Helen Clark’s promise to abolish New Zealand’s Industry Training Scheme is a cruel hoax on the workers of New Zealand, Enterprise and Commerce Minister Max Bradford said today.

He was commenting after Miss Clark again pledged to scrap the successful current scheme and replace it with a coercive, bureacratic nightmare.

“The scheme is a resounding success. Since 1993 the numbers in industry training have trebled to almost 50,000 trainees.

“Over the past five years plumbing apprenticeships have increased nearly four-fold, building and painting apprenticeships have doubled, as has the number of apprenticeships in electro-technology.

“In addition, structured training has been extended to 32 new industries,” Mr Bradford said.

“For the sake of politics, Labour wants to replace it with a coercive, bureaucratic nightmare that would increase business costs and result in fewer new jobs for young New Zealanders.

“Labour’s plan would reduce the number of industry training organisations, reduce the diversity of training and add costs to employers.

“Having to send your staff away to train, whether they need it or not, is expensive, especially if it isn’t even appropriate for the job.

“Employers would also be hit by an Industry Training Organisation administration levy.

“What Labour is really promising is higher business costs and less jobs for trainees,” Mr Bradford said.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>