Third Reading: Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill

The following contribution was made in the third reading of the bill.

Oh, you weren’t listening just today, were you? You don’t listen, anyway.

I did 11 years at Te Wānanga o Raukawa—yeah, Māori wānanga education. Then I went to the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT), as the director of Māori education—they still call it the NMIT; Tasman might have a tussle with you there, Stuart Smith—and then I did seven years at Massey University, as the principal Māori adviser. So we’ve grappled with all sorts of things like how you turn a university into becoming a Tiriti-led university, and built an iwi council alongside the NMIT council, from a time when they were in such a deep fight they couldn’t stand to be in the room with one another, and aal along the way, we built two kura kaupapa. Along the way, our kids went all the way through all of that, and so I understand it pretty good.

The institutes of technology and polytechnics (ITP) sector has got a really key job, and it’s to train our people into work. The Māori unemployment rate today is double that of New Zealand—it’s 10 percent. We need training desperately—desperately. Our young people need training desperately.

I’m going to cut the Minister for Vocational Education some slack and say that I hope you get it right—I really do. A great colleague of mine, and a mentor, Tony Gray—he hopes you get it right, and we both hope you’re getting it right, because we understand the challenges. We’ve had to trudge through them. We’ve done the hard yards to shorten the gap between someone who won’t come in the door—Māori kids, I’m talking about—and someone who needs a job, needs a career, and all of that, and I’ve talked about it in the Budget speech this year. The country needs young Māori. Those members don’t like to admit it, but you need young Māori.

If you want the great economy that you talk about being able to build, you need young Māori for that economy. I’ll tell you why. Take a big infrastructure company like Downer Construction, or somebody. With Downer’s, their workforce population north of Taupō is 33 percent Māori, and south of Taupō, it’s 44 percent Māori. Now, that’s why you need young Māori. That’s why they need training, and that’s why this bill has to succeed, although a lot of the things in it, Minister, tell me that it will struggle. It will struggle, but I’ve got to live in hope—I have to live in hope.

Removing Te Tiriti o Waitangi out of the requirements is a mistake, in my view. Diluting it, downgrading it—that’s a mistake, in my view. The work required to train organisations to deliver well for young Māori requires an explicit description of what the commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi needs to be. So downgrading from “honours Te Tiriti”—that’s a good one. That’s very clear—honour Te Tiriti. OK, probably 99 times out of 100, if I’m promoting this idea somewhere, people ask how or why. Well, if it’s in the legislation and it says that you must do it, they will find ways. This is what it got downgraded to: “have regard to the needs of Māori and other population groups”.

Until the country and its laws and its lawmakers can come to the agreement that the bicultural framework of constitutional rights set out in Te Tiriti o Waitangi is an actual thing and start to acknowledge them—and those two rights are the Māori rights and the Crown rights. They were cleverly captured by Eddie Durie and the likes in the 1970s and 1980s, just for clarity for the people, in the terms “tangata Tiriti” and “tangata whenua”. Those two terms describe where those two groups derive their constitutional right from. Tangata whenua derive the constitutional right from the land, as the name suggests, and tangata Tiriti derive the constitutional right from the Treaty, as the name suggests.

That’s probably the most alarming thing in the amendments, Minister. For me, it’s the downgrading of the Māori right, because until the Māori right is recognised properly, our kids won’t do well in mainstream education. The Māori unemployment rate will continue to be double. These are the things that need fixing, and they need fixing because young Māori and young Polynesians are the future. Good luck to you, Minister. The country is counting on you, but we, unfortunately, don’t support the bill.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.