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 (Greg O’Connor): The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House. It 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 first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill, and, at an appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 21 September 2025.

The bill before the House today is significant and involves substantial amendments to the Education and Training Act 2020. The bill contains both new policies and amendments to existing provisions in the Act, and enables relevant secondary legislation. 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.

Today marks a pivotal moment in our efforts to redesign vocational education and training in this country. This amendment bill will disestablish Te Pūkenga - New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, along with workforce development councils, and usher in a return to local decision-making through a network of regional polytechnics and greater industry direction for work-based learning.

I am proud of what the Government is delivering today. This bill marks the beginning of a new era and a more effective, responsive, and fiscally sustainable vocational education and training system for New Zealand. This redesign has been a key priority of our Government, with this legislation underpinning a specific commitment in our 100-day plan to disestablish Te Pūkenga. But it is not change for change’s sake. The previous Government’s mega-merger of polytechnics and industry training organisations was an expensive failure. Its push to centralise and standardise polytechnics and work-based learning was wrong, and it cost this country dearly. Today, all that changes as we introduce a vocational education and training system that is relevant, progressive, and responds directly to the demands for change from industry, business, students, and communities.

This redesign is the catalyst for a strong and sustainable new system, one that provides skills, knowledge, and career pathways for learners into and within industries and professions that are vital to our economic prosperity. This is about delivering to the 250,000 students, apprentices, trainees annually across construction, engineering, energy, creative, IT, primary industries, healthcare, and the service sector who want training options that are easy to access, responsive, and that will lead to future employment or career pathways. It’s for all those apprentices, trainees, and employers involved in work-based learning who’ve struggled to get support from an overly bureaucratic and remote Te Pūkenga head office in Hamilton. This redesign is also for the communities up and down the country who’ve watched on in frustration as their local polytechnics have been stripped of local innovation and control.

Today, I can reassure that we will turn the tide, and this begins the process of setting things right, of securing future sustainability, and of returning vocational education and training back to the regions and to industry, where it is truly needed and where it belongs. It will ensure that vocational education aligns with what industry needs and wants, and it is responsive to current new and emerging industry developments. This Government is serious about growing our economy and increasing exports, and we must have a skill base to support that, and that’s why this redesign has been so cheerfully considered and why industry have been so intrinsically involved in its development. We want vocational education to cater to large and small industries and employers across a wide range of sectors, with different types of providers offering both traditional and innovative delivery options.

This bill reestablishes a network of regional polytechnics to support vocational education and training across the country. From 1 January 2026, programmes, functions, assets, and staff from Te Pūkenga’s on-campus business units will transfer to polytechnics under a transition plan, to be approved by the Tertiary Education Commission.

Te Pūkenga will be referred to as the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology and will remain as a transitional entity for a one-year period before being disestablished by 31 December 2026, if not before. Each polytechnic will be funded independently and will have local governance and management. For most, they will continue operating at their current campuses across the country. Some polytechnics will be established as stand-alone entities; others requiring additional support will be designated members of a federation or merged, with Cabinet considering their options later this year. Significantly, federation polytechnics will retain their institutional autonomy and academic freedom. They will be accountable for their own performance and will determine the core education and training provisions for the regions they serve. They will also work together with the federation committee to support their long-term liability and commission shared services and programme delivery.

To ensure the vocational education and training system is responsive to current new and emerging industry needs, industry skills boards will be established by 1 January next year, replacing the workforce development councils. These boards will be industry-led and tasked with ensuring industry training consistency and quality. What’s more, industry will play an instrumental role in crafting the nation’s vocational qualifications. They will actively endorse programmes and ensure assessments meet the highest standards. They will also have a strategic workforce analysis function and will provide investment advice to the Tertiary Education Commission on funding relevant to their industries.

This bill also amends current provisions in the Act for a training levy. Should the levy be supported by industry, boards will be able to access additional funding to extend the range of their activities. The redesign will introduce an industry-led, independent learning model, which will enable training programmes to be delivered by private providers, polytechnics, or wānanga, as the industry they serve determines.

Industry-driven work-based training is precisely what apprentices, learners, and industry have been calling for—decentralised vocational education with training that is based around the specific needs of industries. There will be a transition period for up to two years where the management of work-based learning will move away from Te Pūkenga to the new industry skills boards. This will provide crucial continuity for those apprentices and trainees currently enrolled, with training and apprenticeship agreements remaining in force to allow time for new work-based programmes to be developed.

