Estimates Debate — Vote Education

First, we have the extraordinary spectacle of a Minister of Education sitting in the Chamber who will not even take the chair. That tells us about his lack of confidence in the administration of his own portfolio.

Well might he lack confidence, because the Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education) is a failed tertiary education Minister. His policy has no credibility in the tertiary sector, and I shall tell members why. He may be the most plausible Minister, but he does not create policy; he creates a kind of fog. People can never quite get hold of it. It looks like it will stop us, but when we get in there it does not stop us. We can never describe it properly, and we come out afterwards with a cold, clammy feeling.

This is what this Minister has been doing. Here is Steve Maharey’s strategy. These are the tertiary reforms. I will quote from a Ministry of Education document: “The reforms are fundamentally about shifts in ways in thinking and relating”—that is what it is about—“achieved through dialogue around aims and objectives, and steering through a clear set of strategies and the integrated funding framework.”

💬 Simon Power: What’s that?

It sounds so good; it just rolls off the tongue—“shifts in ways in thinking and relating”. [Interruption] No, I will not tell members who else would say that. So that is the “Mahareyism”.

💬 Hon Steve Maharey: Does the member want an extension?

Does the Minister want more of it? The interesting thing about this is the Ministry of Education itself has no faith in the strategy. I have looked through its document that talks about the Tertiary Education Commission’s latest expulsion, or product, or whatever one calls it—the differentiation document—and the Ministry of Education has almost nothing to say about it. It regards the document as incoherent, as repetitive, and as having no sense of priority. In fact, there is one interesting bit in here where it states that what the document states is at odds with all the other decisions that have been made. The Department of Labour and Treasury essentially say: “Don’t do it. Don’t put out the document about the tertiary landscape and differentiation, because it will put things backwards, not forwards.”

After 4½ years of “Mahareyisms” about “shifts in ways in thinking and doing”, here is the verdict of the people who supported him. From 1999 he was a very popular Minister. He had widespread support in the tertiary sector. Well, here is what the tertiary sector thinks about the strategy. This is the vice-chancellors’ comments: “What is the point of laboriously putting in place charters and profiles and a raft of other accountability measures when the system is haemorrhaging dollars right before your very eyes?”. That, of course, is a reference to the runaway expenditure on community education funding, but also the vast increase in low-level courses such as life skills that this Minister has funded. He has created this whole mechanism, this whole big room of ropes and pulleys, to see whether he can get the mouse to eat the cheese. That is what it is all about—a whole big room of ropes and pulleys to see whether he can get the mouse to eat the cheese. What happened? The mouse just went off somewhere else.

I have found that no one is taking any notice. I go round the tertiary sector saying: “Why don’t you oppose this? Why don’t you get worked up about it when you know that it can’t work?”. They just say: “We’re not worried about it, because it doesn’t make any difference to us.” That would not matter except that this financial year the Government will spend $45 million on the Tertiary Education Commission, and no one is taking any notice of it, because it does not do anything. It is a “Mahareyism”. It is a “shift in ways of thinking” full stop. It does not do anything. It is not a shift in the system, and it is not a shift in strategy, or activity, or what students are doing; it is just a “shift in ways of thinking”—a $45 million shift.

This Minister has lost his credibility, and that is why he will get reshuffled by Ms Clark out of this portfolio towards the end of the year. Having talked and talked and talked, then, when they finished talking, reported and reported and reported, nothing has happened.

The point that Bill English made about the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission total vote was interesting. One would have thought that with the charters and profiles having got through there would be a reduction in the vote requirement for the commission. In fact, it is to be increased from $25 million to $45.617 million. One has to ask some very serious questions as to why there was almost a doubling of the requirement for the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission.

