be the ones who are going to develop that curriculum for all of those subjects. When we asked questions in the House, there’s no budget for that. When I ask questions of the Minister about what engagement she has had with the Minister for vocational training and tertiary, you’ve got the Minister of Education who did not even have a meeting with the Minister of Vocational Education about the role that ISBs are going to play in the replacement of NCEA. We have ISBs who are expected to do more work with half the funding of what the Workforce Development Councils had. I’m really worried, not only because of what is in this bill but because of the future role that these ISBs are going to have.

There are going to be more cuts. These reforms are taking vocational education backwards. As of last year, some 900 fulltime-equivalents, 500 programmes, and approximately 30 delivery sites have been cut—cut, cut, cut.

The industry is being shortchanged. The Hon Penny Simmonds promised the industry a stronger role and a more responsive vocational system. This is a broken promise, and the industry has spoken out strongly against these reforms. Did you hear that, Grant Rob—

Francisco Hernandez: Did you call him “Robertson”?

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Yeah, almost Grant “Robertson”—Grant McCallum, did you hear that? The industry has spoken out against these reforms.

Hon Simeon Brown: Read it like you mean it.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Did you just arrive? Oh, sorry, have you been here the whole time? Anyway, that member obviously wasn’t listening to my last part of the contribution, which is that you have two Ministers in the same Government not even having a meeting about fundamental changes. You’re in the same party and you didn’t even have a meeting, and you have the nerve to attack me?

The Minister has promised so much in terms of these reforms, but the information just isn’t even there. We can’t see the plan. We can’t see how they’re going to be financially viable. We, on this side of the House, are all concerned about the impact that this is going to have in our regions.

I look over to that side of the House, to MPs in parts of regional New Zealand: how can you stand by this decision? They know it is going to lead to job cuts, to cuts to courses, to the sale of land that we won’t be able to get back, and they’re just agreeing with their Minister and saying that this is going to be a great thing and promising. But I will be holding you accountable.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Te Pūkenga was a failed Labour experiment. Big Brother. Centralisation. It resulted in $300 million going down the gurgler—$300 million down the Labour fiscal drain. It’s a bit like KiwiBuild, really. This bill brings polytechs back to the community, puts the “local” back in local, is community-led, focused on community needs, and enables viability into the future. I commend this bill.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s been really fascinating to sit here and listen to the debate this evening. One thing I want to reflect on, being a Labour member based in Taranaki, where we have our polytechnic of WITT, the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki, is that we get things thrown at us around “It was all about centralisation. We were all just fraternising with centralising everything and bringing everything to Wellington. It’s all about Wellington.” Well, I’m assuming most of the members know that the head office for Te Pūkenga actually is in the Waikato, in Hamilton. It’s not about bringing everything back to Wellington, like we’ve been talking about; it’s actually about it being out in the regions.

It was fascinating to be in the early stages last term when Te Pūkenga was first floated and the concept of it. Again, being the MP for New Plymouth at the time and having this amazing meeting—

Grant McCallum: They didn’t like the idea, did they? They threw you out.

GLEN BENNETT: Yeah, thank you. They threw me out. It’s hilarious. I’m laughing too.

I met with the CEO at the time and met with the leadership team of WITT, and they were the first polytech in the country to actually come out supporting it and going, “We are not financially viable.” They were very clear about that. They came out in support of Te Pūkenga. In fact, they’ve been bailed out twice by the Government over the last 20 years. This is one of the many polytechs that have failed in the past and are going to fail in the future. As I reflect on those conversations and what WITT said to me, and on the conversations they had with the Minister and what it was when the possibility of what this could do, the possibility of what, actually, it would mean to work across the nation to find opportunities and possibilities to specialise in areas, it was around how we actually prop up something that is broken. We’ve probably, actually, got to pull it apart and start again, which we did.

There were green shoots of hope coming through, but it’s all been cancelled under this legislation. I want to come back—and it was mentioned by my colleague Shanan Halbert—to some of the information in the departmental report. If you want to listen really carefully, the Ministry of Education, in terms of their reflections on this legislation, wrote about the overall affordability of these changes that we’re talking about tonight. Listen to this: “high-level concerns regarding the financial viability of the system and how costly the reforms will be, and this includes the lack of financial modelling, cost-benefit analysis, and funding plan for transition, and concern regarding insufficient capital to support the transition.” This is the Ministry of Education. These are the pen pushers and the people with their calculators actually doing the numbers and going—

Shanan Halbert: Where are the numbers?

GLEN BENNETT: Where are the numbers? We’ve got nothing else to go on. They go on to say that, with the way this is legislated, there are “no legislated supports for financially viable polytechnics attempting to stand on their own post-disestablishment.” There’s no clarity on how regional institutes will be sustainably funded.

Again, it’s this whole wonderful concept of “Let’s just pull it apart and get rid of it because it was a Labour thing.” But, actually, where are the financials? Where are the numbers? They always talk about being the best managers of the numbers, but we can see, in this departmental report, that they are not. They talk about the regional campuses being cut and the financial risk is being offloaded to communities that are already under-resourced. The regional campuses are being cut, and the financial risk is being offloaded to communities that are already under-resourced.

Members of the Government should be concerned and worried about this piece of legislation that they’re probably going to vote for tonight. When you look at what the officials, what the numbers people, are saying, they’re saying, “This isn’t financially viable. We don’t even know the numbers.” It’s just pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Finally, they had concerns regarding the loss of small yet high-value programmes and the lack of dedicated or flexible funding mechanisms that protect and sustain these. We look at some of the outdoor education institutes that have been caught up in this. If you look at the West Coast of the South Island, the challenge here is the fact that these are programmes that take in so many of our young people who are transitioning out of school or are NEETs—not in education employment or training—coming into places like outdoor education where they find a future in the tourism industry or they find a future in rafting, but that is all in jeopardy because this Government is not managing the numbers, they’re not managing the books, and this doesn’t work.