English Bill: General Debates 
English Bill: General Debates 
[Volume:619;Page:15247] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 That was the man who led a blameless life at Massey University—and he has come out to tell everyone else that they spent their time in monastic cloisters! That matters because that Minister looks at the world through light pink lenses. While he has been looking around with his academic theories in his own sector of responsibility the polytechs have been ripping off the taxpayer for tens of millions of dollars. I will come back to that matter later. I did not apologise to Hauraki Plains College. I spoke to it about what it was doing and the best that the Government has been able to come up with is to say that the assessments in the box were not meant for assessment. That is what the Minster of Education said today. I stand by everything I have said and the big question is whether Trevor Mallard will give in now to the pressure for a National Certificate of Educational Achievement review or whether he will give in later. It is really just a matter of whether there will be a review now or later. 
I want to come back to Mr Maharey. Mr Maharey is surfing on a fiscal wave that is the product of a strong economy. He is showing the reckless disregard for taxpayers’ money that we have come to expect of the Labour Government because there is so much more of that. There is a $34 billion cumulative nominal increase in the tax take. Where is it going? Mr Maharey is overlooking the following set of circumstances. Any number of schools in our electorates run adult and community education classes and some of those classes are quite popular. They are paid for by tutors getting an hourly rate. What is happening to those classes? I want to read out an email to the Minister of Education because it is his portfolio money and his Minister mate’s portfolio money that is involved. The email is from a person who runs adult and community education courses and it states: “We have been hit from every angle—far more than just first aid and boat master computing and te reo Maori. Basically any class which was popular they”—meaning the polytechs—“have attacked.” 
What do the polytechs do? They set up an arrangement often with a voluntary agency like the coastguard or the Red Cross. They grab a course that is being taught in the local high school and turn it into an equivalent full-time student - funded course which is much more expensive. The polytechs charge the participants for the full cost of the course and share the funding between themselves and the voluntary agency when neither of them does anything. They do nothing. The participants pay for the tutor and the Government pays the voluntary agency and the polytech for enrolling the students. The Government is paying out thousands of dollars for each of those courses. I will give the example of just one small course. I will not say what it is or where it is held. But for that one small course the voluntary agency collected $125000 and the polytech collected $75000. The participants paid for the cost of the course. That is just one small course which used to be run in a high school under the auspices of adult and community education. 
If the organisations concerned were not public organisations that would be fraud. And Steve Maharey looks the other way because the people involved are all nice Labour-voting people who understand the public service and the ethics of collaborative non-competitive tertiary education. Those people are ripping the Government off day after day and then laughing behind Steve Maharey’s back. I know that because I go and talk to them. I tell them that Steve Maharey said he would get the money back and they laugh. No one believes what Steve Maharey a front-bench Minister and close confidant of the Prime Minister says because he is a totally ineffective Minister who has overseen over $100 million of polytech rip-offs for which the taxpayer is getting almost no educational value. And Steve Maharey still sits on the Government’s front bench.