However, I want to refer to a contribution made a little earlier today by Paul Adams of United Future. He gave quite a powerful contribution with regard to GST on rates. What came through was that GST on rates is an evil thing. By the time he had finished I believed that if this House continued to have GST on rates, hellfire and brimstone would be borne down upon us. However, I point out to Mr Adams, and to United Future, that this is an appropriations bill. In those appropriations, which only this Parliament can make, there is GST on rates. When United Future votes for this particular Budget it will be voting for GST on rates, as it did last year with last year’s appropriations bill, so I really would like some explanation. Could United Future please ensure that hellfire and brimstone will not rain down upon this House, as a result of its vote.

I come back to Vote Education. There are just a couple of things that I would like to focus on, one of which is tertiary student allowances. Everybody knows that members on both sides of the House are concerned about student debt. However, people do not seem to realise that the majority of student debt is not made up of loans for fees, but loans for living allowances. Loans for living allowances are not universal, as New Zealand First would like and that we negotiated with National in 1996 to have. It did not come to fruition because the coalition broke down.

💬 Darren Hughes: Never trust any of them again!

That was Jenny Shipley, and she was the great betrayer. Nevertheless, there is a problem, and to an extent this Budget recognises it because it shifts up slightly—only very slightly—the actual thresholds at which the rebate first comes in, from $28,000 to $33,700, and it shifts up the threshold where it completely goes away, from $50,752 to $62,000. So the Government, and this Budget, recognise there is a problem but it has made only a very, very minor change. We believe that the Government needs to go a whole lot further if it is to overcome some of the inherent injustices that exist within the system as it stands, when the student allowance is assessed on parental income. That is what it is based upon—parental income.

I know of a student who told me her father had left when she was 3 years of age and had never contributed a cent to her upbringing. Yet when it came to assessment for a student allowance he was living overseas, his income was assessed there, and she did not get any student allowance. There is the rub! It is unfair.

However, this Government has also made three other changes to student allowances. The first one is that people who were married and under the age of 25 were not assessed on their parents’ incomes, but were assessed on their own and their spouse’s incomes. The Government has changed that. So to any parent who has marched his or her daughter up the aisle and thought that now his or her daughter is financially independent of himself or herself, at the age of 19 or 20, I say sorry but this Government believes that those parents should be financially liable until their daughter turns 25. This is the same Government that believes that 12 and 13-year-olds can be given the morning-after pill without their parents having any knowledge of it, or being provided with help through State-funded agencies, yet at the same time it is saying that even if the person is married the parents are financially liable.

The other issue is about people who have gone to work. They could have left school, taken a low-paid job, reached the age of 23 or 24 and then decided it was time to get an education so they could get a better job. In the past they were not considered to be financially dependent upon their parents. Under this Budget they will now become classed in that way. We believe this is totally unfair. The Government says that the reason it has had to do this is very simple. The current policies are in breach of the Human Rights Act.

I want to say a few things about the export education funding in the appropriations. Forty million dollars has been set aside for the next 4 years. Yet we know, in this Committee, that there is over $2 billion coming back for this nation through export education. This is a huge business, and I do not believe anyone is unaware of that by this date. It is such a good business that it earns for our nation, by way of GST and income taxes, probably $500 million. It is a huge business, it makes huge dollars, it is increasing and growing each year, and I say that this is very good for our nation.

I think the $40 million that has been set aside in this appropriation is great, but it does not completely say what we should deal with with a business of this size. One of the things I was appalled by in the select committee, when I asked some questions about who runs this business in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, was that 106 staff run the entire thing. I asked very specifically who ran it, and was told that everybody ran it. I want to ask the Government: if one were running a $2 billion business, surely one would want somebody like a Ralph Norris, at least, at the head of the show, because he knows how to run that level of business. It is a great shame, I believe, when 106 people running a huge business are, in their own words, non-business types.

