Education Minister Anne Tolley has decided that Aorangi School in Christchurch should close.
This was John Key’s school. She has announced it while he is on holiday. Coincidence – Yeah Right
Red Alert
Archive for the ‘consultation’ Category
Chopper Tolley – her neck on the block?
Posted by Trevor Mallard on September 30th, 2009Christchurch Press has good background to Tolley’s budget mess.
The Government plan involved a reversal of lower teacher-pupil ratios for new-entrant classes. The 1:15 ratio started this year would be scrapped and returned to the previous 1:18. Tolley approved the plan, which noted that 772 fulltime equivalent teaching positions would be cut on May 3.
So it is clear that Tolley signed out a paper with not only the cuts but the timing in it.
Education Minister Anne Tolley said last night that she backed out of the plan days before the May 28 Budget announcement when she realised how many jobs would be lost.
“I don’t think that I thought they were actual staff. I didn’t realise that they were actually all in place,” she said. “I still thought that we were talking about it as being in the future.”
How could that be. She knew the 1.15 came in last year. I heard her talking about it in the campaign. She promised not to reverse it. So she knew before the election they were in place, she was reminded in writing they were in place and she still signed them off.
I thought there would have been some [redundancies] but I didn’t think they were all actually on the ground and in place,” Tolley said last night.
“I take full responsibility. It was my error and it was my decision, but we never went into that with the idea of making people redundant.”
Hardly credible. Probably a loss of nerve. I just can’t find it very hard to believe that Tolley is so stupid..
She “had no option but to leave the savings in”.
That just leaves a very big question for Bill English. If the decision to take out the teachers had been reversed before the budget as Tolley claims, while it was too late for the formal documentation, it is my view that English had to correct the error by way of note or erratum – or he as well as Tolley was in breach of the Public Finance Act.
The Government would somehow have to account for the savings in next year’s Budget, she said.
The ministry was putting together a paper with options on how to make the saving. It was due “any day”.
Needs to be done before the next fiscal update.
Overall a very sad picture of a Minister prepared to sacrifice the quality of education, not good at remembering how schools are staffed and certainly not capable of reading and understanding Budget papers. She is a front bench member of this government. It just shows how thin their veneer is.
What is also sad is her subsequent lack of honesty. When questioned on the cut she made no mention of her foolishness but did say she had set up a committee to advise her on how to implement it.
Speedmatters
Posted by Trevor Mallard on September 16th, 2009Speedmatters is a good reference from the workshop on open source that Clare ran at conference. Shows a union that is prepared to put its money where the jobs will be and push hard for broadband.
Imagine if Telecom worked with the EPMU to produce this sort of thing rather than sacking hundreds of skilled employees.
On the bus – heading to Hawera
Posted by Carol Beaumont on August 11th, 2009As the Labour Caucus starts the second day of our bus trip a rousing chorus of happy birthday to colleague Ruth Dyson was tunefully delivered.
I am looking forward to another day of talking to people in their community. Yesterday I was lucky enough to participate in two workplace visits – a small manufacturer in Levin and a large manufacturer in Wanganui. The Levin visit reinforced for me the tenacity that small business owners need as they constantly search for markets. In this case knowing that at the time they get to any sort of scale products will end up being produced by Chinese manufactuers. Key messages were – networking and collaborating with other NZ manufacturers is vital, encouraging innovation by all employees, not just designers and the need for better government procurement processes. The Wanganui visit was heartening as the company was picking up output again. Key messages – the importance of focussing on health and safety, the value of a good relationship with the union and
National wants a holiday – yours!
Posted by Darien Fenton on July 25th, 2009Yet another Holidays Act review is now underway. By my count, there’s been six “reviews” in the last 20 years, including Labour’s changes to legislation. National conducted three reviews during the 1990’s, yet made no changes to the Holidays Act, The most controversial was the National/NZ First government’s proposals to trade public holidays for cash, or trade one week’s annual leave for cash, which resulted in a record 13,000 submissions in opposition.
The 1990’s reviews included Business NZ and the Council of Trade Unions, but sensible options for change to what were some pretty technical nightmares were not implemented because of National’s insistence on holidays being traded for cash.
So it was left to Labour to change the legislation and I have to say they did a pretty good job. The grizzling we hear about the complexities of the Holidays Act was happening in the 1990’s too and I tend to think today’s gripes are more about workers having better entitlements than about complexity.
