She who hesitates is lost, as Tolley learns the hard way

Anne Tolley. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Ask the average person how the concept of "inter-school moderation" will work and you are likely to get a very blank look.

Ask the Minister of Education the same question and you would expect an informative reply, given the moderation of literacy standards is very much part and parcel of the jargon-filled argument over national standards in primary schools.

Anne Tolley may well know exactly how moderation will work.

But her seeming reluctance to explain when questioned in Parliament yesterday left the distinct impression she was less than 100 per cent sure.

That reluctance might have been motivated by the questioner being Trevor Mallard - someone National loves to hate - and her thus being unwilling to go down the track he was trying to take her.

However, the feeling Tolley was out of her depth was reinforced when she responded to another of the Labour MP's questions with a fatal "um ..."

Hesitation is death in Parliament. Hesitation - even for a split second - suggests a minister is not on top of his or her portfolio.

"Good job you are not a teacher," interjected another Opposition MP.

The trouble is Tolley sounds like the headmistress.

There is a twang in her voice redolent of the Hawkes Bay squattocracy which makes her (unintentionally) sound as if she is talking down to people.

She is primed with the stock lines and soundbite-sized arguments.

They may be sufficient for media interviews as she tries to reach out to parents and get her message heard above the hubbub generated by the teacher unions, Labour and other opponents of the national standards regime that National is hell-bent on implementing.

Parliament is another matter.

Tolley is by no means a poor debater but the big test is question time, where inadequacies are brutally exposed. No one is exempt from ridicule.

Certainly not someone trying to sell a policy as contentious as national standards.

Tolley's plight was plain to see in the expressionless faces of colleagues sitting around her.

She may as well have been in Timbuktu, such was the silence and seeming indifference of National MPs to the unfolding disaster.

That indifference was feigned, of course. That became apparent when Gerry Brownlee intervened in his capacity of Leader of the House.

He urged Speaker Lockwood Smith to bring Mallard's line of questioning to an abrupt halt on the basis it did not comply with previous rulings.

Smith did - eventually. But not before acknowledging Mallard's "quite clever questioning".

To her credit, Tolley had the fortitude to front again a mere two hours later to be doused with further taunts from her Labour tormentors.

That required guts. But Labour still got the last laugh.

After Tolley sat down, Darren Hughes, Labour's chief whip and wit, raised a point of order, asking why her speech had not been 15 minutes long - the time allotted to MPs giving their final speech before departing for good.