I believe this is a business that could grow to $20 billion and move forward. I believe the Government ought to be really, really stressing how to invest in the best people to make this business work. I am very, very pleased, by the way, that it is making huge profits. I am troubled that many people around this country are perplexed that they have to pay an export levy each year—which adds up, I am told, to about $3.5 million or maybe a bit more—which is collected by fees from all those who have language schools in New Zealand and run those programmes. A lot of angst was suffered to get that $3.5 million. Considering the half a billion-dollar surplus, at least, that comes back to the Government by way of profits through tax, I ask why the Government wants $3.5 million from providers around the country when, in point of fact, the business is making such an enormous profit. This policy has put a whole lot of people’s backs up—everybody from universities, polytechnics, and private training providers—the whole lot were opposed to the export levy from day one.

So the only advice I have to the Government at this point is that it is great to see the expenditure, but why cause so much anguish in and among the industry of education? I am very, very sad that basically—as someone told me over the weekend—the Labour Government is really becoming a closet capitalist party, and making money and profits; yet denying this.

It is always tricky following a United Future member because one is always of the view that he or she could sit down at any stage, regardless of whether the bell has gone, and without too much notice one finds oneself taking the call at that point.

I want to follow on from my colleague the Hon Bill English who talked about the mist of language that Steve Maharey uses to describe what is going on in the tertiary sector. I say to my colleague the Hon Bill English that there is one thing in tertiary education that is emerging from the mist, and that is a huge bureaucracy. It is worth raising this issue for the Minister, and I hope he does take a call to respond to some of the issues that have been raised by the Hon Bill English and myself, because during the second reading of the Tertiary Education Reform Bill on 30 May 2002, the Minister had this to say: “This is a significant change, but I do not want it to be a bureaucratic change. I want it to be a smart change—”

💬 Hon Bill English: He did not say that!

He did say that. “I want it to be a smart change—not heavy intervention, but one that will ensure that in the end most providers are able to do this for themselves”—and this is the clincher—“rather than through some gigantic bureaucracy.”

I tell the Minister that it is worth raising this. On its establishment in 2003, the Tertiary Education Commission inherited 235 staff. Rather than slimming it down, to be a light-handed guiding strategic device, by January 2004 the commission was employing 324 staff. At that point, in 2003, it had already spent $7.8 million on contractors and the outsourcing of work. And that raises the question: what were the 324 people doing? What were they actually doing, that $7.8 million had to be spent on consultants and contractors? A parliamentary question showed us that $1 million alone went to Burleigh Evatt to create the charters and profiles system. Well, call me provincial, but is that not what the Tertiary Education Commission is for? Is it not the commission’s job to create the charters and profiles system? What on earth was going on, when 12 of these employees are being paid more than $100,000 a year?

So what did the Tertiary Education Commission do? It decided it would restructure the second and third tier management, to reflect the streamlined approach that the Minister wanted. Some of those job advertisements, I have to tell the Committee, make some of the best reading one will ever see: Manager of Instrument Steering; Management of Sector Engagement—the most bizarre things that members will ever have heard. What happened at the end of the big restructuring of the Tertiary Education Commission? The Minister knows the answer. After restructuring the second and third tier management, four jobs changed.

💬 Hon Bill English: Surely it was 400?

No, I tell Mr English that it was four jobs. So there are still 320 people working at the Tertiary Education Commission, with $8 million being spent on contractors and consultants. How did they go? What happened? Well, the release of the inaugural Performance-based Research Fund report resulted in a court case, so that went well. The Tertiary Education Commission failed to prevent a $105 million blowout in the spending of low-value, non-assessed, non - New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved community education courses. It delayed the funding category review for another year and, of course, the late landscape document was widely criticised by the Ministry of Education, Treasury, Te Puni Kōkiri, and the Department of Labour.

So what is going on in the mist? Well, if one believes that, which is all true—

💬 Hon Bill English: A shift in thinking!

Bill English says it is a shift in thinking. It is actually a whole lot of people running around, trying to find consultants to do their jobs. That basically seems to me to be what is happening.