But here we go again. The National Party is trying hard to make the so-called review sound benign and in typical Key style, making soothing murmurings about employee choice. We’ll see. We’ll see whether workers really get to choose to cash up their fourth weeks leave. We’ll see whether seasonal and shift workers are better off with changes to relevant daily pay calculations.
These two issues were well signalled in National’s election manifesto, so no surprises there, but they’ve snuck some other things into the review that are worth a closer look.
Firstly, there’s the proposal to allow employers and workers to “transfer” public holidays to another day of significance, The example used is Ramadan. Where did this idea come from? I know the answer to that because I heard it in submissions on it from the EMA (Northern) in select committee last year.
I’m suspicious that this is a ploy to reduce entitlements to extra pay for working on a public holiday. For example, if you agree to swap Christmas Day for a day during Ramaden, and you work Christmas Day, no time and a half. It’s a way of diluting holidays across the board.
Then there’s the old Easter Sunday Shop trading debate which has re-emerged in the innocuous sounding Terms of Reference. But the consultation document sets out the questions in a way that doesn’t leave much room to move.
In the last few years, there have been at least four legislative proposals to open the shops on Easter Sunday. Each time, it’s been voted down by parliament in a conscience vote. I’m one who has opposed the opening of shops on Easter Sunday, because retail workers have been adamantly opposed to it. After all, there are only two and a half days of the year when shops aren’t open.
Having said that, the shop trading laws around Easter are pretty messy. There’s been several attempts to sort it out, but parliament has failed to find a solution that MPs will vote by majority for.
I’m interested in your views and while we’re at it, what about Matariki as a public holiday as proposed by Rahui Katene’s members’ bill drawn out of the ballot this week?
The Gambling Amendment Bill
Posted by Chris Hipkins on July 14th, 2009At some stage soon parliament will resume debate on the Gambling Amendment Bill (No2). It’s a largely technical Bill that makes minor amendments so that the law will work as intended. One of the issues it covers is the distribution of pokie machine profits which, by law, have to be used for charitable purposes. However those profits don’t have to go back into the communities they were drawn from and quite a bit of pokie money goes into paying rental space for the machines, director’s fees for the ‘charities’ that distribute the funds, and other similar ‘expenses’.
During the Second Reading debate, the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Richard Worth, conceded that there were some questionable funding practices within the industry. He subsequently indicated in discussions with me that he thought those issues should be the subject of a separate piece of legislation. It’s an undertaking I hope the new Minister will honour.
In the meantime, Sue Bradford has tabled a number of amendments to the current Bill and while I think that some of them are wide of the Bill’s scope (it’s supposed to contain technical amendments, not significant policy changes) I think they’re worthy of debate. They include requirements for pokie machines to be located entirely indoors (not in courtyards where people can smoke, drink and gamble at the same time) and for the majority of the grants to be made back into the communities the money came from in the first place.
The amendments would also prohibit the use of pokie machine profits for racing stake money. I don’t have a problem with racing clubs receiving charitable grants. It would be unfair to stop racing clubs receiving any funding whilst still allowing other sports clubs to get it. However currently it is perfectly legal for a pokie machine operator to hand over their profits to the racing industry to use as prize money. In my view that is one form of gambling subsidising another and I can’t see how it can be justified.
I’d be interested in people’s views on pokie machines and how the profits should be distributed. Do we have too many pokie machines? Should the profits have to go back into the communities they are taken from? Should racing stake money be an authorised charitable purpose? Should we move to a more centralised system for grant distribution (eg. A model similar to lottery grants)? All reasonable and sensible argument and suggestions welcome.
Broadcast/Internet Convergence Fragmentation
Posted by Trevor Mallard on July 11th, 2009It is great that 7 is on Sky (ch 97) because of the much higher potential audience, including Back Benches, but it has highlighted a set of issues which the Nact Maori government have chosen to dodge.
Sky has effectively got it for free rather than doing the expected Prime to Freeview deal.
It does hightlight the problem that is emerging. I’m not at all technical. I hate having more than one remote or even learning how to drive one of the complicated ones .
What I do know is that at some stage the screen on my wall will be driven by a convergence of internet and broadcast systems . Quality will be fantastic. It will have thousands of choices. Most will be free but some will be on a pay system.
