Formal Opposition to

Summary of Position

I strongly oppose the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill 2025, introduced by Penny Simmonds. Despite its presentation as a systems improvement, the bill is a sweeping structural dismantling of Te Pūkenga and the workforce development model introduced to foster equity, Treaty partnership, and coordinated vocational education.

This is not a repair. It is a replacement: a corporate-style disaggregation that imposes governance centralisation, burdensome transitions, privatised logic, and ideological redirection onto what should be a public good.

1. Te Pūkenga Dismantled — Stability Sacrificed for Structural Realignment

The bill disestablishes Te Pūkenga under clause 147, renaming it as NZIST during a long transition phase and dissolving it entirely by 31 December 2026.

• This represents a reversal of efforts to consolidate vocational education under a unified national system.
• Transitional fragmentation burdens current learners, staff, and providers.
• No public consultation informed this structural reversal.

Te Pūkenga needed reform, not erasure. Dismantling is not improvement — it is strategic abandonment.

2. Treaty Relationship Undermined by Administrative Relegation

The bill shifts responsibilities once guided by principles of partnership to industry skills boards and polytechnic federations, without explicit grounding in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

• No explicit Treaty duties are placed on industry skills boards.
• Decentralisation without Treaty grounding risks cultural dilution and inconsistency.
• Māori partnership, promised in the RoVE reforms, is now functionally optional.

Erasing structural Treaty recognition is not reform — it is regression.

3. Industry Skills Boards: Corporatised, Unaccountable, and Temporary

Newly established industry skills boards (ISBs) inherit many of the former roles of WDCs — but with:

• Fee-setting powers (Clause 154) and levy collection authority (Schedules 16 & 17).
• Little electoral accountability to learners or workers.
• The power to audit and enforce compliance through TEC direction (Clauses 411–413).
• Short-term mandates to deliver training (Clause 153), before being replaced again.

These bodies are bureaucratic intermediaries: empowered but ungrounded, centralised yet unrepresentative.

4. Workforce Development Councils Quietly Deleted

WDCs are phased out without public defence or evaluation of their contributions since their 2021 inception.

• Their disestablishment is finalised by clause 177.
• Their legacy functions are fragmented, with some transferred to ISBs and others to NZQA.
• Their Treaty-based promise of industry-partnered reform is erased without accountability.

Their erasure is not procedural — it is ideological.

5. Learner Experience Deprioritised in Favour of Transfer Logistics

The bill emphasises administrative transition — not learner outcomes.

• Rights of students and apprentices are addressed only in narrow procedural terms (Clause 142).
• There are no guarantees of continuity, protection from disruption, or culturally safe delivery.
• Visa and privacy clauses (Clauses 144 and 176) focus on compliance over care.

The learner disappears into the logistics.

6. Staff Rights Preserved — but in Form, Not in Spirit

While clauses 138–140 and 159–161 appear to preserve staff continuity, the overriding of employee protections (e.g., those in the Employment Relations Act Part 6A) reveals intent:

• Workers are treated as transferable assets, not community contributors.
• Rights are only retained if transferred — not if disrupted or refused.
• Redundancy and notice protections are sidestepped through legislative override.

This is compliant erosion — masked as continuity.

7. Fiscal and Legal Protections for the Crown, Not the Public

Numerous clauses (e.g., 136, 170) protect the Crown, TEC, and Ministers from:

• Breach of contract.
• Civil liability.
• Claims from affected institutions or workers.

These sweeping protections reveal where the real risk lies — not in failure itself, but in exposure.

8. Strategic Levy and Fee Structures Enable Future Cost-Shifting

Through levy orders and cost recovery mechanisms (Clause 154, Schedule 16), the bill opens the door to:

• Transferring training costs onto students and industries.
• Erecting barriers to vocational access.
• Creating financial surveillance models justified as “efficiency.”

This is neoliberal logistics in legislative clothing.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This bill does not improve vocational education — it dismantles its coordinated foundation, delegates power to under-accountable boards, and evades Treaty and community accountability through technicality. I urge the Committee to:

• Reject the disestablishment of Te Pūkenga and instead reform it with public input.
• Reinstate explicit Treaty obligations for all successor bodies and boards.
• Halt the use of transition as a disguise for ideological realignment.
• Ensure learner and staff wellbeing is central — not procedural or optional.
• Reject the establishment of short-term, fee-charging boards that lack grounding in equity, representation, and public mandate.

Vocational education is not a product to be disaggregated and traded. It is a taonga that deserves to be treated as such.

Respectfully submitted,

Ukes Baha

Public Health Advocate | Counsellor | Policy Analyst

ukesbaha.com