Referring to the New Zealand Vice-Chancellor’s letter that the Hon Bill English referred to earlier, it is worth noting this comment that was made on the community education situation: “There are a number of aspects of this situation which quite frankly we find unbelievable, given the plethora of steering instruments, reporting requirements, and accountabilities to which all tertiary institutions are subject.” My colleague Maurice Williamson, who held this portfolio before I did, said to me early on: “This is a difficult piece of legislation to oppose if you believe it’s going to be a light-handed steering instrument.”

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: I did say that.

That is exactly what he said. It is not, and the Minister has some serious questions to answer.

I would like to raise the issue of the $198 million that the Government intends to cut from community education 5.1 funding over the next 4 years. I am not so much criticising the cut in the community education 5.1 funding as such, because we know that it has blown out over the past few years to unacceptable levels, but I do take issue with the Government over the way that it is intending to impose those cuts.

We know that the Christchurch Polytechnic received $15 million for its Cool IT programme, and the question that I raise is what level of accountability was raised with Christchurch Polytechnic. What I want to know from the Associate Minister is how did it ever get to that pass—that $15 million could be paid out for a programme where there was no accountability, or that a polytechnic could act completely against the objective and the intention of that programme. I want to know how many people who went on the Cool IT programme finished the course, how many of those who received the disk actually put it in their computer, and what the outcome of that course was. We do not know. As a result of the actions of a few irresponsible members of the polytech sector, everyone is to be penalised. The Eastern Institute of Technology received, I think it was, $18 million for its te reo Māori course through the radio; I am asking the Minister why it ever got that money and why an investigation was not carried out a lot sooner. I want to know why everyone in that sector is to be penalised because of the foolish and irresponsible actions of a few.

I have to raise with the Minister this issue: if these providers had been Māori providers, we can only posit or speculate about what the outcome might have been.

💬 Hon Bill English: They would have been slammed.

They would have been slammed from one end of the country to the other. If it had been a Wānanga, this would never have happened. If it had been, let us face it, even the Pipi Foundation, which, at least, with all its faults, did deliver what it was contracted to deliver, this would never have happened. But for Christchurch Polytechnic to get away with $15 million and the Eastern Institute of Technology with $18 million, and to have nothing done, brings to mind there is one rule for Māori providers and another for Pākehā providers.

Another example was the Modern Age Institute of Learning. Millions of dollars went missing from the student account. That money should have been there for those students. What happened to it? It just disappeared. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority put all the documents into the hands of the Serious Fraud Office, but the office decided to do nothing—absolutely nothing. Oh, how wonderful it is to be Pākehā in this country! Similarly, there was the case of the Paramount Institute. What happened to the money that was supposed to be there for students? Nothing! It went into a black hole. When complaints were laid with the Serious Fraud Office, the office decided to do nothing—absolutely nothing. Oh, how wonderful it is to be white in this country! We need only think back a few years to Aotearoa Television. Complaints were laid about that organisation. What did the Serious Fraud Office find, when it finally got to have a look at it? It found that no money had gone missing, and that the organisation had delivered on all its objectives. Oh, how wonderful it is to be Pākehā in this country, at times!

I am concerned that this particular kind of funding is of most benefit to Māori communities—especially, to marae courses. In relation to Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi courses that have been run on marae, I was told that a number of those who had been through those courses have gone on to do certificate courses, and are now doing degree courses. There even are records of masters students having gone through those community education courses. So those courses are one way in which the Māori community is able to reactivate, and they have been true to the spirit of the funding. People have learnt to learn again. For the whole sector to be slammed because of the actions of a few—let us face it—Pākehā polytechs just beggars belief. I just find it breathtakingly stupid that the Tertiary Education Commission, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and the Minister would respond in this way.

I turn to the $36 million that is to be spent on international education, which is another example of breathtaking stupidity. If the New Zealand Qualifications Authority had done its job and stopped the Modern Age Institute of Learning and the Paramount Institute from falling over, then New Zealand might not have the miserable reputation we now have in places like China, Korea, and other parts of the world. For a few million dollars we could have stopped that. Then there was Carich, which had several thousand overseas students. If the Tertiary Education Commission could have pulled its finger out of its sensitive places and acted more quickly so that Carich did not go to the wall, then maybe we would not have such a lousy reputation. I say to the Minister: “Give us a break!”.

