John Armstrong: Question is what else will be revealed about Te Wananga o Aotearoa

What else lurks beneath the Beehive carpet? And, more to the point, when will the public be told about it?

Trevor Mallard may have wrestled Te Wananga o Aotearoa into inevitable submission by threatening to choke funding to the troubled tertiary institute and thus force it to cede control of its purse-strings to a Government appointee.

While the Tertiary Education Minister has moved to head off fresh allegations of financial irregularities which the Opposition is poised to make when Parliament meets today, it is still going to be an uncomfortable afternoon for the Government.

The lingering question which will dog ministers during question-time and a likely urgent debate to follow is whether the Government would have come clean about the strife at the wananga if Act's Ken Shirley had not blown the whistle two weeks ago.

And, furthermore, if the education bureaucracy was aware of the wananga's financial difficulties last year - as Mr Mallard yesterday indicated - why did the Government not make its intention to step in a lot clearer a lot earlier?

The lasting impression is that the Government has only come clean now because it has been rumbled by Mr Shirley.

Mr Mallard yesterday also announced the Government had told the Ministry of Education, the Tertiary Education Commission and the Qualifications Authority to grapple with growing frustration over taxpayers' money being used to fund low-quality tertiary courses of limited job value.

The minister denied this instruction had been prompted by bad publicity surrounding some of the courses offered by the wananga, instead noting worries had first been raised by a Cabinet committee last October.

But National's Bill English had been making political hay for months before that by repeatedly revealing the existence of various polytechnic courses of dubious value.

Once again, the question is why the minister in charge of the tertiary sector - in that case Steve Maharey - took so long to respond.

The most the Government can salvage from all this is that last December's Cabinet reshuffle has meant those who held ministerial responsibility during recently exposed failings in the education portfolio have not made the Government's embarrassment even more severe by having to front to explain what went wrong.

Instead, a strange game of Beehive musical chairs has first witnessed David Benson-Pope, now in charge of the country's secondary schools, clearing up the mess over last year's scholarship exams he inherited from Trevor Mallard, who in turn has to fix the problems he inherited from Mr Maharey.

Put that down to either good management or good luck on the Prime Minister's part.