English Bill: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
English Bill: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14359] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 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? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: 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? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: 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.