The Government will conduct a ministerial inquiry to address the school property system which is “bordering on crisis”, according to PM Christopher Luxon.
Luxon and Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the independent review at the post Cabinet press conference today.
It was not related to the Government’s cost-saving exercise.
Stanford said there had been examples of poor planning, citing the Te Tātoru o Wairau Marlborough schools co-location project, which Stanford claimed had years of cost escalations with construction estimates of up to $405 million, despite originally only having $170m allocated by Cabinet in 2018.
According to Stanford, the Education Ministry had paused about 20 building projects within weeks of the new Government being formed.
The ministry had also informed Stanford that there could be up to 350 projects in various stages, from design through to pre-construction, where expectations far exceeded what could delivered.
”It is deeply concerning that many of these projects, years in the planning, were not underpinned by a value-for-money approach from the beginning,” she said.
Stanford said the poor execution of the approach to education property planning was at an “unprecedented scale”.
“What we have is a mess,” Stanford said, blaming the previous Labour Government for the poor planning and communication with schools.
”This should be the last thing that schools should be worrying about.”
She expected the review would take about three months. The reviewers hadn’t yet been appointed.
Luxon said his Government was focused on enhancing school achievement, citing the policy to ensure an hour of reading, writing and maths was taught in schools, as well as the ban on cellphones.
He would continue to “support choice” in the education system.
“The buck stops with the previous minister of education,” Stanford said of the education property pipeline not being able to be delivered on. Labour leader Chris Hipkins and Jan Tinetti both held the portfolio during the Labour Government.
The education ministry would be assessing the 350 projects with the intent to prioritise them so they could be delivered, however, she couldn’t guarantee all would be honoured.
Stanford was working with the ministry to establish what schools had a critical role in growth issues.
Luxon said the issue showed “abysmal fiscal management” from Labour, saying some schools had found out there wasn’t sufficient funding for their expansion projects weeks out from when construction was supposed to begin.
Schools involved in the Malborough project were “led down the garden path” regarding whether the project could be delivered, according to Stanford.
“It got out of control and no one said anything to the school.”
Stanford said there was evidence Hipkins knew at the end of 2022 that the Malborough project had blown out and that the result was the project would continue without further funding being confirmed by Cabinet.
Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said: “This is a desperate attempt to create an excuse to cut much-needed school building projects. National are choosing to prioritise tax cuts over classrooms for children.”
He said under National children learned “in damp, mouldy classroom and schools with no space and no funding”.
“We don’t want to go back to that.
“Labour upgraded every school in the country through the School Investment Package. We built thousands of classrooms and added urgent temporary teaching spaces as rolls grew.”
Hipkins said the school upgrades announced by the previous Labour Government were made on Ministry of Education advice and were based on condition assessments.
“The process for school building work was changed under the last National government and we continued the approach they put in place.
“Cost escalations in the building sector have been a fact of life. National were told before the election they hadn’t allowed enough for cost escalations in their fiscal plan and chose to ignore that and claim tax cuts were affordable. They aren’t and now it looks like kids will be the latest to pay the price.”
The review will assess how to have a clear view of the building pipeline, as in at what point of the construction process schools are at, which Stanford said we didn’t have currently.
Overall, the education construction pipeline was valued in the billions.
Stanford reiterated her focus on improving education at the primary and intermediate levels, saying that would go towards improving NCEA results.
“All options are on the table,” Luxon said when asked about getting more children attending school. He didn’t directly answer whether the Government would decide to increase funding for programmes increasing attendance.
The reviewers will be appointed in the coming weeks.
Luxon said he was still confident the remaining aspects of the Government’s 100-day plan could be achieved, with 14 days left and 16 actions still left. The deadline for the 100-day plan is March 8.
”We will do whatever it takes frankly.”
With Green MP Efeso Collins’ funeral on Thursday, Luxon said he would be attending and still expected Parliament to sit but with reduced numbers so MPs could attend the funeral.
On the gang patch ban proposal, Luxon said he wasn’t fazed with the potential for gang members’ rights to be limited through the ban, saying they didn’t uphold their responsibilities as Kiwi citizens.
He said police were free to be able to distribute resources to hotspots, claiming police officers wanted more tools to crack down on gangs.
Luxon said he would see what the Attorney General said about whether the patch ban contravened the Bill of Rights, but he said his Government had to do something about rising gang member numbers and spikes in violent crime.
He said he didn’t want any intimidatory insignia being worn in public.
Luxon said he and Police Minister Mark Mitchell had looked at lowering the bottom value threshold for criminal asset seizure and indicated his Government could look at changing the legislation, which was brought in by Labour.
It comes amid mixed reactions to the Government confirming legislation will soon land in the House which intends to give police more powers to disperse gangs and take patches off gang members if they wear them in public.
University of Auckland associate law professor Carrie Leonetti told the Herald the proposed legislation is reportedly based on a similar law passed in Western Australia.
However, she has never seen any evidence to suggest banning gang insignia and banning consorting had an impact on gang membership or violence.
Leonetti said the Government’s chief science adviser’s report last year on how to reduce gang-related harm recommended the exact opposite of what the Government is proposing.
“The report recommended working on primary prevention and trying to find ways of joining gangs and trying to minimise the harm gangs propose,” Leonetti said.
“It strongly suggested the tough on crime and zero tolerance crackdown would not be effective but could be counter-productive and may feed into the disengagement a lot of gang members feel.”
Leonetti said the proposed legislation could be an effective recruiting tool rather than a tool for dismantling them.
However, another expert in drug markets and organised crime, Massey University Professor Chris Wilkins, said there was merit to the Government’s new policies.
“[Patches] are projecting power, intimidating to the public, so the more you see people walking around with gang patches in the neighbourhood, the more you feel intimidated and the more you feel that the authorities aren’t listening to you,” he said.
Speaking at the Auckland Central police station yesterday, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said under the new law, police would be able to issue dispersal notices, which would require gang members to immediately leave the area and not associate with one another for seven days.
Courts would be able to issue non-consorting orders, which would stop specified gang offenders from associating or communicating with one another for up to three years.
“The law will also be changed to give greater weight to gang membership as an aggravating factor at sentencing, enabling courts to impose more severe punishments,” Goldsmith said.
Under the legislation, wearing a gang patch in public would come with a penalty of a fine of up to $5000 or up to six months in prison.
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.
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