Estimates Debate — Vote Education (continued)

After that amazing valedictory speech from Richard Prebble, it is back to battle. I want to raise with the Government the damning report that is provided in the Education Sector Review, which paints a horrifying picture not only of the state of the Government’s education bureaucracies but of the mess that they have made impacting on ordinary New Zealand students. When the Government first came in it passed a big Tertiary Education Reform Bill, which set up the Tertiary Education Commission. It told this Parliament, and the people of New Zealand, that that would result in a flash new strategic approach to tertiary education. As my colleague Bill English said, that bureaucracy has consumed $100 million a year of public money—$100 million every year. We are talking about half a billion dollars of public money. Five years later, what does the Government’s own report state? It states: “The … education agencies do not have the capability to take a strategic approach to policy implementation.” That is what the Government’s own report states. We can remember so well Steve Maharey giving speech after speech about the new strategic approach to tertiary education. Five years later, and after spending half a billion dollars, the Government’s own report states that that has not happened.

Then there is the fiasco that occurred in respect of students’ school qualifications. That is the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) debacle. We have the same report—it is from Treasury, from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and from the State Services Commission—stating that “the agencies do not have the essential capability … to support the magnitude of change” that is expected to be undertaken in the senior secondary sector. What does that mean? It means that the 540,000 secondary students in New Zealand get a botched qualification. After 5 years of having Trevor Mallard at the helm of our education system, we have botched the qualifications for thousands of New Zealand students.

Some of those students are my constituents. Some of them are bright top students from excellent secondary schools like Nayland College, Waimea College, and Nelson College for Girls. I have met some of those young people, who are angry and frustrated that for their 5 years of hard toil at secondary school they have ended up with a botched qualification. What does the Government say? Government members think that is funny. Trevor Mallard was in the Chamber earlier, making jokes about it. After 5 years of him being in the role of Minister of Education, we have a gigantic botch-up.

What does the report state about the NCEA? It states that there is an urgent need to stabilise the NCEA and that there is a view that greater ministerial involvement would assist that. What does that say? It says that the Minister has not been doing his job, and that young, bright New Zealanders have paid the price for that with a botched qualification. Then we hear what the report states about the Tertiary Education Commission. The commission is the bold new agency that the Labour Government set up, and the report is damning in terms of that commission. We know that 2 years after Trevor Mallard said that singalong courses would be stopped, they are still going. This very day, at the Eastern Institute of Technology, students continue to be enrolled in singalong courses.

I have sat on the Education and Science Committee for the last 12-15 months, and I have to say that a number of the issues that have been raised so skilfully and diligently by the Hon Bill English—particularly in the last 12-15 months—reflect the most interesting trend in the education sector. I can recall standing in this Chamber during the reading of the legislation to pass the Tertiary Education Commission into life. At that time the Hon Steve Maharey told the House that the Tertiary Education Commission would be a light-handed, strategic steering instrument. I do not know what that means. I spent 6 years at university and I do not have a clue what that means, but that is Steve Maharey’s language. The point is that there is nothing light-handed about the Tertiary Education Commission, and, more to the point, there is nothing strategic about it, either.

I ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Swain, to tell us the last time a new bureaucracy was set up in this country that was described by the Minister who created it as light-handed. The Tertiary Education Commission has an annual budget of approximately $42 million, it employs 324 people, and within the first 12 months of its life it had a massive restructuring to make its governance and management structure more relevant. The result of that restructuring was that the number of people working at the Tertiary Education Commission reduced by four.

The governance structure, which had an executive chairman—Dr Andy West—in place, an executive deputy chairperson, a commission, a general manager, and a deputy general manager, was a structure that we told the Minister would not work. Andy West left within 2 years of the commission being formed. The structure was completely rejigged and good old Russell Marshall had to return from London to fix the mess that Steve Maharey had created by creating this particular commission, which has gone nowhere.

In the meantime singalong courses continued. We discovered in this Chamber on Tuesday that they are still on the website of various institutions. People are still enrolling and still doing those courses, and the total cost at the end of this year will be over $9 million to the taxpayers of New Zealand. In the meantime pet homeopathy, twilight golf, and other courses have continued, yet this Government has the nerve to tell the people of New Zealand that it is not wasting their tax dollars; that matters of surpluses in the vicinity of $7.4 billion are being well spent.

Well, I can tell the Minister that they are not. The bureaucracy in the education sector in this country has been exposed. Steve Maharey was shifted out of that particular portfolio and “Mr Fix-it” was brought in. We saw last week how that went. If the Government is relying on the Hon Trevor Mallard to fix this mess, it will be waiting a long, long time. What Trevor Mallard discovered was that the Te Wānanga o Aotearoa was being fed hundreds of millions of dollars and was not performing. So when it recorded its troubles to the Minister, what did the ministry do? It wrote a cheque for $20 million and told the wānanga: “Here, have some more, and this will make it OK.” Trevor Mallard is delicately trying to say: “Well, actually, I wasn’t the Minister at the time.” Well, actually, as the Minister he controls the vote. As the Minister of Education he controls the vote for tertiary education. The responsibility for the mess in education lies squarely on the Minister’s shoulders.

In the meantime, while all this was going on, at least four inquiries were being held into the National Certificate of Educational Achievement debacle. Students were getting scripts and marks for exams they did not sit and no marks for exams they did sit. No scholarships were awarded in some subjects; too many were awarded in others. These estimates had better fix the problem.