Lack of trades people a common problem [1]
Saturday, November 30, 2002 - 09:15. Updated on Friday, February 19, 2016 - 18:41.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 17, no. 3, November 2002.
The Hon. Marian Hobbs, the New Zealand Minister for the Environment and the Associate Minister of Education, said in Nuku‘alofa in early October that Tonga and New Zealand had one common problem, a lack of trades-people.
The Minister said that she was impressed with the government’s Reform Program and its decision to bring in more technical training, and to introduce creativity into the school system. As a former school teacher, the Minister said she used to believe in learning for learning’s sake, but there were times when we should look at where our economy was going. “There is a need for academic as much as technical skills.”
She said that New Zealand’s lack of trades people came about when the government subsidised farmers, abolished its apprenticeship scheme, and annually failed about half of all students who sat the School Certificate Examination. A lot of jobs became available at the freezing workers and therefore a lot of unskilled school leavers went straight to work there.
While the Minister was in Nuku‘alofa she held discussions with Tonga’s Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Interim Minister of Education, and also attended a ceremony to mark the completion of the first-ever Tertiary Education Assessment of the Tongan school system, which was funded by the New Zealand government.
Hon. Marian said she would like to know what Tonga was planning to do when New Zealand replaced its School Certificate and Bursary Examinations with a National Certificate of Educational Achievement in 2004.
It was her first visit to Tonga and to the Pacific Islands, and as the Minister for Environment she said she had discussions with the Prime Minister Prince ‘Ulukalala Lavaka Ata over his view that he would consider allowing whaling in Tonga if it could be scientifically proven that by doing so would not have a negative impact on the whale population.
Hon. Marian said that the success story of how whaling watching had transformed the poor settlement of Kaikoura in the South Island of New Zealand to a popular, and a properous tourist destination was a good example of what can be done with the whales other than killing them. She said that New Zealand would never allow whaling. “We value the whale for what it does to our tourism economy, and we value the whale because it is a special creature of the sea.”
After a 24-hour stopover in Tonga the Minister left for Niue on October 19.