by David Clendon
We heard earlier this week that Steven Joyce is to replace Anne Tolley as Tertiary Education Minister. Leaving any unkind comment on the reasons for Mrs Tolley’s replacement aside for now, I’ve been wondering what this means for the Tertiary Education portfolio. Is Mr Joyce’s appointment good news, or bad?
Well, on the one hand, since Mrs Tolley dedicated very little time to the Tertiary sector since she took office, her replacement will be good news no matter who it is if it means more time devoted to the portfolio.
And there’s some evidence that Mr Joyce might have a bit of fun in him – the Otago University Students’ Association unearthed the fact that in a past life he was a student radio DJ and welcomed his appointment on that account.
Joyce was only elected in 2008, but already he’s built up a bit of a reputation as the Government’s “Mr Fix-it”, and not in a good way. As Transport Minister, he’s shown no propensity to look for innovative approaches to challenges, preferring to blindly focus on roads and motorways despite ample evidence that roads are not a smart solution.
As the Tertiary Education Union point out, “Tertiary education needs a minister who can champion the end of funding cuts, who will invest in opportunities and access for new students, and who will drive innovative blue skies research.”
Joyce might quickly learn that if he brings his “be reasonable, do it my way” approach from Transport to this portfolio things could get fraught.
The jury is out, and we’ll be watching with interest.
Published in Parliament | Society & Culture by David Clendon on Fri, January 29th, 2010
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Step 1 will be to see the need to engage with stake holders in the sector, The TEU and the NZVCC, unlike Trolley who said she saw no need to engage at all with either party.
Surely the spontaneous sending of the Minister to Coventry at the TEU conference hasn’t meant this change at the helm.
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I have absolutely no idea why Joyce is the MSM darling…
His $10.7 billion dollar state highway program alone is “driving” NZ further down the economic scrapheap…
“Fibre to the home” became “Fibre to the city (if your lucky)” and after 18 months there is still not a single metre of cable laid, great for Telecommunications Minister, remember $1.5 billion..?
A lacklustre budget as Associate Minister of Finance…
And as Associate Minister of Infrastructure two massive power cuts in Auckland this year…
I wish the unelected prick would go back to his crappy radio stations…
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more to the point it seems to me is how will “better” arrive in the tertiary education sector..? Perhaps Mr. Joyce is considered “better” than his predecessor.. by their peers who else..
If so, what I’d really be looking forward to would be the educated potential to answer a very simple question. To wit: who (and how the heck was it made possible) invested USD56bn in equities in the December quarter alone..?
Could this “good news” story be tied to Westpac Bank’s latest foray into online business. [Out of sight out of mind, no matter, we got loads o’ dough!)..? Who will publicly and responsibly express kiwi confidence in the trade that PM Key mentioned early on in the most recent crisis and no one else to my knowledge here has so much as parted their lips upon. Clue: margin traders.. and margin calls..
Time for a more highly skilled education of relevance.. wot!
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Tom, sorry, I’m lost; please can we have some links?
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Joyce hasn’t had too many tough choices so far. In both his portfolios (transport and communications) he’s had a crap load of money to play around with yet has still managed to hack off everyone involved in transport sectors (except the roads lobby) and not really achieve much in terms of getting fibre to home progress.
The one difficult decision that Joyce had to face during 2009 was the Waterview Connection, and to be honest he make a complete balls-up of it. Announcing that all those extra homes would need to go, when actually they didn’t, just because he hadn’t given NZTA the time to do their job properly, is a pretty unforgivable mistake.
I think once Joyce has responsibility for a tough portfolio where he doesn’t have masses of money to play with (like Tertiary Education) we might see him struggle a bit.
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Perhaps this appointment is so Mr Joyce can get a “Road of National (party) Significance” built through a university or polytechnic. Those institutions that are near major holiday spots should start worrying now
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Peter Dunne – you toss pot!
The Blog’s called “Peter’s Position” and we’ve all known for years what that is!
http://media.funny.co.uk/files/2771.jpg
http://www.unitedfuture.org.nz/default,1305,a_couple_of_unpleasant_political_facts_to_ponder.sm
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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I’m not sure that you can blame a Minister for Infrastructure who has only been in the portfolio for a year for two massive power outages, one caused by a shipping container on a fork lift hitting an overhead power line and the other caused by a fire under multiple transmission lines. Almost by definition, infrastructure takes a while to be expanded. Indeed, Transpower are now in the process of running another circuit through the Waikato area, having gone through a long drawnout process to get approval to do so, including opposition from some green party supporters. They have also been given the go-ahead for the Northland and North Auckland upgrade.