I want just to reflect for a moment. I am not sure whether the debate has finished, because I see that Mr English is still a little edgy in his chair. We may hear some more from him, so I may have to come back to answer his questions. I want to reflect just a little on what I often call the “Maharey-Williamson changes”, and the reason I call them that is I think the one person in the National Party who has the wisdom to understand what is happening in tertiary education is Maurice Williamson.

The reason he understands it is he knows that the market model requires a body to run it. Members will remember the changes that took place in Maurice Williamson’s head when he went to Scandinavia and it was explained to him that if we wanted a strategic approach to our investment at a tertiary level, we had to have a body that would make the investment—that there had to be a more organised approach to it; it could not be run just by student demand. He understood that, but he could not get it across to the members currently on the National front bench. They slagged him off, basically, by disagreeing with his model, and he ended up at No. 29. But I am very pleased to see that he is working his way back through the ranks, slowly but surely, on the basis of his understanding, because then, at least, he will probably reintroduce to his caucus the notion that this approach requires a body like the Tertiary Education Commission. There may be an argument over how it works, how many staff it has, how much money it spends, etc., but if we are going to have a strategic model, then somebody has to do it. That is what we are building here.

I thought it was ironic, to use the word used by my junior whip colleague, that on a day when we were talking in the House at question time about the Innovation and Development Fund, which is money that goes directly into the sector—$1.8 million to go off and do specific innovations that will help connections between universities and business; money for biotechnology skills; and so on—when we were talking about a range of money that it would not have been possible to provide to the tertiary sector under the National Government, and that was received as manna from heaven by the university vice-chancellors, who could not get any of this money under a National Government, Bill English should rise and say we do not want this kind of approach. I could go through all the achievements of the Tertiary Education Commission over the last little while, but let me just take one—the Performance-based Research Fund. We asked the commission to put that policy in place. We thought that the money for research should be taken out of the equivalent full-time student funding, because it was being spread too thinly, we did not know whether any accountability was taking place, we did not know who was spending it, there were people who were not research active but were still getting money, and, astoundingly, there were many people—in fact, a worrying number of people—at the post-graduate level, teaching post-graduate courses, who did not do any research, yet we were paying them for it.

So we have said: “Don’t do that.”, and I think, on reflection, that the Performance-based Research Fund policy development is probably one of the best pieces of policy ever seen in this country, frankly. It was done by the sector. It worked in a very, very cooperative way. It now has a stand-up model, which most people around the world are looking at and saying is better than the British one, better than the Florida one, better than the Canadian one. I think we have a model that will have to be tweaked and developed, but if Mr English wants one piece of evidence that the Tertiary Education Commission can do, and has done, something to transform—the word used by a number of my old colleagues, and probably some of his too—the tertiary sector, it is that policy. It has transformed the sector, because if we talk to any of—

💬 Hon Bill English: It has not transformed it.

Mr English, as usual, misses the point, because he is a rather stupid man when it comes to tertiary education. So let me just say that academics like Paul Callaghan, the members of the Royal Society in this country and the Royal Society in the UK, would say that if there is one thing that has transformed the universities of this country, and anybody who is involved in academic research, it is the Performance-based Research Fund. I know that Mr English is now going to say he would repeal the research fund. I know that because he is sitting over there saying it is no good. So the National Party is committed to repealing the fund. We are not. It has transformed the way that academics do research in this country. It is the way that we will change their behaviour. The only person over there, once again, who is silent is Mr Williamson, because he understands exactly that it has transformed that culture. It has been a fantastic success. Unfortunately for Mr English, who does not do any kinds of brave changes—I cannot remember a single thing he achieved when he was a Minister, and when he was leader he did not achieve anything, which is why he is not leader any more—we have changed that culture through these kinds of developments. I know that when we are on the election platform next year, and I am saying we will have a Performance-based Research Fund, and the National Party is saying it would not, I know who the academics are going to vote for. They are going to vote for us.