Throughout this process, the Government’s priority has been to maintain continuity of training and confidence in vocational education. This bill provides that assurance, with transitional arrangements for both Te Pūkenga and the workforce development councils to ensure a smooth transition of appropriate functions, programmes, staff, and assets to the new organisations. Apprentices or students who finish studying or training in 2026 or later might complete their studies at an organisation with a different name, but otherwise the impact on their learning should be minimal.

This bill also sets out the proposed functions of the new entities, their governance arrangements, the process for their establishment and disestablishment, and the technical elements necessary for them to function. The bill is intended to be passed and enacted towards the end of this year, with the redesigned vocational education and training system commencing on 1 January 2026.

There is no doubt that the redesigning of vocational education and training is critical to the economic growth of our country going forward. Today, we establish the foundations for that growth. I am grateful for the support of those who took part in the public consultation of these reforms, and the key industry stakeholders who engaged in targeted consultation. Your feedback has been invaluable and your substantial support for local and regional polytechnics and industry-driven work-based learning has been heard, with this redesign tailored to your needs. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I start my contribution today by acknowledging the hundreds and thousands of students studying in our vocational education system in Aotearoa New Zealand. Can I also acknowledge the thousands of staff that work their guts out to create better outcomes for young people in the system, and I also acknowledge the challenges that they have faced while multiple Governments have attempted to get our education system right.

Everyone has been watching and waiting with anticipation for this particular plan. It is well overdue. But this plan is Minister for Vocational Education Penny Simmonds’ personal vendetta—without a plan today or without any pūtea. The Minister told Radio New Zealand in 2023, when discussing Te Pūkenga, that a quick process was needed for staff experiencing a convoluted period of anxiety and uncertainty—that we needed to get certainty very quickly, but we needed to see what was financially viable and we needed to see what is going to meet the needs of their communities.

The Minister, today, through this piece of legislation, has failed—has failed—to give the vocational education and training sector the certainty and the clarity that she promised them when she came to Government. This doesn’t address any of the critical issues that are before the tertiary sector and the vocational sector, and she hasn’t provided that particular detail. After reading 130-odd pages of legislation, I’m still perplexed where that detail is. Where do particular institutions sit? How is the Minister intending to address the chronic funding issues that are in front of her? She has failed. This piece of legislation offers nothing—offers nothing—towards the certainty for staff, students, and the sector overall. She’s offered no solutions to the chronic funding challenges—that is still absent—and no solutions as to how the sector can become financially viable long term. That was the entire reason why the Labour Government redesigned the vocational sector in the first place. But it’s Penny Simmonds’ vendetta again, coming out to take down Te Pūkenga.

And what do we hear today? She’s renaming it. She’s renaming it to the New Zealand skills institute, taking away the Māori name—of course they did.

Despite the hundred-odd pages of legislation, she hasn’t provided those answers. There’s no clarity on how the federation of polytechnics will be funded or whether additional funding will be made available to assist with disestablishment. She may like to answer these questions before the House today in her final contribution.

The Minister is asking the sector to undertake large, wholesale changes without providing them with certainty that adequate funding will be made available for them to complete this. The workforce development councils are a wonderful example. She hasn’t offered to lift and shift workforce development councils into the new programme that she has planned. She’s disestablished and promised to reestablish something new, but she hasn’t offered the costings, the absolute fiscals, to this House today, or to the sector, to validate, actually, what her plan is going to achieve. It is still very unclear how this transition is going to move forward other than, as she said, with baseline spending.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that under this piece of legislation, she’s given herself more powers—herself more powers—when it comes to the federation of polytechnics, but she’s given less to the sector. And particularly, she’s diluted the representation of Māori within those polytechnics, despite the good work that the sector and iwi do together. I do not support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to take a call on this bill. We have no philosophical objection to the idea that there could be thriving, independent vocational institutions; however, this legislation does not establish that. Everyone in Aotearoa—students and learners and staff—deserve tertiary institutions, vocational institutions that allow them to get essential skills, that enables regions to thrive, and enables employers of the future to have skilled workforces.

However, this reform has been marred and the legislation has been marred by an unwillingness to engage with the fundamental issues and actually fix what’s broken with the education system. The first thing we need to acknowledge is that education is a public good. However, this disestablishment has been severely disruptive to the hundreds of staff around the country who’ve been let go; to the thousands more that have had to go through job consultations that have rescoped, descoped, and unscoped their roles. We know that there’s been a lack of support. We know that there’s been a lack of support to the institutions as they’ve gone through this quite disruptive process.

