English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:623;Page:18676] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I suppose it is to be expected that Labour would be worried about Dr Brash’s relentless rise in the polls but the real crisis of confidence is one that Labour still cannot understand and that is the crisis of confidence of 150000 young New Zealanders in the school qualifications for which they study so hard. Why did the Government not mention that today? The other crisis of confidence is between Helen Clark and her main “Mr Fix-it” Ministers: Trevor Mallard Steve Maharey and David Benson-Pope. 
David Benson-Pope and Trevor Mallard remind me of one of those pantomime horses we see when the kids are doing a show. They both are fighting to be the back end! Neither of them wants to be responsible for stories like the one today where the head of the chemistry teachers association—a man whom I have never met and who probably has no partisan bent—tells us that 2000 to 3000 students were disadvantaged by a shonky exam. A professor of chemistry who used to set and mark exams could not pass that exam in the time allotted. That is why the Prime Minister has panicked and today she has dumped the Minister of Education right in the middle of it. 
It turns out that he knew about the shonky New Zealand Scholarship results because he told the Prime Minister about them on 15 or 16 January. He knew then because the New Zealand Qualifications Authority had told him the day before. We are not talking about some large complicated analysis of the millions of papers which they keep referring to; we are talking about a single-page table that shows the number of people who entered and the number of people who passed. How could he know that fewer people were passing scholarship than expected without his having seen the table that showed the subjects? Was he given just the little bit at the bottom—the rest being covered up—and told: “Trevor you’re allowed to see only the one number at the bottom.”? Was he given a big square sheet of paper with one number on it and the rest was withheld under the Official Information Act because it was not in the public interest? How ridiculous! 
He was told on 14 January. He told the Prime Minister on 15 January. He was told again on 17 January. On 18 January his most senior officials Karen van Rooyen and Howard Fancy convened an officials group to work on the problem. On 26 January he put out a press release. Was it not wonderful? In it he said: “As this is the first time the new Scholarship system has been run there is particular interest in the patterns of results …”. Except that today he told the House he never looked at the pattern of results. He is particularly interested—so particularly interested that he never even looked at it. Who believes that? The Minister also stated: “Provisional results indicate that some students did exceptionally well in Scholarship but didn’t necessarily”— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I thought you might have intervened at that point. A member’s word has been given in this House and it cannot be doubted in this House as it was then by the Hon Bill English. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I heard it and I think it was borderline. In fact that is the way I accepted it—as being very borderline. But I did hear it. It was hypothetical. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: So there is particular interest and there is detail about the provisional results—so detailed that apparently he knows how many students sat three subjects and others that are not publicly available. But apparently he did not know anything. 
This press release was an attempt to cover up shonky results in New Zealand Scholarship which came to public attention only because concerned teachers and parents brought them to public attention. What we now know from what the Prime Minister and the Minister have said is that we would never have heard about that from those people. They set so much more store by the aspirations of young New Zealanders but they did not do what they should have done—that is tell the public. We would never have known—never. It would not have happened. It would have stayed covered up by the 26 January press release. 
In the real scrap going on now between the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Minister whose head will roll—Karen van Rooyen’s or the Minister’s? I say it will be the Minister’s.