We are getting more and more systems and at some stage there has to be a winner. The shut down of the analogue system will be an opportunity to implement policy decisions. But before that happens we need a solid policy development process. Thats what the digital review was all about. Nact scrapped it.
Sky will take advantage of the policy vacuum. Their direction might be where we want to go in the end. But lets make a deliberate decision rather than being led by the nose by people whose long term obligations are to their overseas owners rather than New Zealand’s future.
Save Auckland’s community assets
Posted by Phil Twyford on July 2nd, 2009My private member’s bill to protect Auckland’s assets from privatisation was drawn from the ballot today.
No one trusts Rodney Hide and his cronies to keep Auckland community assets in public hands so my member’s bill will put any decision to sell community assets firmly into the hands of Aucklanders. The bill requires the sale or privatisation of any assets to be first put to a public referendum.
I’m hoping ACT will support the bill. They are big on referenda in local government. In fact Rodney Hide’s recent cabinet paper proposes that councils be required to put any ’significant or irreversible’ decisions to referendum. If flogging off the assets Aucklanders have paid off with their rates over generations is not ’significant or irreversible’ I don’t know what is.
I think one of the big anxieties underlying the super city debate is the fear that the super city is just the prelude to corporatisation of local government, and privatisation of our assets: the ports, the water, and our transport infrastructure, not to mention libraries, parks, halls and other assets. These fears have been fueled by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide’s proposed reforms of the Local Government Act which seek to reduce council activities to core services. And by ACT’s stated policy to force Councils to sell off their commercial enterprises. Bear in mind also that it is only a decade or so since the right wing were trying to hock off the ports.
My bill, the Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill, would require the Auckland Council to hold a referendum if significant asset sales are being considered. An appropriate threshold for the value of an asset that would trigger a referendum will be developed through the select committee process in consultation with Aucklanders. But the Bill would outlaw the sale of a range of assets including parks, swimming pools, libraries and public housing – other than when a sale might be part of the normal day-to-day portfolio management and has been subject to the normal consultation.
Getting the luck of the draw today was perfect timing. Aucklanders will be following the super city select committee hearings over the next four weeks as the committee considers a couple of thousand submissions. My bill will likely get its first reading on June 29 so we have four weeks to get some good debate going on this issue. I would like to hear any thoughts or suggestions people have about how we can best do that.
From the Opposition – Here to Help
Posted by Trevor Mallard on June 29th, 2009The NZEI and Principals’ Federation have agreed to meet with me tomorrow on Education Standards. Anne Tolley has got herself into a corner and needs to understand that if she wants to change the law to prevent league tables for primary schools it isn’t that hard. I will check the proposal for a minor amendment to the OIA with education leaders in the morning. The link to the substantive debate is here.
Nats Support Labour Anti Drug Driver Amendments
Posted by Trevor Mallard on June 18th, 2009Steven Joyce has indicated that the government will take on my amendments outlined in a previous post. Good parliamentary process. Congratulations to David Bennett and Nathan Guy who helped me convince Joyce to overide very cautious officials advice.
This is a small but important step towards discouraging people drving with active drugs like P in their blood.
Who should pay for swine flu?
Posted by Darien Fenton on June 17th, 2009With swine flu numbers escalating, there needs to be some resolution to the argument about who should pay for workers sent home because of suspected swine flu. Critical to preventing the spread of the virus is ensuring workers stay home when they have symptoms or are exposed others with the flu.
Factories and workplaces are now sending staff into home based quarantine where there is one or more suspected cases of swine flu among the workforce. In one case this week, a seafood processing plant sent its 100 factory staff home for three days but say they will not pay staff who have no sick leave entitlements.
Other workplaces, such as the NZQA who placed 29 staff members in quarantine took a different approach to ensuring the virus is kept out of the workplace by paying the workers full pay for the time off.
Unions are arguing that workers told to stay home because of swine flu should not have sick leave entitlements deducted and the employer should pay. The workers are not sick. They are fit and able to work and the decision to send them home is out of their control, so sick leave entitlements should not be affected.
Many workers have as little as five days sick leave entitlement per year and few workers can afford to have up to a week off work without pay.