We have to question why there’s been such a lack of support from a Government that has claimed—and in the Minister for Vocational Education’s first reading, she claimed that this Government was going for growth. But, sadly, we’ve seen a shrinking of the sector while this reform has been ongoing. We’ve seen that the reforms potentially opened a door—and has already opened a door—to asset sales within the institution itself. We know that some campuses, like the one here in Wellington, have already been sold off. We know that there’s already been consultations for more to be sold off. So how is this creating growth? How is this creating a thriving regional New Zealand when, in fact, hundreds of jobs have been lost and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the sector?

Now, we also have a lot of specific questions and a lot of specific objections to the way that this process has gone on. Now, the first thing we want to see is: will the Minister guarantee that the institutions that entered this reform with debt will either have their debts written off or have some sort of loan forgiveness or loan grant system so that they can stand on their own two feet? Because you cannot create independent, thriving institutions without actually providing the pūtea.

The second is that institutions that went into Te Pūkenga with net assets, that went into Te Pūkenga with a net positive balance on their balance sheet, will be able to walk away with this positive balance sheet intact. Because if we are serious about creating independent, thriving institutions, then we would like to see support for it in the Budget. Now, it’s quite interesting that we’ve not heard any pre-Budget announcements from the Government about Te Pūkenga. We’ve not heard any packages of support being scoped up or offered. Possibly because there’s nothing. There’s no actual support. There’s just thoughts and prayers for an independent, thriving polytech, but no actual backing, no actual reality that underpins the lofty rhetoric that’s emerged from this other side.

We would like to see student representation in these newly independent polytechnics. This legislation doesn’t actually create any specific provisions for it. I echo the words of the previous speaker, Shanan Halbert, that it dilutes Māori representation. Not only does it dilute that but it also doesn’t ensure student representation. So we would like to see that on the table.

We would also like to see guardrails against privatisation, because we’ve heard with concerns some of the Minister’s statements towards the end of last year that the private training institutions might play a role in—

Rachel Boyack: This is privatisation.

FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: Well, it is. It’s asset sales and privatisation. That’s absolutely what’s going on. So we would like to see guardrails against that.

We would also note that in the proposal for the workforce development councils, one of the previous industry skills boards has fallen off. Now, there’s a lack of creative arts, there’s a lack of business administration, and there’s a lack of information technology in the new proposed councils. So we would like to see that actually made in there.

In conclusion, let’s have some support for thriving, independent polytechnics. Let’s actually put our money where our mouth is by supporting funding for them and not disestablishing them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill. This is a very important bill because this is about vocational education and training. When we talk about vocational education and training in cities, it’s quite different from when we talk about vocational education and training in regions, because in regions we know the types of industries are limited and the types of skills that are needed are limited. We want to see that our vocational education and training in regions has that regional engagement, regional understanding, so that they can provide the right skills and also prepare for that right pipeline of skills that are needed in the regions to grow.

What this bill does is it disestablishes Te Pūkenga and it re-establishes polytechnics. This is to make sure that our vocational education training is aligned with local industry and workforce needs. It is also important to note that there has been talk from the other members about financial viability. We fully understand that financial viability is an important factor. Along with financial viability, academic rigour is needed as well as community engagement. The industry engagement is also needed to ensure that our vocational education and training system is able to provide for what is needed for the regional economic growth and the overall economic growth that we want during these times.

About the financial viability, what this bill does is it sets up a polytech federation committee to support a designated federation of polytechnics to operate as viable entities. For the entities that will not be designated to the federation committee, they will have to prove that they are able to stand alone financially and academically.

Along with this, what this does is it also sets up the industry skills board. The industry skills board will replace a workforce development council. Now, these are big changes, disestablishing Te Pūkenga, re-establishing polytechs, and then setting up the industry skills board. That’s why this bill allows for a transition time as well, so that it can be done in a smooth manner.

I have been talking to a lot of people in the tertiary education sector and the vocational education and training sector. The views that I was hearing was that some change is needed. I think this bill—which is a product after talking to various people in the sector after consultation—will provide the opportunity now to people in the sector to come before the select committee and then formally submit to the select committee as well. I’m really looking forward to working on this bill in the select committee process. We support the bill in the first reading. Thank you.

Thank you. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill. It’s in the name of the Hon Penny Simmonds, who gave us a very detailed overview of the bill. Thank you, Minister.

