The government’s most recent humiliating bungle just got worse:
Behind-the-scenes budget documents show Education Minister Hekia Parata knew full well the impact her education reforms would have. She knew the number of teachers that would be cut, that technology teachers would be hardest hit, and that there would be negative fallout from the changes.
Ms Parata said publicly that “we are not cutting teacher numbers”, but it turns out that she knew all along that 1063 teachers would be cut by 2016. …
Labour’s Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins suggested that Ms Parata either deliberately misled the public, or failed to read the advice she had been given. “Either Hekia Parata lied or she didn’t read the advice she was given. There’s no other conclusion that can be reached from these papers that have been released today,” he said.
Parata’s later comments suggest that she had indeed read the advice. I was going to say “unbelievable”, but of course it isn’t, we’re all used to being lied to by Ministers in this government now. So what does Parata have to say?
Behind-the-scenes budget documents show Ms Parata knew technology teachers would go. She said she did not hide it, but just did not have enough time to mention it.
Did not have time to mention it? What?
“I think we have to bear in mind if we step back through that that there was something like less than a week I think when parents and teachers became concerned,” she said.
Keep digging Parata, that will help. Here’s what you said at the time of cuts to teacher numbers:
“I was not given any information that led me to have suspected this outcome was going to be achieved.”
That is now shown to be an outright lie. For a change I think I’ll leave the final word to John Armstrong:
If Hekia Parata is to remain in the education portfolio for any length of time, she needs to stop spouting meaningless blather.
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