Government sitting on its hands on trade training in Christchurch

Confirmation by Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce at a Select Committee today that only $7 million of the $42 million allocated for skills training in Canterbury has been spent is an indictment on the Government’s slow and ad-hoc approach to ensuring there are skilled New Zealand workers available for the Christchurch re-build, Labour says.

Labour’s Tertiary Education, Skills and Training spokesperson Grant Robertson says: “There are industry groups ready to provide training in Canterbury, there is a pool of potential trainees, and there will be work for them to do, but the Government is continuing to play catch up with the skills deficit.

“It seems content to import labour from overseas rather than get in front of the issue and train New Zealanders,” Grant Robertson said.

“While the rebuild of Canterbury is frustratingly slow, the last year has been precisely the right time to get people trained up. Instead less than 20 per cent of the available funding has been used.

“You can’t blame businesses for the lack of training. The Government needs to get alongside businesses and support them in training workers until the rebuild begins.

“Mr Joyce admitted in questioning today that there were proposals for training from Christchurch that had not been funded. Why would he not support increasing the supply of skilled labour in Canterbury?

“Labour has been calling on the National Government to get stuck into skills training in Canterbury since the first earthquake.

“The fact it is still sitting waiting for the rebuilding to begin shows a lack of foresight and a wasted opportunity to develop a skilled workforce in our second largest city,” Grant Robertson said.