What this bill does is reform New Zealand’s vocational education system by making an amendment to the Education and Training Act. It disestablishes Te Pūkenga, and it re-establishes a network in the regions. New Zealand First is very in favour of doing this, because we feel that, in the regions, they will be able to more effectively address the needs and do it more efficiently and effectively. We also feel that decentralisation is a good thing. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was looking forward to contributions from all parties in the House on this important bill for regional New Zealand, because we’ve heard a lot which essentially is crying wolf from the Opposition. They created this mess, and we said we would fix it. I know and I appreciate that there are people around New Zealand who are challenged at the moment because of some uncertainty created by the disestablishment of Te Pūkenga. Through the Education and Workforce Committee, I commit that we will work as judiciously as possible to get this through the select committee and back to this House, because we need strong vocational education around New Zealand. The money wasted by the previous Government on centralising Te Pūkenga did not deliver that, and we are about to fix it. I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. There’s a pattern of behaviour going on here, and I’d just like to highlight the big picture: that we have a Government that has come in and just cancelled stuff without actually having any real plan as to what happens next. Maybe it’s the coalition agreement pressure; I’m not sure what’s going on, but there are a number of different areas that are causing New Zealand uncertainty. They are undermining our ability to get back on our feet economically, and this Government has actually made it worse, when we think of the number of construction projects around the country that have been cancelled by Government, with 13,000 construction workers now leaving New Zealand for other jobs. We think of the housing projects that were going on up and down the country that have been canned, and Kāinga Ora builds that have been put on ice. We can think of their disestablishment of Callaghan in the Hutt Valley with no plan as to what’s going to take its place or how that’s going to take shape, with the uncertainty that goes there. And now we have this bill which disestablishes Te Pūkenga with no plan as to what’s going to happen.

So there is a clear pattern of offending. What is happening with this Government is they come in talking tough, talking big; they’re going to take action. That action is just to cancel things, but they haven’t taken the time to unpack what happens next. We’re at this critical point in the political cycle where all the cancelling, I hope, has happened halfway through but there’s still no plan for what happens after they’ve cancelled it.

They’re getting into some pretty hot water right now, because right now with this bill it’s great that you—well, it’s not great; it’s sad that Te Pūkenga has been disestablished, but what is happening with workforce development councils? There is no provision in this bill about something that was working incredibly well, that was developed for being an interface between industry and training. In the Hutt Valley, we had some great examples where local skills gaps were an interface between the trainers, the skills, and also what’s happening for those workplaces in being able to have that discussion. The whole problem has been lifted and shifted—she should’ve lifted and shifted it into this bill, and what she’s done is just delayed it, kicked the can down the road. So all of those who are on Muka Tangata, who are on those different workforce development councils, that it’s industry as well as union, as well as different voices on there, that are looking at what kind of skills New Zealand needs, what type of workforce planning we are putting in place—all of that has been put on hold for a year with absolutely no certainty.

I get back to the point: that this is a Government that has cancelled a number of significant projects that were under way without having any plan or any blueprint as to what happens next, and they’re hitting the hot water right now because people are expecting some certainty as our economy is still stagnating. Areas such as having certainty in workforce development councils around construction when 13,000 construction workers have left the country—it’s important. They need that level of certainty in training and knowing what is happening.

I attended the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation graduation for those apprentices in the Hutt Valley on Friday, and some of those apprentices had worked for five years. The uptake in apprenticeships has dramatically declined in New Zealand, and that is part of the lack of certainty about what is happening in the sector. It is incredibly concerning that we have someone like Penny Simmonds, who is advocating for her free polytechnic in Invercargill—and that’s great; that’s good for her—but someone who’s come into the sector with the sole purpose of unravelling something is akin to what Nicole McKee has done with firearms reform in New Zealand. You have someone coming in for a singular purpose: to take away a structure that is meant to be an interface between employers and the industry, the training, and the workers to look at what are the skills gaps in New Zealand and how do we future-plan to fill those gaps—because that is a fundamental problem in New Zealand. We need to have the foresight and the ability to do that, and the workforce development councils are something that this bill has completely neglected to look at. That is the role that they should be taking.

The Minister, under this bill, has the ability to establish polytechs with limited consultation or requirements beyond any advice from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and the only specification for the inclusion of Māori to a polytechnics council is “as far as is reasonably practicable”. There are real concerns with how this is going to work. I do not commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill in its first reading. As a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, I look forward to looking at the details of this bill and doing what we can to make sure that it is a judicious process, that it is taken through all the required rigour, and that we see a decent plan as it’s coming forward, because vocational education is vital for our economy. When we see other advanced economies, they highlight the importance and the absolute value of vocational education. I think, in New Zealand, we have overvalued training and education through universities and have not given, essentially, the mana to the vocational programmes that they should have. I commend this bill to the House.