Mr English’s contribution really, on the whole, is ironic and one that does not acknowledge that major changes, like the Performance-based Research Fund, have been very significant. The single biggest change I can think of in academic life in my lifetime is that Performance-based Research Fund. That is how big it is. It has made that kind of change. Unfortunately for Mr English, I was the academic and not him, so I probably know.

The second point is about Bernie Ogilvy. I thought the United Future contribution, as always, was a very good one. He gave a contribution tonight that, unlike the ones by Mr English, actually did make a contribution in terms of something that has got to happen with export education. It is a very large, $2 billion business. It is something that now is a significant player in our economy, and we have to make sure that we organise that industry and do not have it run by every disparate player in the country, individually. I think that is a very important point he made. I hope that is what is happening under Trevor Mallard’s leadership, as we are moving towards that kind of very significant industry being more integrated and being led properly in the way that it should be.

Brian Donnelly, as usual, made a very good speech as well, particularly about student allowances and debt. Yes, we have made changes this year. Yes, they have made a difference. I personally think that we, as people who represent taxpayers, will have to do more in this area. I think we have a very significant issue around student debt. We have tried as a Government to turn it back with interest-free loans, by trying to keep fees low, by ensuring that allowances are extended, and by doing a range of smaller things, particularly in terms of work for students. But, frankly, I think the people who sit in here—with the exception of people like Simon Power, who is a little younger than people like me who went through tertiary education without this debt burden—are still struggling with making sure that we do something significant about reducing that debt. But this Government has tried to put its money where its mouth is and move it forward.

I think Simon Power and I are proud to be provincial—that is what I would say. He said “call me provincial”, as if that was bad; it is not, and we would both fit into that category. I think he raised some interesting points about the Tertiary Education Commission. I think we have to ensure that we end up with a Tertiary Education Commission that does not see itself as the centre of the system. It is supposed to be there as a funding body and to assist the institutions themselves to develop good relationships with people who are trying to use their university, polytechnic, or whatever—the student, the business community, the iwi. That is the relationship that should be strong. But let me remind Simon Power that if we want a more strategic, focused approach, which is making decisions about where money is invested, there needs to be some kind of central body to do it, and I am glad he agrees with that.

Donna Awatere Huata, ironically I think, raised the issue of accountability. I understand that she takes it very seriously. Let me say that the 5.1 funding, which is a policy put in place by—and Bill English was not the Minister then—the National Government, last year blew out in a way which was unacceptable. Because we do have funding mechanisms in place where we can deal with that, we have. We are trying to get ourselves a system where, yes, there is community education, and, yes, people are accountable. I say to Donna Awatere Huata that she is wrong, that we will hold people accountable for this expenditure. In the case of Christchurch Polytechnic we have an audit going on now. If that audit comes back and we find that that money has not been accounted for properly, we will act on that institution in the same way as we would with anybody else. It will have to front up with the money, account for it, and do the same thing as any other organisation would be required to do. I will not be panicked into doing things before we have proper information, before we have the proper dialogue that should go on, but we will always make sure that taxpayers’ money is accounted for properly. If Christchurch Polytechnic cannot do it, then it will, unfortunately, have to account for the money that is there, because that is the requirement of this Government—that people do front up.

Those seem to be the major points. I think Mr English wants to speak again, so I will sit down. If, when he is finished, there are points I need to account for, I will rise and do that.

The Minister is about $100 million late. He could have easily fixed 5.1 by firing the so-called professionals who are running three or four of our polytechnics, and who simply broke the rules in a very unethical and unprofessional manner. If he fired the councils that he appoints, because they would not fire the chief executives, everyone would get the message. Instead, what he has done is cut millions from the funding of every regional polytechnic, including most of the ones that behaved themselves admirably and did not take the opportunity.

