Hipkins Chris: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8440. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I do not know how to turn it on. There we go—the microphone is working. I tell you what it may be karaoke night here at Parliament but there is no one singing from the Government’s song sheet in the education sector this evening. Nobody in the education community is happy with this National Government tonight and the people who are most upset tonight are the people who have had debt collectors set on them by Steven Joyce. To rub salt into the wounds having not been paid having been overpaid and underpaid and having had Steven Joyce talking to them for maybe 6 weeks now about how he was going to get the problem solved Steven Joyce’s idea of solving the problem has been to stick debt collectors on to people who have been overpaid. 
I am aware of at least one teacher in my electorate who was overpaid by Novopay in one fortnight and the fortnight later they were underpaid and now they have debt collectors chasing them for the overpayment. They rang me up and they said: “Am I allowed to send debt collectors back the other way for the underpayment that I got in the following pay period?”. No they are not. Are they allowed to send debt collectors to Steven Joyce to find out where their KiwiSaver payments have gone—the ones that have been deducted from their pay cheques but never paid over to the KiwiSaver providers? Are they allowed to send debt collectors to the Government for that? Apparently not. What about the child support payments that the Government has taken but has not paid over? Should they be sending debt collectors to the Government for those? 
Kris Faafoi 
: The heavies. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: The heavies. That is right. The National Government put heavies on to people. 
It is through no fault of their own—bear in mind that these people did not claim this money. They did not take the money. The Government just gave it to them and in some cases did not even tell them that it had given it to them. It just put extra money in their accounts. It was Christmas-time. It is very convenient to put extra money into someone’s account at Christmas-time. Some people did not even know they had been overpaid and suddenly the Government turns round to them and says: “Oh pay the money back. Pay it back right now and if you do not pay it back right now we are sending the debt collectors around.” What a disgraceful thing for this Government to do. It is absolutely offensive that having made this mistake having overpaid people who in good faith have gone out and spent that money not knowing they had been overpaid—for the Government to now put debt collectors on to them is absolutely shameful. 
I am not surprised that every member of the National Government in the Chamber is hanging their head in shame right now and that they have nothing to say about that because Steven Joyce with 6 weeks in the job to fix Novopay— 
Maggie Barry 
: Not at all. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Oh Maggie Barry is not allowed to comment on this. She was not underpaid by Novopay so according to Maggie Barry’s standing orders she should just sit there quietly because she is not allowed to comment on this. But I tell you what. Steven Joyce said he was going to fix the Novopay problems and 6 weeks on he is telling teachers that there are 3 months to go before the Novopay problems are going to be solved and he is still putting the debt collectors on to people. A competent Minister a Minister who was actually getting on top of this would have said to the Ministry of Education: “Whatever you do do not put debt collectors on to people until we actually know what is going on—until we actually know whether they have been overpaid or underpaid or whether they owe us money or whether we owe them money.” But oh no that has not stopped Steven Joyce. He has still got the debt collectors going to people to collect money that they have been overpaid and that is an absolute disgrace. But of course this Government has absolute contempt for people working in education and it has contempt for the New Zealand public. 
It is not willing to tell the New Zealand public why Lesley Longstone got a $425000 payout—oh no. And when Jonathan Coleman was asked about that in question time today what was Jonathan Coleman’s response? “Well how should I know?”. “How should I know?”—that was his actual answer—“How should I know?”. That was from the Minister of State Services the guy who is responsible—the guy who actually signed the pay cheque effectively. When asked why it was that she got the $425000 payout his answer was: “Well how should I know?”. That shows an absolute contempt for the New Zealand public. 
It shows how arrogant this National Government has become. It thinks that it can pay people large sums of money. It thinks that it can set debt collectors on to other people—people who are not being paid at all. It can set the debt collectors on to them but it is not willing to justify why it is that it paid $425000 to the outgoing Secretary of Education who incidentally had been actually doing the job for only about a year. That is a phenomenal amount of money. I think it was something like $1600 a day over the time that she had actually been in the job that she got paid out. 
Tracey Martin 
: How do you get lieu in notice when you’ve quit? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Yeah well I tell you what. It would have been a lot cheaper if Hekia Parata had gone and something like 60 percent of New Zealanders when polled by Television One said that Hekia Parata should have been the one who had gone. I absolutely agree with them on that—I absolutely agree with them on that. 
There is no accountability in this Government. All of the decisions all of the things that it is blaming Lesley Longstone for were all Hekia Parata’s decisions. It was Hekia Parata who thought bigger class sizes were a good idea. It was Hekia Parata who initiated the school closures in Christchurch. It was Hekia Parata who decided to close Salisbury School.