On the other hand some employers say the only way they can deal with quarantining staff is to require workers to use sick leave entitlements when they are sent home. Others are saying the government should help because businesses can’t afford the losses and it is at the government’s direction that staff are being sent home.
As swine flu numbers rapidly rise, this will become a bigger issue. Employers do have a responsibility to their staff to protect their health and safety. The law requires employers to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of employees while at work and employees may refuse to perform work that is likely to cause serious harm.
But what’s not clear is where the responsibility for the financial loss lies when workers are prevented from working because of the pandemic.
The critical issue here is reducing the spread of the virus and something has to be done.
What do you think?
Should workers or employers pay?
Or should the government be helping out?
Will Nats support drivers on P or try and reduce the incidence?
Posted by Trevor Mallard on June 14th, 2009Early in Red Alert’s history I blogged on drug driving. The feedback was taken on board as caucus discussed its position.
We will support the legislation subject to two amendments.
- Mandating the police to apply the impairment test and subsequent blood test notwithstanding the fact that someone has also failed a alcohol breath test. This means if someone has both been drinking over the limit and taking drugs they will face two driving charges.
- Making +ve tests for Class A drugs taken from injured drivers available for prosecution evidence in the way similar alcohol tests are used.
Draft amendments are available here for people to examine. [Draft amendments are available via the link below].
The Nats have been advised they are coming. The select committee chair gave an assurance that parliamentary counsel help would be available in drafting the amendments but eith the A-G or the Minister of Transport withdrew that offer so any comments welcome.
Frankly I can’t see any rational person voting against them. To do so would be to support drugged people driving.
UPDATE (17/06/09): Here’s an updated version of the SOP.
Education Standards – Who Are they For ?
Posted by Trevor Mallard on June 11th, 2009Real education standards are very important. Good standards measure value add or progress rather than a simple pass fail hurdle. They require professional support to work. They won’t get this support if they lead to league tables in newspapers. Under the Official Information Act this is inevitable. We need a law change to prevent this happening. Together we can build a campaign to change the law and therefore give us a chance to have strong, high quality, meaningful and effective standards.
This blog is a bit like those on drug driving, mall opening and education ownership. It is designed to elicit feedback to help build policy.
We need to decide what education standards are for. In my view they are an essential tool in improving teaching and learning. Working well they can identify strengths and weaknesses of individual students, teachers and schools. Good assessment can be used to direct future learning for both students and teachers. It is a vital part of a feedback loop to parents, senior teachers and principals.
I’m a strong believer in formative assessment. As Minister of Education I invested millions of your dollars building asTTle. It is a world leading assessment system. It is beginning to work as designed because teachers trust it. And it is a high trust model. Information is collected and shared on an implicit and sometimes explicit understanding that it will not be available for purient sensational and often meaningless comparisons by way of league tables.
Anne Tolley’s proposed standards won’t add any value to most schools. They look like they have been designed to fulfil an election promise rather than to have any educational benefit whatsoever. They measure hurdles that in some cases are very very low and in others are so wishy washy that there is room for tremendous variation in assessment between schools. Most importantly they don’t measure progress or the amount a child has developed over a particular period. That is they key measure of learning and thereby of teaching.
But it is no use consulting on that question until the fundamental one of “Who are they for?” is answered.
Because if they enhance teaching and learning, they will get professional support. If they lead to useless league tables and competition between schools they won’t. It is as simple as that.
I have had an informal discussion with the Ombudsman on the issue. He has made it clear to me if we want to protect the information and prevent the league tables the best approach is for parliament to do just that by changing the law.
I’m interested in your views. If there is widespread support for this approach (and remember the mainstream media will never support holding back tables that can dominate their front pages for two days a year) then I’m happy to build a campaign to get the law changed.
How long should shops in malls be forced to be open?
Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 21st, 2009Multinational Westfield has over recent years forced small business owners to extend the hours their shops are open. Following complaints from shop owners in the Hutt I’ve discussed the issue with a small sample around the country. They have shown me evidence that hours have increased in small jumps from around 60 on average to closer to 70. They tell me that even at 60 hours the ends of the trading day were unprofitable but that they now carry a lot more cost – mainly staffing costs for almost no extra sales. They often have trouble finding staff because the hours tend to be the least sociable.