The other question I have for the Minister is this: where are his officials? Clearly, Ministers are not taking the estimates seriously. There are no officials present, so if one asks a question, such as I will be asking, there is no one to tell me the answer. Here is the question. The Government has funded a pretty extensive assessment project through Auckland University. The product, asTTle, is now out in the schools. I have been debating with the Ministry of Education and the Minister about access to the asTTle data, because it now has 100,000 students on it and the data has been calibrated to produce finely judged testing. That system is working in our schools right now. I asked for that data under the Official Information Act, and I received a scrambled reply from the ministry that said I am allowed a briefing on it. But even though the ministry has total ownership of intellectual property in that data, the letter does not say it will not release it, it just does not address the issue.

So I ask the Minister tonight whether he will give me the performance data from asTTle. I know it is there. It is called trial data, but it does not matter what it is called; the ministry owns it. It is all packaged up and accessible. It is not in raw read-only form, like the data from the ministry that the Minister gives to me when he is using smart-alec tactics. It is all there, ready to go. One can press the button and look at it, and Professor John Hattie will show it to anyone who goes to his office. So if I can see it in his office, why will the Minister not give me that data, under the Official Information Act? It is owned by the taxpayer, paid for by the taxpayer, and readily available. I am allowed a verbal briefing on it apparently and, I presume, some presentations on a screen, but I am not allowed the trial data. I want to know from the Minister, why?

I also want him to explain why he does not have officials here to answer our questions, because that is what has always happened in the 13 years, almost 14, years that I have been in this Parliament. At estimates time, Ministers sit in the chair, with the officials nearby, and answer questions. Where are they? I want to know where they are, and why this Government is so arrogant that it thinks it does not have to bring officials here to answer questions about why publicly funded data is not being given to this Parliament, even though the Ombudsman intervened to make sure I got some versions of it. Why is that the case?

Where are the officials who can answer questions about the $80 million blowout and the deep-seated conflicts of interest at Christchurch Polytechnic? They are being protected because they have done their job as badly as this Minister has. There are a whole lot of questions about education spending, and they just cannot answer with any integrity. There is an $80 million blowout. What could our schools have done if they had that amount to spend on information technology, or their operations grant? What could have been done with $80 million to appease the Minister’s crocodile tears about student debt? He will go around half-crying to student audiences for the next 15 months about how he wished he could do something. Well he blew the money! For all his steering, control, and strategy he blew huge amounts of money—millions of dollars—on the least strategic, least important, and lowest value waste of education that could be found in any tertiary system. He blew it. So where are the officials, and why are they not here to answer our questions? What is so special about the Minister and his officials that they do not have to front up? I also ask the Minister to tell me about asTTle. It is publicly funded data. I have asked for it and I am allowed a briefing. Where is the data?

I will answer those “quiet” questions from Mr English. He needs to watch that blood pressure—that is all I will say. He has had his answer, as far as I understand, about the asTTle data: he is allowed a briefing.

💬 Hon Bill English: No, no. Why can’t I have the data?

I am telling the member that he should go ahead and take that briefing.

💬 Hon Bill English: Why can’t I have the data?

I heard the question in the first instance, and I have just given the answer. I will explain for people at home. The way it works in here is that we have a turn each. Mr English has just had his turn, but he is continuing it from his chair. The answer to the question is that he has been offered a briefing on the asTTle data, and I would take it, if I were him. I cannot think of any other question he asked about that point.

💬 Hon Bill English: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. Have officials been prevented from coming into the Chamber? Are they being kept outside by order of the Chair or by some other request from an MP? Clearly, the Minister is not going to answer the question as to why he thinks they are not in here, to answer those sorts of technical questions we cannot expect the Minister to know the answer to. I want to be clear with you, Madam Chairperson, about whether officials have been prevented from coming into the Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No. It is entirely up to the Minister.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Education Review Office