In both cases, the failures caused outages in part because alternative circuits were closed for maintenance. This maintenance is performed during spring and summer when demand is lower and the weather is more suitable. It appears to me that in both cases, a second circuit was either knocked out or failed to operate (chain reaction failure).
Trevor.
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Thanks mate!!!
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Glad to be of service
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BluePeter cuts and pastes comment to support his narrow view on education standards from –
Kiwiblog
ROTFLMAO!!!
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The School Trustees Association!
Pahleeeze Peter!
Get up to speed.
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Yes, what was I thinking.
Telling parents how their kids are performing on a national level is so obviously a terrible idea.
Best keep them in the dark.
Stay strong, Union brothers!
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In any case, it isn’t up to teachers.
National were voted in on this policy, and the teachers take money for carrying out the wishes of their employers, the Ministry.
If they don’t like the terms of the job – quit.
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If they recognise that their employers are making a stupid, ideologically-driven mistake, oppose it in every way they can!
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He has achieved more in government than the Green Party.
Our standards for success are certainly not the same as Dunne’s. While we work to change the current paradigm, he’s had his success by accepting it and whoring to either side. We have much longer term success in mind. Your doubting that the Greens will be back in 2011 applies way more to Dunne, who is only there by the grace of the National Party. He’s the only one likely to be retired next year.
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You keep telling yourself that.
How long have you spent not being part of government now?
And your percentage is not looking healthy……
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have you actually noticed that Dunne has no policy stance whatsoever, and leaps from lefft to right according to the whims of whomever he can currently suck up to?
He is a classic case of ‘Minister of my own career’, and while certain elements of the Ohariu elecotorate think they’ve got him paid off, they don’t always read the fine print.
As Vallis has already said, but I’ll repeat for the hard of cognition, Green policy is aimed at paradigm shifting; Dunne is aiming far lower than that, merely to get vote-shifting within his electorate long enough to keep himself elected.
‘fly – what can I say to such linguistic comedy?
And tacking back against the wind towards the original topic:
Mmm, very hard to find anyone in the Tertiary sector last year with anything good to say about Tolley, she completely alienated both NZUSA and the several campus student associations who invited her to speak pre-elections, then failed to respond to any questions about changes to tertiary policy after the elections; and was similarly unresponsive to the TEU’s requests for policy discussions.
Not sure how (if?) Joyce intends to repair those relationships, which have always been key to tertiary sector policy management; perhaps he’s thinking about blending his former role as associate Telco Minister and offering better telecomm’s access on campuses – although as most are in reasonably well-serviced urban areas, that would be a bit redundant.
Secondary schools in rural areas might have a few things to say to him on the same subject, however.
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Anne Tolley made an appointment to speak to VUW students.
I invited an academic who had failed to discover what her plan was for higher education – no names, no pack drill.
Anne Tolley cancelled.
I apologised to the academic.
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He quotes Beeby,
“it has taken a long time for us to learn that no fundamental change can be brought about in schools on a national scale, unless the average teacher understands the change, believes in it and, above all, accepts it as their own idea …”
Read that and weep Anne Tolley.
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Listener and proctology – talk about yer educational standards!
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JC2,
lost — surely not..? Tho unapparent it would appear to you my call for relevant tertiary “betterment”. After all, why should high finance per margin trader business remain sole preserve to a very few people with you’ve guessed it private agendas. Such potential for corruption ought be a very public and educationally attainable matter. Can’t have our chaps led unto the long wrong load.. Either in ignorance or arrogance..eh!
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Greenfly,
I think it was yourself who responded to someone else who’d advanced the “wisdom” of kiwiblog in regard to national standards. Two things struck me about the exchange:
1. that national standards were first advanced by a then social democrat kiwi author whose own child had been through an appalling kiwi primary school experience;
2. the definition of luddites given by kiwiblog bears no relation to their (luddite) reality. Which was more a matter of denying progress, and thereby something akin to climate change deniers in our times..
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Tom – I’m a huge fan of the activist Luddites, who sought (in my opinion), to keep people in hands-on employment and took steps to prevent technology from displacing people. Interestingly, they used technology to fight technology, employing hand-tools to destroy machines.
To my knowledge, I’m their only fan.
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Greenfly,
I’ve been reading Brian Easton’s book about Globalisation. From the point of view I end up with:
– Sir Robert Muldoon was attempting to achieve something similar, by isolating the New Zealand economy
– it comes with short-term benefits and long-term costs
– (more opinion and less fact) we would have been better off if he’d stopped sooner
May I have your opinion about his legacy?
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jc2 – had I a worthwhile one, I’d gladly share it with you, but sadly, I don’t.
I’ve a friend who was a friend of Muldoon and admired him greatly.
I didn’t.
My parents-in-law carpeted their house with a white shag-pile that Muldoon had ordered but declined to buy.
