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Leader's LetterJuly 2005
Education System in ChaosNowhere has the politics of sucking up to certain interest groups by the Labour government been more exposed than in the field of education. Prior to the last election, the Labour party forged a contractual relationship with the teacher unions. The unions carried out their part of the bargain and sent out information packs to teachers telling them to vote for Labour. Since Labour has got into power, the unions have been calling in their chips. The result has been huge increases in expenditure on education, much of which is having no positive impact. New Zealand First believes we have to pay our teachers well. However, we would expect some changes in work practice by teachers themselves. For example, we need to break down the idea that so-called school holidays are teacher holidays. Part of the workload problem for teachers is that some attempt to cram 48 weeks worth of work into 38 weeks. Many do carry out courses and plan classes during their holidays. However, the Minister recently described that as teachers giving up 'their own time'. The secondary teachers salary negotiations in 2002 were an absolute disaster. New Zealand First advised the Minister on what he needed to do and he ignored our advice. The result was the worst industrial upheaval in educational history and, in the end, because an election was pending, the Minister caved in. However, because the main objective of the PPTA was to break pay parity with primary teachers, the final discussions left some secondary teachers being penalised and the ill-feeling created by that still hasn't been resolved. At the tertiary level, the government has put in place at huge cost, a mechanism to more wisely spend the tax-payers' dollar. New Zealand First has supported this process. The problem is the government hasn't used the mechanism so we still have such stupidities as a thousand times more divers being trained than the labour market can absorb, hip-hop courses and the debacle of the blow out in funding low-level courses at Te Wananga o Aotearoa. The government lacks the steel to offend certain interest groups, considering its own future before making a decision in the best interests of New Zealand. As an example, the debacle at the wananga has been created by the government agreeing to a $40 million capital injection based on a Waitangi Tribunal ruling. New Zealand First had this issue put before us (at the cost of $10 million) in 1997 and rejected it on the grounds that the wananga had received capital funding within the grants they had received since 1993. Unfortunately, after the coalition ended, National accepted the claim and the incoming Labour government fell over itself to come up with the money under the guise of 'Closing the Gaps'. New Zealand First has as one of its founding principles that education is to be seen as an investment in the future. However, we believe that government must use tax-payers' funding in a responsible manner and every dollar spent must be used effectively and efficiently. Playing interest group politics inevitably leads to poor quality expenditure in education and, for the Labour government, the chickens are coming home to roost. Hon Brian Donnelly MP
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