By Bernard Hickey
With 75 days left until the September 20 election, here's my daily round-up of the political and governmental news from in and around Wellington on Monday, July 7, including the latest on the Government's plan for the Christchurch rebuild and reaction to Labour's weekend Education policy announcements.
Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee confirmed at an event in Christchurch that 1100 Government staff from 13 agencies would relocate to three new privately owned buildings in the Christchurch CBD by 2016. This is in addition to 200 Inland Revenue staff already working in the Mid-City Building above Ballantynes and another 400 staff moving into another new building in the city.
“Leases for the 1100 staff across the three buildings we’re announcing today represent a NZ$170 million investment in Christchurch over the next 20 years; so this is a significant commitment to the city’s prosperity. These buildings are in or on the edge of the Retail Precinct, meaning an influx of 1100 people into shops and food outlets in the city each day,” Brownlee said.
The project would see Government offices reduced in the city from 17 to four. See the details here.
'No Chronut'
Brownlee said the notion of a 'donut' of developments around Christchurch was being rapidly dispelled.
Labour's State Services spokeswoman Maryan Street said the relocation in the CBD was a good idea, but she was concerned there was no new money to fund the relocations.
“Some 1700 public servants from a range of departments and ministries are going to be accommodated in the central city area but the State Services Minister cannot say how much the project is costing and how much each agency is going to have to pay to relocate. In answers to recent written questions from Labour, Jonathan Coleman confirmed there was no new money available and the agencies would have to take the costs out of their baseline by reprioritising," Street said.
“We all know that reprioritising means cutting. So what will be cut?," she said.
Labour's Education policy
It was a busy weekend for policy announcements from Labour, which held its election-year Congress for activists at Wellington High School and the Michael Fowler centre.
Labour Leader David Cunliffe delivered a rousing speech on Sunday that included a promise to employ 2,000 more teachers to reduce class sizes. He said it would be paid for by cancelling National's Investing in Education Success (IES) plan to pay higher salaries to executive teachers and principals.
Labour's policy is to reduce class sizes in years 4-8 from 29 to 26 by 2018, and from 26 to 23 in secondary schools.
It said the policy would cost NZ$503 million over four years, which it said was the same cost as IES, although National's announcement in January said the cost was NZ$359 million over four years. However, Labour's policy also includes NZ$104 million for new classrooms and equipment.
"It is a far better use of our education resource to increase the number of educators we have and make sure they receive the best training possible, than more money for performance pay and part-time principals," Cunliffe said.
"That’s backed up by a wealth of academic evidence and it’s something parents know instinctively. One of the best things we can give our kids is more one to one time with their teachers," he said.
Labour announced on Saturday all students in years 5-13 would have a portable digital device.
A Labour Government would provide a NZ$100 subsidy per device and set up a NZ$5 million hardship fund for those parents unable to pay off the rest of the cost of the devices through a NZ$3.50/week payment plan. The policy would cost NZ$25 million over 2016 and 2017.
'Back to the future'
National Education Minister Hekia Parata described the policy of reducing class sizes was a "back to the future" idea that would achieve little.
"We know that because that was their policy last time they were in government and student achievement flat-lined at best," Parata said.
"If you really want to improve success at school the answer is to help all teachers be better teachers, and invest strongly in principals," she said.
Labour Education spokesman Chris Hipkins said Parata had learnt nothing about a public outcry over class sizes over two years ago.
“Increasing teacher quality and smaller class sizes are not mutually exclusive. Having more time to spend with their pupils means teachers have more time to reflect on their practise, undertake professional development and spend on kids who are falling behind," Hipkins said.
“A Labour Government will raise the quality of all teachers. National's executive principals policy would hand-pick a few people and pay them more," he said.
Hashtag politics
Labour also released it's twitter slogan. It will be #forabetterNZ, which competes with National's #teamKey.
Elsewhere, Cunliffe told Paddy Gower on TV3's The Nation that he would not rule out a post-election accommodation with Internet-Mana.
Cunliffe told Corin Dann on TVNZ's Q+A that Labour would look at buying back sold assets on a case by case basis.
Labour also confirmed to TV3 that it planned to increase the minimum wage to over NZ$16 an hour within its first year in office from NZ$14.25 currently.
I'll keep updating this through the day.
See all my previous election diaries here.
See the index for Interest.co.nz's special election policy comparison pages here.
(Updated with details on Christchurch announcement)
19 Comments
Its a nice-to-have, and I would support it , but it loks like some kind of bribe.
It actually raises more questions than answers , like :-
How are we going to pay for it ?
And what are our priorities ?
And who is going to pay for it if we dont borrow and get into even more debt ?
Imagine if we have 2000 extra doctors or healthcare professionals , 2000 extra Policemen, what are our choices ?
Labour does not have any common sense in almost anything.
Social security, health, education, you name it.
If I were a teacher, I'd like my performance be measured according to my students school performance after controling for fix effects, i.e., school location, decile, and factors that are out of my control.
If my students' performance were better than some benchmark, I'd love to have my efforts acknowleged by getting paid a bit more than the average.
As an inventor/designer I work in a non linear fashion, how do you measure that in a linear system? The whole process of measuring is fraught with danger. If you want a real challenge, measure only the bottom 10% of students, or the failures.
I think of New Zealands best selling author, he dropped out of school very early.
the government will pass a degree that you need to comply.
you need to register those hours, and see they are properly accounted and paid for.
the system is success (by decree) if you don't fit it is your willful non-compliance, therefore you an (1) an enemy of the state, (2) required to change your evil ways.
Oh I agree, time and motion is very useful for a highly repetitive ie a production type environment making a good, where the ppl are at best semi-skilled. Its useless and even damaging in any sphere where thought is needed and each task is unique and done by skilled ppl. Been there done that (or worked with it) waste of time and money.
regards
The high school that I went to streamed the classes. Different teachers were used for different academic abilities and many at each level were probably quite successful, I don't see how you could fairly compare and compensate that.
There is also the presumption when trying to measure that you are measuring the right thing and I would take serious issue with that.
However I do think that a non performing teacher is probably quite apparent and I see the issue as much about removing those from the system than rewarding any perceived excellence.
I just hate it when ppl say "common sense" it usually isnt. It means no one agrees with their outlandish point of view and at the same time its a shutodwn of any counter-argument.
So its a failure of logic.
a) Lets take health, NZers live longer than Americans and spend about 8% of GDP to achieve it v 16~18% of GDP. That is a huge amount of money being symphned off in America into rentier profits that isnt being spent which creats jobs.
b) Teachers and indeed say Police dont do it for the money actually, and that is the problem with ppl such as yourself who only think in terms of $s you cant grok anything else.
c) If you look at the economy under a leftish v rightish Govn you will tend to see that leftish Govns have better economies.
So yes lets name it, be specific, lets debate a point.
regards
Re the Chch Old CBD announcemnents (actually, old news, dates from Sept 2013 but let that pass) - filling the building chock full of Public Service drones will have three effects:
- As they, the banks and the lawyers/accountants/assorted other parasites will be the only office occupants in the Old CBD, there will be an echo-chamber effect - they'll all only have each other to talk to.
- There will, of course be the obligatory assortment of food premises, bars, and other itch-scratch-resolution centres which are needed to keep the cube-dwellers relatively sane.
- Bally's will at long last be able to move that old inventory of cardigans and walk socks.
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