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Speaker 1: Our foreign student numbers are down. Ministry of Education shows

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Speaker 1: there was a forty percent decrease from the peak in

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Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Universities rebounding post COVID, but secondary schools and

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Speaker 1: vocational training are lagging. Penny Simmons is the Vocational education

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Speaker 1: minister with me this morning, Minister.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, good morning Ryan.

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Speaker 1: Why are we down forty percent? Still?

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Speaker 2: Taypoking tapuking has centralized everything they did all the marketing centrally.

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Speaker 2: Nobody knew what taypooking was overseas. They required everything to

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Speaker 2: be the same, so whether you were offering courses and

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Speaker 2: in Voicagoo or Auckland, you had to have the same price.

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Speaker 2: So Auckland numbers have come back a little quicker, but

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Speaker 2: certainly the regions they just haven't come back at all.

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Speaker 2: You couldn't do anything innovative or different. You couldn't do

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Speaker 2: things like having free English for spouse so that they

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Speaker 2: integrated into community. So it just killed off any innovation,

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Speaker 2: anything that was done in the regions to particularly attract

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Speaker 2: international students.

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Speaker 1: So you're saying the first thing you said was that

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Speaker 1: they were advertising as tapooking and no one knew what

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Speaker 1: it was Do you mean that they didn't go out

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Speaker 1: to the international market and say this is New Zealand.

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Speaker 2: Well they said New Zealand, but they didn't say what

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Speaker 2: the institutions were. So you couldn't go out and market

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Speaker 2: yourself as Nelson Polytechnic, an MIT or Otago Polytechnique. You

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Speaker 2: had to be tapooking and then your branch of.

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Speaker 1: Is that important because international students would be going and

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Speaker 1: researching those places and saying, oh, this looks good and

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Speaker 1: I can trust that one.

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Speaker 2: Yes. And also they knew the name polytechnic. They know

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Speaker 2: what a polytechnic is, they know what an institute of

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Speaker 2: technology is. They certainly didn't know what a two people

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Speaker 2: what a shambos. Same thing happened in Queensland when they

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Speaker 2: centralized all it takes exactly the same thing happens.

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Speaker 1: So why what are we a year and a half

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Speaker 1: in What are we What are we currently marketing ourselves.

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Speaker 2: As they are starting to be able to market themselves individually,

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Speaker 2: but it's only just started.

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Speaker 1: Well, what's taken you so long? I mean, fair enough,

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Speaker 1: they bug it up, but what's taking you so long?

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Speaker 2: Well we've got the legislation going through the House now

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Speaker 2: to disestablish tape pooking here. But while tak pooking is there,

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Speaker 2: I can't instruct them to do anything. Why not because

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Speaker 2: they had their own entity.

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Speaker 1: I don't have the well, rip them up, push them.

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Speaker 2: That's exactly what we're doing.

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Speaker 1: How can it take I think, Look, if this is

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Speaker 1: this is a serious issue on twenty seven, this is

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Speaker 1: worth billions of dollars. We're forty percent down on pre COVID.

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Speaker 1: You've got an institution that's been created by a previous

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Speaker 1: government you've got no control over, and it takes you

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Speaker 1: a year and a half to even dismantle it.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it does because the legislation takes a long time

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Speaker 2: to get written. It's a really complex bit of legislation.

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Speaker 2: But also because of finances with such a mess, and

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Speaker 2: so we're having to go through and unpicked all the

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Speaker 2: financial difficulties. There are some that went in in debt,

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Speaker 2: some went in with reserves, all that got apalgamated. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's been a nightmare that we're unpicking it. It will

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Speaker 2: be undone by one January next year.

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Speaker 1: One January we will have be free of tapooking it.

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Speaker 1: And then when and from then universe politechs can start

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Speaker 1: advertising themselves as who they are.

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Speaker 2: They are starting to now they've got the message toa

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Speaker 2: poking has got the message. They're starting to. But they've

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Speaker 2: only just been allowed to charge their own fees and

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Speaker 2: that's been a big barrier.

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Speaker 1: Penny, what is your target date for getting this number

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Speaker 1: back to pre COVID?

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Speaker 2: I think it will take two years from when can

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Speaker 2: we get disestablished? Paper king are disestablished, so I think it.

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Speaker 1: Will be come in years. January twenty twenty eight, we'll

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Speaker 1: have a conversation.

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Speaker 2: Penny, please do I look forward.

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Speaker 1: To Its good to have you on the show, Penny Simmons,

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Speaker 1: Who's the Minister for Vocational and Education. For more from

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Speaker 1: Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live to news Talks.

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Speaker 1: It'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.