Aside from that trivia, I’ve got nothing.
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And who sought, thereby, to keep the price of cloth up at a time when many people could not afford clothing for themselves and their children.
Factories that introduced the new machines but kept to the old high prices were largely left alone. So despite their rhetoric, it seems that what the Luddites truly objected to was the way that the machines owners were (outrageously!) producing affordable cloth when the old, labour-intensive ways produced expensive cloth.
Meanwhile, may I suggest that you google “lump of labour fallacy”.
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icehawk – no empathy for the Luddites, eh! I understand the lump fallacy well enough and didn’t think that was the point of the Ludite action. To me, there is an aspect of working a loom (hands on, social, pride in manufacture ) that is lost when machines replace weavers. It might be that those weavers could find other employment, but, like Maori women who have learned their sophisticated art, the weavers might have found the idea that they could move sideways into another job, very unnatractive indeed.
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‘fly -
another luddite fan here!
You might want to check wikipedia on craftivism to find where the latest in luddite-inspired activism is going – people are using hands-on creativity to fight the developers who attempt community stagnation by sitting on speculative land, rather than building the low-priced housing that is all the locals can afford.
There’s a few other applications going on, as well, but it’s very grassroots (or should that be linen/flax-roots?)
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Katie – U crafty activist U.
That’s me 2!
Now, if we can just weave a net from spider silk, strong enough to ensnare Big Gerry B. lash him to his Ministerial Post with muka and crochet him a new …
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Katie, Greenfly,
The Luddites didn’t just want the right to do hand-crafts: they wanted the right to destroy the machines that made cheap competition. Luddites didn’t refuse technology: they tried to deny technology to others. There way wasn’t concientious objection or self-denial, it was violent opposition to deny others.
It’s all very well to want the dignity of doing a given job a given way: but when that changes to busting other peoples stuff so they can’t compete with you I do indeed run out of empathy.
Nope. No empathy at all for the Luddites.
But I’m a big fan of the Arts & Crafts movement, and all that has come from it. I think the modern Green movement has a large intellectual inheritance from Morrison, et al, and their late-19th-century backlash against dull modern factory-produced objects and houses. I like unique hand-made crafted objects. But you’ve got to realise that the results are *expensive*, and not all can afford them, and I won’t insist that all have to pay the price of the luxuries that I like and can afford.
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excuse this entry _ I am determined to try make a link properly — past experience at doing one led me to shove off at JC2′s suggestion on this thread .. so okay, the test is my own blog and a simple one to write .. if this code works then I’ll try oblige the guy.. because, not least, Mr Clendon is likely small business rep for the greens and needs be aware what I’m saying..
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Okay then, link worked fine..
First up mebbe JC@ would excuse my slight shittiness in response.. we’d been spending a lot of time examining all the faux in banking biz type stuff and at news of Paul Volcker’s op-ed in the NYT – how to fix the big one etc – I’d figured everyone would on or about that bigtime tertiary axis. My fault entirely. Too focussed
Anyways Volcker wasn’t published at the time, making it next day, and I wasn’t entirely sure he’d plumb a paragraph or so on the issue I see as most relevant here. And in need of educational input for sure..!
So first link to Volcker. see second par this page where he talks about speculative bank capital as a misuse from its more regular customers use etc.
More specifically, and pointedly, a follow up on the Opes Prime case in Australia is an instructive read. Total relevance I believe coming near the end..
Happy reading.. and learning JC2 and you folks… small business would be grateful for an alert eye on such matters..
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Icehawk – “concientious objection or self-denial”, where was that going to get them?
They had spunk and got off their ergonomic office chairs (ha!) and used their legs and arms to try to stem the eroding tide of heartless technological ‘progress’ (regress) and maintain some heart in their communities. After all, community is paramount, yes?
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Tom,
Thanks for coming back to me.
Except in so far as small businesses are customers of the failing institutions, I don’t see how margin trading (for everyone else: roughly speaking: buying shares with 20% my money and 80% borrowed money, but taking 100% of the capital gains and losses, where the losses have to be paid in cash) is an issue for small businesses.
In “January 30, 2010 at 5:31 PM”, you implied that you had information about Westpac and about asymmetric transfers between cash and share markets. I can’t see that information in your links. Do you have links for it?
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JC2,
“February 2, 2010 at 11:46 PM” — I guess if you don’t see it you don’t see it.. re small business, and if you are truly interested, it might help if you try some follow through. In what the conclusion of that case might mean in the context of small business. And large. There, here and elsewhere. Since.
As for “January 30, 2010 at 5:31 PM” – therein I asked a question. Implications are for others to take. Your I can’t see that information in your links. then somewhat baffling as to the implication you took.
Questioning arises most usually from a need to know, not of knowledge.
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