I hear Carl Bates has had a lot to say over there, but I wonder if he’s picked up the phone and talked to his local polytechnic about the 74 job losses at Universal College of Learning (UCOL) being proposed at the moment. I bet he hasn’t.

Carl Bates: It’s in Palmerston North.

RACHEL BOYACK: UCOL covers Whanganui—

Carl Bates: But where are the jobs? Do you know the detail?

RACHEL BOYACK: I do—I do have the detail. Would you like me to talk to it? I’ll talk to the detail. The job losses are happening, Mr Bates, in the following programmes: engineering, beauty therapy, construction, applied science, social services, music, entertainment and events technology, photography, early childhood education, and some business programmes as well. Mr Bates isn’t actually standing up for his own polytechnic.

Let me get to the crux of this, having worked in the vocational education sector, in a polytechnic. I studied there as a student, worked as a student president, worked as a member of the council, and worked for the polytechnic itself. What I can say is that what the Government is doing is absolutely taking the guts out of the polytechnic sector. There is no plan and there is no funding. We’ve lost jobs at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) as well. The feedback I’m getting from people on the ground in Nelson who I talk to—who talk to me a lot, Minister—is that the Government has not been listening to the advice given to them, Minister, and that the guts are being ripped out of our polytechnics. There is no funding, so what the polytechnics are doing, in order to try to be stand-alone, is cutting programmes and cutting staff.

I’m going to come back to some of the other programmes being cut across the country, because I hold the arts portfolio and one of the concerns I have is that, in the disestablishment of the workforce development councils and their replacement with the industry standards boards, there is nothing for the creative sector—nothing for the creative sector. There’s a really good piece of commentary here from the current chair of Toi Mai workforce development council, Dr Claire Robinson, where she talks about the importance of having oversight for the creative sector. Creative tech, screen, game development, music, cyber security, ngā toi Māori, digital entrepreneurship, business skills: these are the kinds of things that are happening in vocational education, for a sector that is actually one of the sectors that is growing in New Zealand—our creative sector.

Furthermore, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, who has published the draft strategy Amplify for the arts, which talks about growing the creative sector, says that the place to do that is in education. So what does this Government do? They cut the workforce development council. They cut programmes in creative education. They cut creatives in schools. They’re saying one thing, on the one hand, and obviously the arts Minister and the vocational education Minister aren’t talking to each other, because Minister Goldsmith says, “Let’s put lots into education”, to do all these great things, and then Minister Simmonds cuts it all. The sector is very, very frustrated.

I’ve also got some more information on a few other programmes around the country, in the arts sector, that are being cut. At Eastern Institute of Technology, this year, the New Zealand Certificate in Ngā Toi is not running. At Southern Institute of Technology, I’ve heard, a really good programme they’re not running this year is the New Zealand Certificate in Foundation Skills strand in Music and Music Technology, or the New Zealand Certificate in Music. At Tai Poutini Polytechnic, they’re not running the New Zealand Diploma in Arts and Design. I’ve already talked about UCOL. And at Whitireia and WelTec—I asked the Minister for Vocational Education if she’d received any advice on the issues there, around their programmes and around their building. She hadn’t sought any advice about that. They aren’t running, this year, the New Zealand Diploma in Screen Production. The Government can talk about, “Hey, let’s put some more money into the sector”, but they’re actually not going to train the people to do the work. This Government is all over the place when it comes to vocational education. We’ve heard about it being a vendetta, and it absolutely is.

The other issue: I visited the construction school at NMIT yesterday and met with some of the students. One of the real concerns, when I was involved in the polytechnic sector, was we had this absolute challenge about the competitiveness between the industry training organisation sector and the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics. It was a competitive model, and when you look at a boom and bust economy, you’d see students being moved from one side of it across to the other. What we did with Te Pūkenga was actually smooth that across and get these two sectors to work together finally. The feedback I’ve had from actual businesses with apprentices in Nelson is that it was working. They said to me—they pleaded with me, Minister—“Don’t change it.” That’s what they said to me, and I stand by those statements. This is a terrible move from a Minister with a vendetta, with no plan, no funding for vocational education, and I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is with great pleasure that I rise to support the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill. Te Pūkenga has been a failed experiment—a $300 million failed experiment. That’s what it’s cost the New Zealand taxpayer. But more importantly, it’s cost the students of New Zealand the opportunity in the regions of New Zealand to get a good vocational education.

Being from Northland, I’m very aware of this, and we’re working hard to do what’s best for Northland, and that’s what these adjustments will mean—not being told what’s best for Northland by those that live in other parts of the country. I commend this bill to the House.