Nanaia Mahuta

The Herald yesterday carried an article that New Zealand schools had advanced $560,000 to teachers to cover Novopay errors.

According to official figures there are 2358 schools in New Zealand. That means on average they have had to advance $125 237 each – not a big deal. Apparently there are 7500 staff who have been mispaid – just over 3 per school – also not worth ripping your hair out for. It isn’t a good look but clearly many people who should be focussed on improving the lot of kids are well and truly out of proportion distracted.

The grizzling of teachers is the opposite of the traits you would expect them to look for in their students. On TV3 last night serial whiner Laurie Powell threatened to leave the country and stated that if he made those kind of errors he would get the sack. If he is the same Laurie Powell listed on “rate my teachers” it is clear some of his students do consider he makes those kind of mistakes and would mind if he was in another country.  Read more »

Very few nominations, which is pretty indicative of the state of the opposition.

National’s poll drops are totally self inflicted and the opposition can barely hold their heads up with pride.

For me though there are a few that can.

The nominees are:

Chris Hipkins – for not losing his head and following along with silly hits like Mallard, Little and that newbie  from Dunedin have a habit of doing. He has held Hekia Parata to account and shown up Nanaia Mahuta for the lazy trougher and token MP she is.

Kevin Hague – for calmly dealing with issues not personality. His handling of ACC and also his professionalism with the marriage equality bill show he has some futre.

Russel Norman – love him of hate him he made himself look like the leader of the opposition when David Shearer failed to show up all year.

Winston Peters – he is long past his prime but he is stroppy when he can stay off the sauce and get the words out. best if he left the wig at home now.

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John Tamihere was on Q+A yesterday and made very specific references to non-performing Labour front benchers:

Across the whole line, whether it’s health, welfare or education, and those are the biggies.  …

This has to have been a deliberate attack…on the “front bums” of the front bench. The Labour MPs holding those jobs are Maryan Street, Jacinda Ardern and Nanaia Mahuta.

Notwithstanding that, he is dead right on their performance.

This is the kind of bullshit that causes unbelievably bad election results.

Asked about her future in politics, Ms Mahuta said she did intend to stand again in 2014. She was more dismissive about the possibility John Tamihere could run for Parliament again, saying Labour had decided during its recent organisational review that it should focus on attracting more young people and women to ensure it was in a strong place through to 2026.

No Nanaia, the Labour Party needs to be thinking about now, not 2026. It needs good people who can sell policies that middle New Zealand want, not some visionary program looking into the middle distance to discover what Labour will be like in a decade and a half.

Bill English tried this when he led National. He went on and on about the browning of New Zealand and how National needed to prepare for a white minority in 2040 or something equally stupid. Under his leadership he forgot about preparing for the 2002, concentrating on some nebulous point in the future rather than facing up to Helen Clark. His legacy was 27 MPs and a seven figure debt for his party.

This kind of dumb statement, combined with Nanaia’s total lack of impact on the education portfolio means she should be pensioned off as quickly as possible. An extended maternity leave if you will.

For all her protesting about people being out to get her she has not given any good reasons to keep her.

Maybe I have been asleep for as long as she has been in the education portfolio, and there have been some stunning policies Fran Mold hasn’t managed to get the media to cover?

Or maybe she has nailed Queen Hekia in the house and I was preoccupied with guns and hunting and missed it?

Or maybe she has been something more than an entitlement orientated Maori Princess who believes that her tribal rank entitles her to do nothing and get all the status that comes with high birth?

Or maybe she is just dead set useless and Shearer really does need to give her the arse-card.

I understand that Nanaia Mahuta’s baby is due in December.  Does this mean that Shearer will time the reshuffle in the middle of BBQ season – and after the birth of Nanaia’s baby?  January perhaps?

At least he won’t look as though he is sacking a pregnant woman.  Instead he will be targeting a woman with a new baby, a woman who is most likely sleep deprived and a woman who under all this stress may well develop post-natal depression?

So nice to see such inspired leadership from Shearer.