In Australia shop opening hours are highly regulated by state governments. I’m not sure that that is what we want here but I can’t see a good reason for forcing shops to open on, for example, New Year’s day when hardly anyone wants to shop, strip shops are closed and almost nowhere else in the world are shops open. I do fondly remember Saturday sport where parents were able to come because shops were closed.
I’m going to run a survey of businesses in malls around the country asking them what they think but I’m interested in views on the topic from owners, employees and shoppers.
That was so last term…
Posted by Moana Mackey on May 14th, 2009I recently found myself trawling through the Hansard on the Local Government Act 2002 (yeah I know I need to get a life). I’d forgotten that the world was going to end and that the gates of hell would open on the passing of that Act.
But what really made me smile as I read these long forgotten debates was the hypocrisy of this National Government’s current position on the Auckland governance bill (currently being bulldozed through all stages under urgency) given their impassioned and outraged stance on local government legislation when they were in opposition.
And the Local Government Act, by contrast, did go through a proper process, including public scrutiny at select committee. I can only imagine the Nats would’ve literally exploded with indignation if we’d used the kind of process they’re using this week.
A couple of examples:
Phil Heatley: I was disturbed to hear the Hon Chris Carter say that he was rushing this bill through Parliament and wanting a commencement date of July next year, because the councils wanted certainty. That member has forgotten that councils are there as servants of the people, and those people are the ratepayers. They are the ones who pay the bills, and the ones who will foot the bill for the consultation required because of this document. So the Hon Chris Carter might like to rush the bill through this Parliament to suit those regional and district councils and unitary authorities, but he should remember that it will be the ratepayers who pay the bill. To date, those ratepayers have not been given the chance to consider the 300 changes to the 600 clauses in this bill. That is what concerns me.
Well it obviously doesn’t concern him anymore. He won’t even tell Auckland ratepayers what it’s going to cost them and he’s certainly not going to give them the chance to consider this particular piece of legislation.
Then from Dr Mapp:
Dr Wayne Mapp: His third position is, as far as I can see it is: “Auckland is a mess. We’ll impose a solution, and basically it can go to hell, because the Government knows best.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
The gentle art of filibuster
Posted by Phil Twyford on May 14th, 2009It’s ground hog day all over again as the House drifts towards the end of a day-long 15 hour sitting. Labour, the Greens and Maori Party are resisting National-Act’s undemocratic super city bill under urgency. The day has been spent debating numerous amendments to the bill that sets up the new Auckland Council, and establishes a transition authority with draconian powers over the elected mayors, councillors who are only half way through their elected terms.
It’s not so much clause-by-clause combat but something much gentler. As literally hundreds of amendments are voted down – Ayes, Noes, The noes have it, Party vote called for – it’s not unlike the soporific rhythms of radio cricket commentary on a summer afternoon.
What else to do in the face of the Government’s bulldozer tactics but resist in the old parliamentary way? If hundreds of people can turn out on a wet night to protest across the burbs of Auckland it seems the least we can do. It is early days in the debate. Friday night plans to head home from Wellington should now be on hold. I am still hoping the Nats will explain to Aucklanders how gutting local councils is good for democracy, and how much this lark will cost the ratepayer.
Drug Driving – What do You think?
Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 10th, 2009This is a bit of an experiment for me. I want to use cyberspace over the next 36 hours to get feedback on a couple of issues that involve civil liberties and lives.
For the last few months I’ve sat on a select committee working on a transport law reform bill that has two major strands driving while drug impaired and access to motor vehicle registration data. I’ve got two issues. And for the record the issues were in the bill as introduced by Labour and have not been fixed by the select committee where National holds the majority.
- If someone fails a breath test then all action related to driving while impaired with drugs ceases. The evidence the committee got made it very clear that using booze and other drugs together had a multiplicitive effect when it came to having accidents. In an extreme case an offender would get a lesser penalty by having a quick drink when stopped at a checkpoint while high on “P”. Doesn’t seem right to me. My view is that where someone is clearly more impaired than they should be with a given breath test reading then the Police should have the right to move down the drug testing route as well.
- When someone is hospitalised then blood taken can be used for a drink but not a drug drive charge. In my opinion anyone who has active class A drugs in their system should be prosecuted – even if they have had an accident where they have been hospitalised.
I want to talk to colleagues about this on Tuesday – tell me what you think.