It is good to know he cares about women.  Is Sue Moroney sure that Shearer put his hand up in support of her paid parental leave bill?  Hmmm… may be there is an option for Shearer in that.  He could pay Nanaia to stay away and have an ‘Acting’ Education spokesperson in her place.

Whatever he decides Nanaia is right.  Shearer has lead the charge in attacking Nanaia for being a woman of childbearing age.

If Cactus cannot sack or demote a pregnant employee in Hong Kong a country that cares zero about labour law, it makes you wonder how Shearer could even consider getting rid of the Maori Princess.

 The problem is that even where I live, one of the least labour law inclined jurisdictions in the world, labour law would prevent me from demoting or sacking an employee once they’re pregnant unless there is “serious misconduct”. You just cannot. They get the immunity stick in Survivor.  Here is the HK law in plain language

Dimpost highlights that Nanaia Mahuta thinks she is battling enemies from within caucus…with talk of her being sidelined just as she is due to have a baby.

I wonder which enemies she could be talking about?

With internecine warfare about to break out in Waitakere and now manky front benchers in Shearer’s caucus it might be time to settle in with some popcorn. I just hope that Carmel isn’t planning on getting pregnant anytime soon since it looks like that is a surefire career killer in Labour right now under the leadership of David Shearer.

David Shearer did the unspeakable on The Nation.  He indicated there’d be a reshuffle in the not so distant future – specifically to the front bench.

“[I'm] certainly looking at where we can improve. Obviously you would want to do that,” Mr Shearer said.

“With 34 MPs I need all my team contributing fully,” Mr Shearer said at the time.

“I have made clear that I will be looking closely at the performance of every MP and strong performers will be rewarded.”

Does this mean that the performance reviews he promised when he won the leadership are now complete?

It appears that rather than confront Cunliffe directly that Shearer is trying to pick off Nanaia Mahuta.  While Chippie will be loving the idea, and has been doing a great attack job on the easily crippled Parata, Shearer is a bit nutty to pick on Nanaia.

First of all, Nanaia is pregnant.  Any man knows you don’t fuck with a pregnant woman.  Taking her portfolio away will be akin to taking her hokey pokey ice cream with sprinkles and gherkins on top.

Shearer can’t target Nanaia because in doing so he is throwing down the gauntlet at Cunliffe.  Does Shearer really think he is strong enough to do this?  Has Shearer now got the Robertson camp on side by allowing them to run all the House strategy (like letting Chippie run the attack lines).

Demoting Nanaia will be seen as another affront to Maori in Labour but may be this is intentional as Tainui in particular have played an important role on the water rights issue – and Shearer clearly has a different view.

Nanaia hasn’t performed in Education but can Shearer afford to move her to another portfolio?  Is he going to suggest she walk through the Exit door first?  How very chivalrous!

So, who will be Labour’s next Education spokesperson?  Will it be Chippie who has been running the attack lines against the government?  or perhaps it will be Sue Moroney?  She desperately wants the education portfolio back – and has been snuggling up to the gaggle of gays in a hope of being seen as one of the team.

Only one question is left – how did Shearer manage to squander another good media opportunity for Labour by instead creating another opportunity for the newsfeed to be all about Labour’s woes… and not about the Government?

Jacinda Ardern keeps carping and moaning about measuring poverty.  When National put the figure of welfarism at $47 billion she was not happy.

Now the National are trying to bring in leagues tables, again Labour are not happy.

The Government’s pig-headed determination to use “ropey” data to create school league tables will do nothing to help our kids, says Labour’s Education Spokesperson Nanaia Mahuta

“National is obsessed with measuring the problem – it thinks if it can just produce a nice chart that shows how schools are doing in terms of meeting its National Standards all will be well.

How dare National try and measure student performance?

Labour are again moaning when New Zealand spends more money on education than any other country in the OECD.

An annual report on education by the OECD says the Government spends more of its budget on education than any of the other 33 countries in the organisation.

The 34-nation organisation’s annual report on education published overnight tues night

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says New Zealand directed 21.2% of its public spending to education in 2009.

That was enough to push it past the previous biggest spender, Mexico, by nearly one percentage point.

The OECD average is 13%.